There’s a wide-eyed romanticism to embarking on the journey of making a career for oneself. Having already tasted the freedoms of college, the rest of the world is typically the next big step for students. If high school to college is a pond to the lake, college and beyond is a lake to the ocean. College is where many discover passions within themselves and hopefully begin to pursue those passions as a career. We romanticize going out into the world but don’t view smaller steps with the same enthusiasm. What if your passion calls you back to your university? Back to the hallways, students, and professors you know? For Union graduate assistants, their passions have called them back to Union’s hallways to continue to learn and begin to cultivate the passions of the next generation of students.
Union’s men’s and women’s basketball programs are prime examples of just how rewarding being a graduate assistant can be. With a focus on building relationships on both a player and coach level, former students who return as graduate assistants find themselves welcomed back into the fold. Part of what makes being a graduate assistant appealing is the feeling of returning to a familiar space. Union invites these students back to the spaces they already know and recontextualizes them with fresh responsibilities, making the transition to their post-undergraduate years seamless.
“I’ll be honest, it was a little weird at first,” said JC Hawkins, former player and current graduate assistant for the men’s basketball team. “They’ll sometimes joke around and call me coach. They know I don’t like it but they’ll do it just to bug me.”
Hawkins finds himself in the unique position of coaching some of his former teammates. It’s a rare opportunity but one that has gifted him with a level of relatability with his players, something that many coaches have to work to earn.
“Especially my former teammates: they know I was one of the smarter guys around, so they listen to me more,” Hawkins said.
When I met Hawkins for our interview, we were still searching for a place to conduct it. I followed him from a hallway of the coach’s offices to the men’s locker room, and across the PAC to an empty room. I was getting familiar with the spaces he knows.
Throughout our search, I saw the natural, quick interactions he had with the basketball players. Each one was fleeting but insightful into what his relationship with these players is like. We ran into a player on his way to class, and Hawkins inquired about the rest of his day and offered him some advice. The interaction was instinctual, an exercise in muscle memory for Jonathan, demonstrating how naturally he fits into his role.
Hawkins’ earned trust with his players has elevated the communication between coaches and players.
“They also know they can come to me with anything,” he said. “If they need to go to coach with something, they can come to me first, and I can figure out the right way to tell coach because sometimes what they say is not what they mean.”
Player-to-coach communication is vital to a functioning team, and graduate assistants, who often are situated to be more relatable to the players, are key elements in making this process smooth.
“With me, they can come to me and say whatever they want to say, and I can think about it and get the message across but in a different wordage,” Hawkins said.
While the context that graduate assistants will find themselves in will vary depending on the department, a universal thread between all of them is an emphasis on preparation for a post-college environment. In a sense, this is true for any student, but working as a graduate assistant often provides people with real responsibilities in the field they are hoping to go into. It allows them to build relationships professionally and provides a goldmine of hands-on experience.
For Jada Perkins, former player and graduate assistant for the women’s basketball team, stepping into her position came with its challenges.
“I’m not a very talkative person, and I never really wanted to coach,” she said, commenting on how taking the position didn’t feel like a fit for her at first. “My role is to build relationships.”
Perkins fits into her program in a similar way to how Hawkins fits into his, using her role as a student leader to build connections with players. These assistants offer a perspective that is invaluable to their teams since they have a level of relatability to students that coaches have aged out of.
“I’m not gonna force it on anybody,” Perkins said, discussing her approach to working with players. “Just when I’m there, I try to help them to see, you know, different views — aspects of things.”
Graduate assistants are asked to step up in a way that most students aren’t. They are given a great deal of responsibility not only in their own lives but also in the lives of the students they work with.
Hawkins sees this responsibility as a blessing and sees the fruits of it every day with his players.
“They know at the end of the day I’m just trying to help them,” Hawkins said.
Photo by Laila Al-Hagal
