Anthony Newell heard his name announced in Worthen Arena and rose to his feet as applause from the crowd blanketed him in approval.
It's a scene Newell has become accustomed to during his past four years with Ball State's men's basketball team, but this occasion was significantly different.
Instead of sporting his basketball sneakers and No. 32 Cardinals jersey, Newell wore dress shoes with a black cap and gown. Instead of sprinting toward the hoop, he walked toward a platform on the floor.
Once he got to his destination, there were no teammates ready to feed him the basketball. Instead, he accepted his diploma, a trophy given only to those who receive their degree from the university.
Sitting in the crowd, Newell's mother, Doreen Newell, felt tears roll down her cheeks as she watched her son become the first from his family to graduate from college this summer. Of all the memorable moments Doreen Newell has seen her son experience playing on the Worthen Arena floor, she said none was sweeter than his walk across that platform.
"When I was sitting there, I don't think it came to me until he walked across the stage," she said. "That's when it hit me, how great it is and what an honor it is to have such a bright and intelligent son to graduate from college. There's no one in his family that graduated that could've told him about it. He just did it."
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BUILDING A DREAM
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Growing up in Chicago during the 1990s, it's predictable that Newell's favorite basketball player as a child was Michael Jordan.
Like most boys in his neighborhood, Newell envisioned wearing the red-and-black No. 23 jersey for his hometown Bulls when he played on his community's playground courts.
Newell's grandmother, Lenora Johnson, doesn't share her grandson's enthusiasm for basketball, but she recognized Jordan was a Superman figure to him. Johnson jumped at the opportunity to use her son's hero as a teaching example.
While Newell gaped at the on-court exploits of his hometown idol, his grandmother stressed that Jordan returned to North Carolina to finish his major in geography after entering the NBA.
"It's been a goal of mine [to graduate from college] ever since my first day of high school," Newell said. "I've always wanted to be different from everybody. To a lot of people [in Chicago], college is not really an option to them. So I just wanted to be that person to make a change and be different."
The dream may have set in during his high school years, but earning a college degree was a message Newell's mother preached since he was old enough to remember. Doreen Newell, a construction coordinator in Chicago, always wanted to attend college, but those plans fell through.
To this day, Doreen Newell said she should have gone to college after high school, but the allure of earning a paycheck every week as an 18-year-old was too difficult to pass on. Regardless, she wasn't about to let the same temptation derail her children's futures.
"I don't have a college degree, but I've always wanted my kids to go," Doreen said. "I've always instilled in them that it can be done, that it needs to be, in order for them to have a prosperous life. I've always told my kids when they were growing up, even when they graduated from eighth grade, I told them, 'Oh wow, you've got eight more years.'"
Even during the heart of basketball season, Doreen Newell never shied away from letting her son know his first priority was school. Newell's accomplishments on the floor were great, but it was his production in the classroom that mattered most.
Throughout his time at Ball State, Newell never forgot the life lessons his mother taught him.
"[When] I come home, they don't even ask me about basketball half the time," Newell said. "It's always about school and how things are going, am I keeping up with work, just that kind of stuff. It really kept me focused because we never brought up basketball until we were done talking about school."
Putting education first is no problem for the Cardinals' coaching staff, assistant coach Bob Simmons said. While wins and losses matter to the program, he said, guiding a player to his college degree is one of the most rewarding aspects of his job.
"As coaches, we're educators first," Simmons said. "Coach Taylor really puts a high price tag on your degree. He wants and expects players to graduate, works with them to graduate. It's a great honor when your player walks across the stage. That's when it feels the job is complete."
BEING A ROLE MODEL
Newell arrived at Ball State with the goal of earning his degree, but he hadn't decided on which major to pursue.
As a freshman, he leaned toward earning a business degree, but the courses didn't captivate his attention. Then he talked with former basketball player Terrance Chapman, who received his degree in criminal justice.
"He told me criminal justice was a great major that kept him into it and kept his attention," Newell said. "It's hard to find a major that keeps your attention at all times, and that's basically what criminal justice did for me."
If it was difficult to pin down a major, the decision quickly became an easy choice compared to others that awaited Newell. Even suspensions early in his career, the departure of former coach Tim Buckley and a knee injury that forced him to ride the bench with a medical redshirt through his first season couldn't prepare him for last summer.
When Newell heard former coach Ronny Thompson would abruptly resign, he felt it was time to look for another school. Being one of the faces of the program wasn't a role he initially embraced, especially when the athletics was knee deep in racial issues.
Newell called his mother and said he wanted to transfer, but his mother's wisdom again pointed him down the right path.
"At that time I told him he couldn't transfer," Doreen Newell said. "I told him I thought that Ball State was the destined place Anthony should be. Whatever happens, you have to go through it. I told him it would be like quitting something, and if you start doing something and quit, you're going to be doing it throughout your life. So I told him he couldn't leave; he had to stay there."
Doreen Newell also assured her son the situation was going to get better, and he would regret taking the easy road. Of all the things she told her son, however, none stuck more than the realization that he needed to be a role model for his two younger siblings.
"Chicago is a very tough city, especially for boys like my little brother," Newell said. "I just wanted to show them that there's other things out here. It's not all negatives; there's a lot of positive things that they can do. I just wanted to show them that way."
It's a message Newell's 13-year-old brother, Darian Newell, realized sitting in the Worthen Arena crowd that July afternoon as his brother accomplished his dream. Darian, a safety on his school's football team, said he wants to follow in his older brother's footsteps and earn an athletic scholarship to college.
While football is as important in Darian's life as basketball is in his older brother's, he said, Newell taught him earning a college degree is more important than anything he'll accomplish on the field.
"He tells me if you want to make something of yourself, you've got to keep getting A's and B's in school," Darian said. "He tells me if you want to play football when you grow up, you've got to do well sports-wise and with your school work."
Adversity has been part of his family's story, Newell said, but his personal troubles helped make him stronger. Newell said he wouldn't change the struggles he persevered through because it led to that precious moment when his family witnessed him become its first college graduate.
"It really made me into a man a lot faster than I thought," Newell said. "I definitely look at it as a blessing. You've got to go through adversity. If everything was perfect, that wouldn't even be the kind of life I'd want to live. I want to have adversity in my life so I can become a stronger person."
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