sports
Tale of Struggle, Progress and Success
photo by Wayne Gehman
ThiS STaR aThleTe aRRived unmOTivaTed In 2001, Eric "E.J." Arrington arrived at EMU as a talented basketball and football player from nearby Stuarts Draft, Va., who didn’t have the grades or SAT scores to get a look from Division 1 recruiters. EMU enrolled him under “conditional admittance.” His Royals main recruiter, assistant men’s basketball coach Bill Hale, saw a young man who, in addition to being a gifted athlete, was bright and backed by a devoted mother. “She worked two or three jobs – she raised us (him and his younger sister) as a single mother,” Arrington said in a recent interview. “But she came to every single one of my games – football and basketball – from Little League on.” Arrington’s father lived in the Los Angeles area of California. In football, he had gotten as far as the Raiders training camp, but he hurt his knee. While partying in a gang-ridden area, he got shot six times, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Arrington’s mother took her children away from the urban violence, moving to rural Virginia when Arrington was seven years old. As a first-year student at EMU, Arrington did great on the basketball floor – he made the freshman All-American team – but he struggled academically, succumbing (he says) to financial and personal issues. While flunking or scraping by with a low D, however, Arrington was “becoming accustomed to the EMU way of living,” he says. He liked the fact that the “people were nice, classes were small, and people weren’t just black and white, but there were lots of people of different nationalities." At the beginning of Arrington’s junior year, Kirby Dean arrived as the new head men’s basketball coach. Dean organized daily study hall for the team, which Arrington attended. Dean also stressed teamwork, rather than play centering on one or two standouts. Arrington had a (self-described) “attitude” and pushed back. Then, in the second game of his junior year, a major knee injury sidelined Arrington. He had no health insurance. Dean found a surgeon in Charlottesville willing to treat him. Dean and his wife, Gina, were in the University of Virginia Hospital room when Arrington came out of surgery. "That’s when he started to develop trust in me,” says Dean. Arrington agrees: “Coach wanted me to succeed. He checked up on me.” Arrington also came to appreciate Gina Dean, who always sat in the stands near the team, cheering their efforts. He especially liked the chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies she baked for the team. In the Deans, Arrington saw a good marriage. As a red-shirt that year, Arrington started to get more serious about his schoolwork. When his speech teacher, Barbra Graber,
"E.J." Arrington '06 overcame challenges on and off the court.
got exasperated with his lack of effort and flunked him, he admits that initially he was indignant. But now Arrington reflects, “She changed my route. She challenged me. Being tough, I needed that.” He re-took speech in a community college, made an A, then enrolled in a theater class taught by Graber, where he also made an A. Arrington spent the summer of 2005 at what is now called Washington Community Scholars' Center, where he enjoyed exploring D.C. and had what he describes as the “priceless experience” of working in a studio with a music director from Howard University. Arrington graduated in 2006 with a major in communication and a minor in psychology, becoming the first college graduate in his family. With references provided by EMU contacts, including Coach Dean, Arrington parlayed his psychology minor into a job working with youth in Richmond, Va. Today he is a school-based counselor, with a case load of six at-risk middle-school boys, who he “re-directs when they get off track.” He aims to “make sure they succeed.” In his spare time, he is working with two other basketballplaying alumni – Marcus Harris '05 and Jeremy Miller (class of '05) – to launch a music career under the name AllMindzBonded (visit www.myspace.com/AllMindzBonded).
www.emu.edu | crossroads | 25