Sean Young [pictured holding up his finger] currently works in sports as event staff for the New York Knicks, coaching staff for clinics around the NYC area, as well as working as a coach for Basketball City – a state of the art facility where customers can rent available basketball courts and hold events. Young grew up in Fanwood, New Jersey and always dreamed about playing in the NBA or working in sports.
Prior to working in the community with children, Young aquired a public relations internship with the Brooklyn Nets. Young was an avid sports fan playing soccer, football, and basketball. Young attended the University of Delaware, then transferred to Montclair State University. While Young was playing sports he realized how important it was to give back to his community. Although he was a talented player, he knew that not everyone could play in the NBA. Young realized that not playing in the NBA wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I interviewed Sean Young as he prepares for his first independent clinic on Saturday, May 21.
Young reminisces on his time as a young fan, “my best friend got me into sports. I grew up as a huge Chicago Bulls fan idolizing Michael Jordan. I decided that I wanted to play soccer and basketball since my best friend played.” Once Young attended middle school, he remembers when he started to take sports seriously, Young states “probably during seventh and eighth grade I started to take basketball more seriously. It was big for me. I realized I was better than most of my classmates and age group.” Young also remembers growing up with future NBA talent. “I played with Lance Thomas [currently with the New York Knicks], we grew up together. Our eighth grade team went 50-0; that was huge. We started to get really serious about basketball at this time”
Young wasn’t only talented in basketball, but in various other sports as well. “I was really good at soccer. If I wasn’t playing basketball I was working on my soccer skills. From third grade until the end of my senior year in high school, I was always in the gym.” “My friends convinced me to play football and baseball because of my size and height, but that didn’t last a year.” Young always found a way to go back to his first love – basketball. Once Young graduated from high school, it was his dream to play at a university. Young reminisces, “I wanted to play division 1 basketball, that’s why I went to Delaware. That situation was going well, but I wanted to come back home and play at Montclair State. I was a freshman at Delaware and I didn’t get a chance to evolve as a player.”
After Young graduated from Montclair State, he realized that the NBA was so far away in terms of reaching that plateau. One of his coaches approached him with an opportunity to speak with the Assistant General Manager from the Brooklyn Nets, Bobby Marks. “My coach said I have Bobby Marks on the phone. I said from the Nets? We spoke for a bit and he offered me an internship in the public relations department and I took it. I felt it was too much for me, it was a lot of work, but although it was rewarding, it wasn’t something I was interested in fully.” Young still wanted to work in sports but he decided to turn his attention towards community efforts.
“I just realized that the other coaches that are in these clinics, not that they’re bad coaches, but I came from winning communities and there is something to learn from that to give back to the kids. Other people don’t have those experiences and we are missing that in our communities.”
Young will now run his own independent clinic where he will be the lead and have other coaches under his supervision. Young has coached at enough clinics to know how to run a youth program and he is excited to give back to the community he grew up in – New Jersey.
“This is my first independent clinic where I will be at the helm. It was easy for me because I was already going in this direction. I was learning so much and I feel like whatever job you work you learn and you should take that and build it on your own and you should give back to people who you know you can give back to.”
I asked what will his message be to the children that will attend his first clinic on Saturday, May 21, “I hope that they learn the game of basketball. I want them to know that life is a mentality and that if you believe in something, you can achieve it with focus and effort. That is what the importance of a basketball clinic really is, it isn’t only about the basketball aspect. Not everyone will go to the NBA, it’s more about the learning experience.”