The 2016 Rams Reflect is the first in a series of annual collections. Senior captains and representatives of Suffolk teams have been invited to contribute viewpoints based on personal experience from both their senior seasons and full varsity careers at Suffolk. 

For a complete listing of the 2016 Rams’ Reflections, click here. 

To my fellow Suffolk Rams:

I came to Suffolk University because it gave me a chance to get a high quality education, and an opportunity to play basketball – a game I fell in love with when I was in the second grade. I also came to Suffolk with high hopes. I had hopes to excel academically, and also win a GNAC Championship in basketball. I did excel academically with a Cumulative GPA of 3.94, however, I never fully achieved the success I expected for my basketball team and me. I do not want to talk about my successes. I want to talk about my failures and dashed dreams. I want to talk to all my fellow Suffolk Rams who have tasted the agony of defeat.

When we look at our four years of playing college sports, is that how we measure success? Is it a numeric value? Numbers of wins and losses? Does success really come down to a mathematical value? Or is there something more to this? You see, I came to Suffolk looking for a positive numeric value that was going to be the “measure of my success.” But my experience in the last four years has taught me that I cannot simply measure my experiences and my relationship with my coaches, my teammates, my trainers and my community based on the logic of mathematics. There is something more to this life and our experiences.

I played high school basketball at the Tilton School in New Hampshire on an ESPN highly-ranked team with DI Talent. One of my teammates, Nerlens Noel (Kentucky) was a high first-round draft pick in the NBA, and the others such as Wayne Seldens (Kansas) and Georges Niang (Iowa State) have experienced tremendous success in their athletic careers. Both are potential NBA Draft picks and I am excited to see what is ahead for them in the future. In my heart and mind, I was hoping for a little success for myself. I was comparing myself to my peers, and I was envisioning success as a mathematical value, an impersonal variable. I prayed quite often for this success, and I worked hard to achieve my goals. But my success never came in the way I expected. 

I had a very good freshman year. We almost beat Johnson & Wales in the playoffs. Till today I could never understand how my last second layup went in and out of the hoop. We could have come away with an unexpected upset win that would have been the talk of the Suffolk community. That loss still haunts me to this day. However, being voted “captain” of the team at the end of my freshman year was an honor.  I thought that was the beginning of some positive karma, but my basketball karma was something I never expected. I hate to lose, but we ended up with three losing seasons. We lost in the first round of the playoffs every year. There were many painful and bitter moments on the court. As a captain for three years, I suffered emotionally and I did not achieve my goal of winning a GNAC Championship. Thus, the net value of wins over losses was NOT a positive mathematical value.

If I choose to look at my varsity experience in this light of wins and losses, I would then be “impersonalizing” the work and the worth of my coaches and teammates who contributed so much to my life. They are more than numerical or static values. My first coach Adam Nelson was a good man and a good coach who recruited me and gave me an opportunity to compete and play the game I love. He taught me about responsibility and personal integrity. My coach today, Jeffrey Juron is an amazing coach with a remarkable basketball IQ who taught me the importance of preparation, hard work, ethics and team work. My assistant coaches for the last four years such as Eric Wheeler, Dana Harris, Kevin Blake, Rich Pittman, Max Kaim, Adam Kaplan, Colin Halpin and Matthew Pepdjonovic continuously showed me what I could do better on the court to further improve my game and thus, elevated my play to the next level. In addition, I met some great teammates that made my experience a great one at Suffolk University. As an only child, I never had any brothers, but my various teammates fulfilled this role. To name a few, Adam Chick, Nacho Ballve, Jake Meister, Curtis Casella and Sean Nally became very close friends. Though we faced some tough losses throughout the four years, we never let those losses affect our friendship but instead, brought us closer together. 

I played in 103 games and started in 101 games. I averaged 28.8 minutes per game, and scored a total of 1025 points in four years at Suffolk. One of the best memories I had on the court was when my whole team embraced me when I scored my 1000th point in my 100th game on the Suffolk court. My coaches and teammates hugged and celebrated me during this high point of my life. A couple of weeks later, our season and my college career ended at Lasell College. My coaches and teammates hugged and celebrated me during this very low point in my life. You see, there it was in front of me all the time. The statistics will never embrace me. Only my community will embrace me. Basketball is a metaphor for life. It taught me that life is about living and serving in the human community, and we can never reduce our lives just to simple statistics.

Life may not turn out the way we expect. King David, the Psalmist of Israel once said that life sometimes goes through the valley of the shadow of death. My basketball dreams of a GNAC Championship have died in those valleys of death and defeat. But I choose not to stay in those valleys. I prayed and worked hard for basketball success, and I believe that my prayers were answered. It came in a way I never expected. Basketball was a humanizing experience for me. It made me a better person. It taught me that I need not compare myself to others, and my life does not reduce down to an impersonal statistic. Basketball has taught me never to quit on life or my community. It has taught me never to quit on my family and friends. It has taught me to be a better son, a better student, a better citizen and a better man. As a student-athlete graduating out of the Sawyer Business School Honors Program, I take these values into the future to make the world a better place.

Go Rams!

Sincerely,

Caleb Unni