In the winter of 2012, I decided to join the Niles West News as a sports writer — I knew I had a love for watching sports and decided that writing about them would be a good hobby and a potential career path for me. I covered the boys’ basketball team’s home games and gradually improved my skills as a writer.

At the end of the year, the sports editor position on the NWN staff was open; I interviewed and got the position. While I was thrilled with this opportunity, I had little experience as a journalist — I had never formally taken a journalism class, so I would have to learn on the fly.

I was strongly encouraged to take a trip up to the land of cheese and take a leadership course, where I would learn how to be an effective editor, at the KEMPA (Kettle Moraine Press Association) Summer Journalism Workshop hosted at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

The college experience was nothing short of the way I had imagined it to be — hot, sticky dorms, unsatisfying cafeteria food and enthusiastic, energy-packed students. The classes I took taught me how to be a leader to those whose work I will be editing this year, and also gave me the opportunity to improve as a writer.

Inspiring speakers, most notably the Chicago Tribune’s Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer Scott Strazzante, gave lectures on how to effectively and artfully tell a story, and NWN Adviser Evelyn Lauer and I walked away from the scene filled with ideas to enhance our online paper here at West.

The event that I will remember the best from this workshop occurred outside of the lecture halls, however. I took a walk with the photography class over to the campus basketball court to get some shots of training basketball players — only this wasn’t the type of basketball I was used to covering at Niles West; it was wheelchair basketball, and team USA Paralympian Wheelchair ballers, including Matt Scott, who famously starred in Nike’s “No Excuses” commercial, were amidst an intense training session right  before my very eyes.

I was in awe as I watched the chair-bound athletes with absolutely massive upper body strength swiftly wheel up and down the court, display eye-opening ball handling skills and shoot the ball remarkably well from all spots on the court.

Scott, who plays professionally in Turkey, came right up to the camp photographers, interacted with them and was an extremely personable guy as well as a pleasure to interview. He talked about how he’s yet to attain a gold medal in the Olympics. The hunger to have a gold medal hung around his neck, recognizing his team as the best wheelchair basketball squad in the world, is what motivates him to give all he has on a daily basis at the intense training sessions hosted at Whitewater.

What I admired most about Matt, however, was his mindset: he neither felt sorry for himself because of the physical condition that confines him to a wheelchair nor is he overly proud for being unique. He views himself as a completely normal athlete who wants to be the best player he can be despite the physical obstacle in his life

“A lot of people might think that playing professional basketball, for a person in a wheelchair, would be a long shot,” Scott said, “and I just never thought that being in a wheelchair would stop me from doing what I was gonna do.”

“My advice to anybody that has a goal or has a dream is just follow it out,” Matt added, “and do the best they can to make it happen.”