Nate Archibald - High School and College Career

High School and College Career

Archibald, a playground legend while growing up in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood in the South Bronx, New York City, only played high school basketball for one-and-a-half seasons, and was cut from the varsity squad at DeWitt Clinton High School as a sophomore. He returned to the team as a junior. During his time without basketball, Archibald briefly flirted with dropping out of school after having been largely truant in past years. But with the help of two mentors, Floyd Layne and Pablo Robertson, Archibald turned it around. Robertson, a former standout at Loyola of Chicago and a Harlem, NY, playground impressario, had seen the gifted, mercurial Archibald in action on the playgrounds and convinced the young man's high school coach to re-instate him on the squad. Despite only playing in blowouts as a junior, the shy, quiet teen managed to blossom into a high-school star, being named team captain and an All-City selection in 1966. Off the court, Archibald began to attend school regularly and worked to improve his poor academic standing, which deterred most colleges from offering him a scholarship. To improve his chances of playing major college basketball, Archibald enrolled at Arizona Western College, transferring to the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) the following year. He had three standout seasons at El Paso, from 1967 to 1970 under the legendary coach Don Haskins.

Read more about this topic:  Nate Archibald

Famous quotes containing the words college career, high, school, college and/or career:

    “In looking back over the college careers of those who for various reasons have been prominent in undergraduate life ... one cannot help noticing that these men have nearly always shown from the start an interest in the lives of their fellow students. A large acquaintance means that many persons are dependent on a man and conversely that he himself is dependent on many. Success necessarily means larger responsibilities, and responsibilities mean many friends.”
    —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    “The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Today, only a fool would offer herself as the singular role model for the Good Mother. Most of us know not to tempt the fates. The moment I felt sure I had everything under control would invariably be the moment right before the principal called to report that one of my sons had just driven somebody’s motorcycle through the high school gymnasium.”
    —Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    “Mrs. Pilletti: This girl is a college graduate.
    Catherine: They’re the worst. College girls are one step from the street, I tell you.”
    —Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)

    “He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)