Throughout the year, the Southern Conference will feature a former student-athlete from around the league in a series called Where Are They Now. This will be an opportunity to get reacquainted with student-athletes after their competition days have come to an end. The question and answer session will focus on a former student-athlete who has gone on to a career away from the field, course, mat or court.
Our next Where Are They Now feature focuses on former Davidson men’s basketball player, Andrew Lovedale. The 6-foot-8 forward from Benin City, Nigeria was a member of the Davidson team that went to the Elite 8 in 2008. Lovedale scored 12 points with four rebounds in the Wildcats win over Wisconsin to advance the team to the Elite 8 where they fell to the eventual National Champion Kansas Jayhawks. Following his graduation from Davidson in 2009, Lovedale moved overseas to continue playing basketball. He is currently playing for Ujap Quimper in France.
Lovedale is the president and founder of Access to Success (A2S Foundation). Lovedale started the A2S Foundation to impact the lives of underprivileged youth through training in sports, faith and education in Lovedale’s hometown of Benin City, Nigeria. For more information on the A2S Foundation, go to http://a2sfoundation.org/Access_2_Success/Home.html .
Andrew Lovedale
Davidson Men’s Basketball (2005-2009)—Political Science
Current Profession: President and Founder of Access2Success and professional basketball player Ujap Quimper in France.
How did you end up at Davidson?
My coach in England had mentioned to me that there was a coach from the U.S. who was coming to see a player who could help his program out. I never thought it was coach McKillop, I wasn’t into American basketball so I barely knew anything and then coach McKillop came. I didn’t know he was there and I was actually sweeping the floor because after school I usually went to the basketball center to coach little kids. One thing we do before coaching the little kids, so they don’t fall while playing, is we mop the floor so it’s shiny and it’s good for the kids to play on, so that’s what I was doing and he never saw me play. Somehow my coach in England told him ‘That’s the kid, he’s raw talent. He needs some polishing, but I think he can help your program.’ Somehow coach McKillop believed without ever seeing me play and offered me a scholarship, just because he trusted the words of my coach in England.
What was your favorite part about being at Davidson?
I think for me it was perfect. Everyone knows everyone. You play basketball games and you look into the stands and you can probably mention 50 percent of the students. There’s such great camaraderie where everyone knows everyone, and everyone works together. It’s such a unique place because Davidson is a small town and a small campus and everyone just gets along and I think that’s what I like about the place.
What was your biggest challenge balancing academics and athletics?
I think the biggest challenge was trying to find a balance. Coach never allowed you to take shortcuts whether it was basketball or academics. So you have to do everything full speed and put 100 percent into everything. So just finding a balance coming from practice and doing study hall and making sure you have an adequate amount of work done for the night before going to bed. I think that was the biggest thing for me in such a place where dedication and hard work was the only option that you had.
You were a part of one of the most successful Davidson teams. Talk a little bit about that and your teammates.
I still talk to almost all of the guys. I talk to Steph (Curry) every once in a while. I talk to Bryant (Barr) because he also has his own foundation now so we communicate and bounce ideas off of each other. We are all in different places but we still do a good job of staying in touch with each other.
What was your favorite memory while you were at Davidson?
Going to the Elite 8.
What was the atmosphere of that game like?
It was great, and surreal. It’s something that you dream about. It’s one of those things were you wish you could play in an arena like that or play at that level. Getting there with a bunch of guys that you just love and you’ve worked so hard with made it even better. I think the biggest thing for us, was that we were there to have fun and play for each other. Coach kept telling us to ‘get better, play to win and make every play count and just have fun.’ We didn’t really care who we were playing against we just wanted to have fun, play for each other and enjoy the moment. That was something as a team, we will share for the rest of our lives.
You’re currently playing basketball in France. Can you tell us a little bit about the transition from being a college athlete and then going overseas to play basketball?
There wasn’t really much of a transition for me because I’ve traveled a lot so I think the biggest thing for me was the language and the lifestyle, while having to convert from being a student to actually being an adult. Things are not the way they used to be, but you have to be very professional now and you can’t lag behind. Basketball wise you can’t afford to have bad games because you’re being paid to come out every night and probably lead the team in scoring or rebounding, so there are all these expectations placed on you. When you were in college and you had a bad game, coach would pat you on the back and say move on to the next play or the next game. Here you have a bad game and the coach is mad at you because he thinks you didn’t come to do your job and the president is mad at you, the fans are cursing at you, so it’s very different. It’s a different environment. The shift in atmosphere and the language are the two difficult things for me.
You started Access2Success. What made you start your foundation?
For me I was growing up and I thought, ‘One day I will make a lot of money and I want to make sure that kids don’t have to go through what I went through.’ So giving them an opportunity which in turn helps meet or reduce the obstacle that they would have faced without any form of help. That’s always been a lifelong dream for me.
At Davidson we got basketball shoes from Nike, and when those shoes were getting old we tossed them to the side and go get a new pair from the equipment room. So I thought about it and I said, ‘These shoes that we are throwing away are as good as new to an African kid.’ So I told my teammates not to toss their shoes into the bin and I put a box in the locker room so whenever they got tired of your shoes, they tossed them in the place that I provided in the locker room.
The first year I took a couple pairs of shoes back home and some of our practice jerseys. I did the same thing my second year, and a church in Davidson heard about what I was doing so they helped purchase balls and reversible jerseys for the kids. It became an annual thing where we gathered shoes from the Davidson locker room and I took it home with me during the summer. Then I would distribute them to the kids on the basketball court and try to encourage them. I made sure to tell them that it’s not the shoes, because the shoes will wear out, but it’s the story behind the shoes. That was the most important thing for me.
The third year, we made the Elite 8 and that kind of opened things up a little bit. There was an article about what I do on ESPN and in USA Today so we got a lot of recognition from that. Some of the alumni came and said ‘Why don’t we help Andrew get some shoes to Nigeria?’ The Davidson Sports Information and Marketing departments have each produced co-founders for my foundation, helped create an event called Kicks From ‘Cats, the Andrew Lovedale Shoe Drive, where they told people to bring shoes, and even suggested making donations to help ship the shoes. I went from taking two bags of shoes to Nigeria to raising about 10,500 pairs of shoes. So that summer we went to Nigeria with about 14 volunteers form the U.S. and distributed the shoes and held a mini basketball camp, and got a chance to talk to these kids. I came back and felt a sense of peace and the people that traveled with me felt good, and said we had to do more. I talked about my philosophy and how faith, education and sports had helped promote a balance in my life that I think would be a recipe for success to every kid out there struggling, so I talked about that philosophy and that is what we built on that.
I came back in 2009 and I said I’ve got everything it takes, there’s just so much support and we sat down and said we should make this an official organization, so that’s how Access2Success (A2S Foundation) came about.
Talk about Kicks From ‘Cats, since Davidson will hold the annual event on February 6.
I think the program has its own identity because it’s been going on for four year now. It’s a program around the Davidson community that everybody knows about. In terms of personnel, we have three co-founders who live in the area and will be on-ground to talk to anyone who needs to be briefed. Morgan, who is also a co-founder, will fly in from D.C. and my finance will fly in from Cleveland, so there will be a lot of help during the event. We also have four great interns who are working for the foundation, who are Davidson students. The Davidson basketball team is always there to help us out and provide whatever support they need to make the event a success.
While you’ve been overseas, your foundation grew. This is going to be the fourth annual Kicks From ‘Cats, you also started the inaugural 5K and also did Shooting For Shoes. How has that developed while you’ve been in France?
I’m not there physically but it’s something that I work on every day. Lauren, who is also a co-founder, and Morgan they work every day. I think it’s much better for me now because I play basketball three hours a day and then I can work. I can think about ideas and normally I have weekly meetings with Morgan and Lauren where we’ll come up with tasks that we have to take on and we distribute some of it to the interns. We all handle the task we have to handle. We find a way to make it work. We basically work around the clock so we continue to grow and continue to succeed. We have a great support base at Davidson. There’s another co-founder King Mawhinney, who also helps out with stuff. Not being there is tough for me but I think with the technology in place today we can actually work from anywhere in the world.
On the inaugural 5K: When I was home during the summer, we worked on the project and did a lot of the legwork to get sponsorship, so by the time that I left I felt really bad because Lauren was left to finish everything, but she had adequate help and it was really amazing to see that we raised over $10,000 in the first year. Hopefully we can expand on that this year.
What advice would you give to current student-athletes?
It’s something my coach always said, ‘always realize that you’re on stage.’ When people are watching or not watching, you’re always on stage. The best you can do is invest in others and when you invest in others, you’re also investing in yourself. You help someone on the court and it translates to real life by you working hard in class and not taking shortcuts. You can’t take shortcuts if you’re a student-athlete because it might seem good at the moment while you’re on campus and enjoying the fame and everything, but it’s something you’ll always pay for later in life. Just capitalize on the opportunity and while you’re doing all that, have fun. Have the most fun that you can because when the real world stares you in the face, it’s a totally different ball game. Now you play for yourself first, then you play for the team, it’s not like at Davidson where you played for the team and then you played for yourself. Everything is reversed and you don’t have the kind of relationship that you had with people when you were in college. Enjoy the experience, take time to invest in others and just don’t take shortcuts.
Do you have the opportunity to follow Davidson basketball overseas?
I am usually up until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. watching Davidson basketball out here. It’s the only thing that keeps me up at night. When they play on Saturdays it’s really good for me because I always get Sundays off so I always watch the games online. Otherwise I follow the box score or listen to it on the radio maybe while playing Xbox or doing something else. I’m almost always awake when Davidson is playing. I talk to some of the players too and there is a Nigerian on the team so I follow the team closely. I’m right there with them, all the time.