Q: How do you feel about being inducted into the athletics hall of fame?

A: I’m incredibly honored and humbled by it. I never expected this to happen. I knew I had a good athletic career, but not necessarily Hall of Fame worthy, so I’m incredibly humbled and honored to have this opportunity.

Q: Were there any lessons you learned from your career that you’d like to share with the students today?

A: Never give up, there’s always time to get better. I heard a quote, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard,” (Tim Notke.) So if people can hang on to that [quote], because most of us aren’t the most talented, and you’ll probably always end up in a spot where there’s people better than you, and that’s okay. I get to teach high school math, and one of the things I tell my AP calculus students is that you guys are great math students, but they don’t think they’re great because they’re comparing themselves to the kids in multivariable calculus. You guys are brilliant. Quit comparing yourself to other people who are better than you because there’ll always be people better than you. Have trust in who you are and what you do.

Q: What was the highlight of your experience at Central?

A: I think the fact that the teams I was on had tremendous success. We did really well, [like when] our basketball team won a regional, we hadn’t won regionals since [around] 1960. It’d been 20 years since the school won a regional, so I’m pretty proud of that aspect. I think we were in that transition phase of Naperville Central being a really good school athletically, to us being one of the top schools in the state.

Q: What message or advice do you have for our current students?

A: Believe in who you are and what you’re trying to do. Also, find people that you can follow and that you can deal with and surround yourself with [that are] really good people. As a high school teacher, I see kids who surround themselves with other kids that aren’t the best, and then they get in trouble and they make bad choices. So surround yourself with the best people you can, and learn to follow the best people you can follow.