Basketball player interview: Devin Sorell
DEVIN SORELL played basketball at Clarkson University in Upstate New York. She majored in civil engineering with a minor in project management. In high school she also played Soccer, Softball and Track & Field. In her free time she loves to travel and go hiking. She is currently doing the 46 High Peaks Challenge with her fiancée and has done 11 so far. This is a challenge based in the Adirondack mountains in New York dedicated to preserving the wilderness and you get to be in a club called the “46ers” when completed.
In this episode with Devin, we will be talking about coaching changes, nagging injuries, and finding a job after sports.
Below I have written most of what we talked about but you can listen to the full podcast on Anchor / Spotify or on Apple Podcasts.
Q: Your freshman year was not easy with a coaching change. You’ve mentioned to me that you were struggling on and off the court. What were the things you were struggling with and how did you overcome those?
A: Originally the coach who recruited me called me just about a week or two before we were supposed to move to campus to tell me he took an offer at another university. He was a big reason why I chose this school.
That was a big struggle going into college having to reprove myself. It’s like being recruited all over again in a way.
That was a big struggle on top of other typical freshman struggles.
Confidence has always been kind of a struggle for me. I struggled thinking that maybe I’m not as good as people thought I was or maybe I’m not cut out for this.
I knew I wasn’t playing close to my abilities and I knew I had to refocus.
It’s tough to build your own confidence but I had to do that. I called my parents countless times in tears saying I made a big mistake and I’m not cut out for this. They always refocused me.
I also made it up in my head that I was an outsider but I had such welcoming teammates so I had to come back to earth and get my confidence back.
Once I figured one thing out it was like a domino effect and everything else came with it.
Q: How did you go from not playing and struggling in school to becoming a starter by leading the team in games and by being in SAAC?
A: I didn’t have to study a whole lot in high school. I was a pretty good student with an A- average.
I chose to go to a really academic focused school with a rather difficult major.
I knew I had to change my study habits.
I studied so long for my first chemistry exam. When I got my results back I was crushed to see that I had failed.
I couldn’t believe it and that’s when I was thinking “did I make a mistake? Am I really cut out for this?”.
On the sports end, that was a big struggle. Basketball is my outlet where I am comfortable and can truly be me.
When that wasn’t working out, it was kind of all mixed together and I felt lost.
I called my parents a bunch of times. We had already had a game and I didn’t get any playing time which took a shot at my confidence even more.
My dad said, “you are good enough to be on this team, you know you are”. I was like I know I am and I know I can help. I also felt guilty because I knew I wasn’t competing to the best of my ability and I could help my teammates.
My dad suggested that I talk to the coach and ask what it is she needs to see from me and what I can do to earn my minutes on the court.
I did talk to her and she told me that she can tell I’m not confident with the ball. I was struggling learning the plays. I’m a point guard and I need to be confident with the ball and really learn the plays. Then I could start earning my minutes.
I refocused and started building my confidence with little victories. I started opening up more with my teammates and becoming better friends with them.
I started out by becoming the first person off the bench and eventually becoming a leader on the team.
I consider myself very lucky with really liking the coach I ended up with. Sometimes it doesn’t work out for people and it’s not a good fit but I feel lucky that wasn’t the case for me.
Q: Tell me about your “community award” you got with your friends. How did that affect the decision to stay at Clarkson after freshman year?
A: They sort of made up that award at my school.
My freshman year I was on a coed floor mixed with a lot of non-athletes and athletes and we meshed well.
The university made it up for us because we got along very well.
I wanted to work on friendships on my team of course but I wanted to have friends outside of basketball as well.
I tried to make it a point to be outgoing outside of basketball to make more friends and I made my lifelong friends that year.
Even though freshman year was a struggle, I couldn’t imagine leaving those friends behind.
On the classroom side of things, one of my friends studied all night with me one night. I’m very thankful for him and we all helped each other succeed which made it feel like home.
Q: What was one of your favorite moments while competing?
A: We won the conference championship my sophomore year which was the first time we’ve ever won that.
It was the first time we’ve gone to the NCAA tournament since the 80s and that team ended up being in the final four.
When I came into the program we were struggling and working on rebuilding, we’d had a couple of wins.
The coach always said “leave the program better than when you found it”.
When we did that, it was nice to be like “yeah we did that, we left it better than when we found it”.
That year was fun because we were talented and we were all really close.
We were notorious to blow out the team the first half of the game then get too comfortable and lose our lead.
That ended up happening in the championship game. We almost went into overtime but we got one of those last second shots and we ended up winning.
It was really cool because we were home to host.
Q: You originally didn’t want to go to Clarkson because it was an academic focused school but then you chose to do a degree in engineering. How did you land on that path for a major and career? Do you feel like you would have done a different degree if you weren’t a student-athlete?
A: I actually did want to be an engineer major when I was looking for schools.
I grew up about two and a half hours away from Clarkson and I have family that lives up north so we went to the area all of the time.
Clarkson has the reputation for being a really strong academic school producing CEO’s and engineers and all of those really positive things but I didn’t think I was on that level.
But then the coach that had recruited me put a lot of time and effort into recruiting me because Clarkson was not on my list of places.
Finally I was like okay I’ll come up and visit and on that visit I had the feeling that this is where I’m supposed to be.
I’m grateful that he was persistent with recruiting me. If I went somewhere else, it might not have challenged me the way that Clarkson did.
Q: What were the deciding factors of not continuing to compete over-seas?
A: After basketball was over there were some very preliminary offers to play overseas, not official, I probably would have had to try out.
I really wanted to do it because as a winter season student athlete, I wasn’t able to do a study abroad.
I could have maybe been able to do it over the summer but I had an internship during that time.
I had to work over the summer to make the money to sustain my academics and living situation at Clarkson which is why I didn’t do it.
I wanted to go to Europe and play basketball and travel for a year.
I had to weigh all of the pros and cons and I decided it was a better idea to stay in the states and start my career.
Unfortunately it didn’t work out to play overseas but it’s also a good thing that it didn’t.
Q: What was it like finding a job after graduation?
A: Finding a job after graduation didn’t happen as quickly as I would have wanted it to. I worked for the same company interning all throughout college.
I got to interview for a really cool program that they do but the interview was at the same time as a game.
I asked for a different time but it was a panel and it wasn’t flexible.
I turned it down because I only had so much time left to play basketball and it was really important to me.
I knew that I was going to get a good degree, I was going to get a job, things were going to work out, and I will play basketball as hard as I can while I still can because there is a clock on that.
That company ended up going on a hiring freeze by the time I graduated so I had to branch out into looking at other places.
I found myself comparing myself to my friends who had already had a job, they seem like they really liked it, and I was struggling.
I was applying, getting interviews, nothing really felt like the good fit. I had to get a job so I accepted a job, I was there for about 3 months but I knew it wasn’t a good fit.
Luckily the company that I had interned for had an opening and I got that job and I still work there so things did work out.
Because of where I was at in Syracuse, I ended up meeting my fiancée, so things worked out!
Q: How did you find new hobbies after being done with basketball? How did you get into hiking?
A: You have so much more free time when you’re no longer playing your sport at that competitive level.
I knew I always wanted to travel. I loved it and I knew I wanted to do more of it so filling in the free time with the interests that I knew I had ended up leading me to discovering more new interests.
I always wanted to do obstacle course racing but never really looked into it. When I had more free time, I looked more into it and now I’ve done a couple Spartan races.
I really enjoy those and want to do a lot more of those. You can be really any athletic level to do it and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a nice challenge.
Q: What aspect of the transition out of sports was the hardest for you? What advice can you give to athletes on what you learned from that?
A: Having a lot of free time, it kind of felt like I wasn’t doing anything meaningful.
You’re training for your sport, you’re being productive.
I kind of struggled with working out again. I found myself slowly doing less and less in the gym.
One day I asked myself “why am I doing this if I’m not training for basketball?”.
I wanted to stay connected to my sport because it is not my entire identity but it is still what makes me feel good.
I ref’ed for a little bit and coached little kids which was fun. It’s nice to go back to the roots because we fell in love with this game.
With the advice, I would say to learn more about yourself. It’s okay to take a break.
Maybe you never go back to the sport and say “that time of my life is over and I loved it and it made me who I am but now I’m ready to move on to these parts of my life”.
We’re constantly changing and evolving and it’s nice to learn more about yourself as you go on.
Q: Do you have anything else to add?
A: To athletes that are going in, just remember to have fun. We all started the same way, we were just kids who fell in love with the game. That’s what’s so pure about it.
If you’re struggling, have fun and also embrace the struggle because that’s where you’re going to grow the most.
I look back on my freshman year and I’m really proud that I got through it.
You have your community and resources. Reach out for help if you need it and just have fun.
If you missed the last podcast, our guest was basketball and volleyball player Brooke Butkovsky. In that episode, we talked about her experience as a dual athlete in college, going straight into coaching after college, and her podcast After The Athlete.. Up next we will have Colby Thibault as our guest. In that episode, we will be discussing injuries, struggles as a student athlete, and her path to her career as a culinary dietitian and personal trainer.
If you have any more questions for Devin, please leave comments below or contact me. If you or someone you know is struggling, please call or text the Suicide Hotline. It’s toll free and available 24/7 at 988 or 800-273-8255.
Rose Medal’s mission is to provide resources and support for current and former athletes. Please support our mission by making a donation.
Are you or someone you know currently struggling with what happens in life after sports? Or did you already go through that transition to life after retiring competitive sports and wish you had more resources and support? Have you ever wondered, “what do athletes do after they are done playing sports? What’s next after sports?” Do you feel like you dedicated so much to your sport and you don’t know what to do now that you’re done competing? You’re not alone. Check out the site and join us in the journey. Once an athlete, always an athlete.
Blog posts similar to this one: