Rookie Year: Part Two
The moment I landed in Utah I felt a rush of excitement. I love traveling to new places and experiencing the culture of a new city, and since this was my new home, I was very excited.. Jarrell came to pick me up from the airport and I will never forget the drive to the hotel. I had never seen anything like Utah before and NO humidity?! Is this heaven? I sure thought that Utah was perfect when I first got there.
In my first weekend, we went up to Park City, Jarrell showed me the facilities he was working out and his favorite restaurants. I am usually the person in our relationship that plans so it was really cool to have Jarrell show me around. I loved our new life together and could not wait to see what else life had in store for us.
We moved into our apartment before training camp started and Jarrell was pretty much home everyday after 2pm. We were not really bored but for some reason we felt like a dog would entertain us. Jarrell has always wanted a dog. I have been scared of dogs my entire life, until my sister got one of her own and I warmed up to them. So, we went to all these different places that were selling dogs but the prices really shocked me. We went to a place sort of like a puppy kingdom and found that the dogs could run up to be $3,000…… but they did have a payment option. Hahaha. But seriously, I could not believe that these dogs were so expensive when there are shelters to adopt dogs from! So Jarrell and I decided to go to a few adoption events that were hosted by nearby shelters the following weekend.
The first event we went to we walked all around and I for sure thought that I found THE ONE. I am horrible at making decisions so we decided to walk to the coffee shop that was just a few shops down and talk about it before we adopted the dog. Well, when we got back to the event, the dog was playing with another family and I got really nervous. The father of the family came running in the door with cash in his hand and they walked away with the dog that I really thought was mine. Jarrell and I were both pretty sad, really just me, but we still had one more event to go to! Long story short, we got to the second event and BOOM we left with Melo, who at the time went by the name, Chester.
The first week with Melo was CRAZY. I had never raised a puppy and Jarrell left me alone for about 3 hours and I legit went crazy. Melo had soooo much energy and I had no idea what to do with him. We had considered giving him back, but I could not do it. I did not know how I was going to handle Melo, but I was going to figure it out. We figured it alllllll out and now we are a big happy family!
Everything was going well, I was pretty much settled in, I finally had some type of routine but then the season started. Before the actual season started there was a Chris Brown concert that Jarrell and I went to and I met a friend, Kirstyn! I am so thankful to have met Kirstyn. We are the same age and are experiencing everything together, and our hubby’s drive us insane, kidding haha. We were both planning a wedding, and Kirstyn helped me a lot with my planning. I thank God to have found someone like her this year in the game. At that point, I was excited for the preseason to start because I knew someone I could hang with and I was just excited for basketball!
Preseason went great! I learned the arena, where I would park for games, met the incredible staff, and had the opportunity to meet more people! I traveled to LA for a preseason game to see Jarrell guard Lebron James in his first minutes in a NBA game and I absolutely went NUTS, it was great. I realize now that preseason is literally just the calm before the storm.
The G-League season started and BOOM. Our schedule goes from pretty open to WE HAVE NO CLUE, please don’t ask. HAHA. But no seriously, once the g-league season started we really had no idea when Jarrell would be home or away, because we also had to consider the NBA schedule, since Jarrell was on a two-way contract.
I was doing fine at the beginning of the season, but of course as time progressed I started to struggle a bit. Naturally, I always want to do something with my time. I wanted to meet people so I decided to start a retail job, but that did not work at all. For the first year, I did not think it was a good idea for me to jump into a full time position because I had no grip on my life, scheduling wise, and I had no idea how long I would be in Utah. So I was struggling with that and I started to get home sick and just missed being around people that understood me.
Utah does not have that much culture...Black Culture. The headquarters for the Mormon Church is in Salt Lake City, and the culture in the city is very different from what I had grown up with. I am grown, I know that there are going to be places that I feel uncomfortable. I am always the person of color wherever I go in Utah, and that is very uncomfortable because it is obvious. I have so many stories of racism here in Utah, but we can leave that for another day. I would not say that Salt Lake City is a town full of racists, no, but there is not much diversity so there is just ignorance. But with education that can change!
If I put my love for Utah in a cup, the cup was empty at this point. But once I opened myself up more and grew friendships with people through the Jazz organization, I really started to feel happy again. I love getting to know the other strong women that were always around and really enjoyed building relationships with them. We all know that women can be so catty and mean, but I have not experienced that in my situation and I am very grateful for that. They have made my transition so much easier.
I do not want to seem like I hate Utah, because I really don’t. I just have had a hard time adjusting, which I feel like anyone would in my situation. There are ways that I have tried to adjust and include myself in the community of Salt Lake. I have always been the type of person to want to be a helping hand in the community. I had found a few community service opportunities in SLC. I had signed up to feed cancer patients and their families at The Hope Lodge and invited women from the Jazz to join. It was an absolute success and it felt good serving the community together as women.
There are a bunch of other things that I have done in SLC that I have enjoyed. I went to my first Sundance, which is a film festival that happens every year. I met a bunch of amazing creators through this that I still keep in touch with. I get to hangout with the other women where we try to talk about things other than basketball. And I try a bunch of restaurants! Salt Lake City is not all that bad at all, it just is very different from the South.
Besides the cold and the lack of culture, I started to enjoy Utah again. I never thought that my transition would be easy, but of course I had never imagined being so far away from home. Things seemed more manageable until March hit. Never experienced a March this MAD.
Okay, so this is when things get a little crazy so I am going to use a timeline to organize the craziness.
March 2nd:
Jarrell had already been gone for a week with the G-League at this point but had been moved up to the Jazz for their road trip. I was leaving the following week to go to Germany so we decided I would meet him in Boston to spend a bit of time together.
March 4th-7th:
I am in Boston with Jarrell, trying to travel safely with COVID-19 going strong. And Jarrell comes home the night of the 7th.
March 10th:
Jarrell is now back down with the G-League and leaves for a road trip.
MARCH 11th, 2020:
Oh gosh. This day. The morning of the 11th, I had been on the phone with my mom trying to figure out if we would be following through with our plans for Germany that weekend. At this point, COVID-19 had grown pretty rapidly in Germany and we were not sure what we should do with our traveling plans. The whole day we were going back and forth with our plans and then my flight had been canceled. I then decided I should go to Cotsco because I figured everyone would be going crazy shopping because of the virus.
I got home right before both the G-League and Jazz game. I am sitting on the couch scrolling on Twitter and catch that Donald Trump had put a travel ban on Europe, so that had canceled my mother’s traveling plans. Then just a few seconds later I got a notification that the Jazz and Mavs game had been postponed. Then just by a blink of an eye, boom, a Jazz player had tested positive for COVID-19. And I started to panic. I then get a call from Jarrell, who should have been playing by now, tells me that he had been rushed off of the court and placed in a confined room. So at this point, I do not know what to think/do. I figured we would have to go into quarantine since I had just been with the team as well, and ran to Target and grabbed so many random things and just threw them in my court, definitely panicking at this point. I noticed I had grabbed sauce with no noodles, there were no cleaning supplies, and everything was pretty much gone.
Jarrell came home the next day by bus and we started our 14-day quarantine together.
Handling it….
Really honestly everything between then and now is a blur and honestly a headache. Trying to figure out if we would go back home until the NBA came out with a schedule, what we would do with our wedding… so much stuff to think about/worry about.
Honestly, if I had not learned anything from stressing about getting engaged, moving, and then getting everything that I had prayed for and more, I have learned to not worry about something that God has already planned out. I have a lot on my mind right now, what is going to happen with the season, our wedding, my family I did not get to see, but honestly, I have let it all go and just allowed time and patience to do its thing.
I never imagined our life to be like this, and I mean all of the good. This “rookie year” has allowed me and Jarrell to grow together as we made tough decisions together, we have grown as individuals, and we have grown in our careers. I will definitely have a part three to this rookie year post and I hope it ends a lot better than this one!