For basketball walk-on, Tech is a glorious adventure

By Mike Tierney

For the AJC

Taking stock of future engineer Sam Shew’s first two years at Georgia Tech:

Joined the Firm and won a championship. Attended the NCAA Final Four gratis. Irritated the Tech basketball squad. Soaked up the masterworks of Van Gogh and da Vinci at the Louvre. Absorbed the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn in their homelands. Aced an exchange-program class at England’s esteemed University of Oxford.

Oh, yeah. Became a respected teammate of the same Yellow Jackets whom he annoyed.

Shew, a junior from Decatur, is a walk-on player, which means he helps unload bags from the team bus, gets fewer guest tickets than the scholarship guys and is a glorified cheerleader during games.

He would welcome more minutes — seconds, even — but doesn’t pout because basketball is one dish from the buffet line for him. If college can be an adventure, Shew has made it a glorious hike up a steep mountain. (In fact, he did ascend the Swiss Alps this summer.)

“I don’t think there could be anything that matches this, the way things have played out at Tech,” he said.

A four-year starter at Decatur High, the 6-foot-5 Shew toyed with the option of a smaller school such as Emory, where hoops would have been a sure thing. A walk-on gig at Tech was anything but.

Freshman year, he soldiered through a group tryout. “Me being an optimist, I was 80 percent positive I would be on the team,” he said. “If they’d see my work ethic and dedication and leadership, there’s no way they’d turn it down.”

He informed the coaches that a calculus class would overlap with practices. They didn’t call back.

So Shew fulfilled his basketball craving on an intramurals squad dubbed the Firm. It swept to the campus title, earning an expenses-paid trip to a national tournament in San Antonio. The event organizers chose him randomly for free seats at the NCAA Final Four that ran concurrently.

“The next best thing,” he said, to not making the real Tech team.

Swinging by the athletics office to inquire about walk-on tryouts for his sophomore year became an almost daily routine. One coach told him, “I appreciate you staying in our face.”

Shew adjusted last fall’s academic schedule, with 8 a.m. classes — “which I hate” — to avoid conflicts with practices. Tryouts came and went.

One Friday night, a coach phoned him and asked, “What are you doing tomorrow morning?”

“Nothing.”

“Can you come to practice at 10 o’clock?”

“I’ll be there at 8.”

While celebrating with roommates, Shew dialed every stored contact on his cellphone to share the news, only to realize that no assured team berth was conveyed.

Several days into practice, a coach spied his ragged sneakers from high school and said, “Boy, I think you’ve earned a new pair of shoes.” Finally, he could exhale.

“Sam is what you look for in a walk-on — works hard, selfless, pushes teammates, never takes a day off,” assistant coach Peter Zaharis said.

Shew approached every team sprint as if it were an Olympics race, usually beating the acclaimed Yellow Jackets. He would chide them for not hustling more. “That’s my nature,” he said.

Late in the season, some hinted to the outspoken newcomer that it had taken them a while to warm to him. He had won them over, Iman Shumpert telling him, “You’re the first [walk-on] I’ve seen who goes out there and plays like you think you’re the best player on the floor.”

Shew barely left footprints on the court. He logged four minutes in three games, with only one statistical contribution: two assists.

In Shew’s mind, he did score. Fouled in the final minute of an exhibition game against LeMoyne College, he toed the line “grinning from ear to ear. I could hardly contain myself, about to get my first points.”

The first attempt clanked. “Oh my gosh,” he thought,” this might be my last chance.”

It was. And it was good.

Shew missed summer workouts, with the coaches’ blessing, when the siren call of Europe proved irresistible. For six weeks, he and fellow Techies studied art and music for credits in nearly a dozen cities.

Then, five weeks at Oxford, learning ethics and more engineering. (Shew claims a 3.54 grade-point average, scoring two A’s and two B’s overseas.) On weekends, he hung outside the gates of Wimbledon during the tennis tournament, caught a glimpse of the Tour de France in Spain and checked out the Alps. He regrettably passed on a final excursion with Tech pals — to the British Open, won by Jackets alum Stewart Cink. “I got to travel the world,” he said. “I realized how unbelievably vast it is and how much it has to offer.”

At Oxford, Shew punched up the Tech roster for next season and worriedly counted 15 players with assigned jersey numbers, along with him and two other walk-ons — digit-less.

Uncertain about his fate, Shew still was shaking off jet lag last week at a meeting with coach Paul Hewitt. He was invited back, another reminder how vast are the opportunities in college and how much it has to offer.