To call Rashaun Freeman a talented basketball player would be an understatement. The Schenectady High School and Career Tech Culinary Arts senior has been showered with player of the year and all star awards and courted by some of the country’s top college and university basketball coaches. Rashaun’s phone rang off the hook this fall with scholarship offers from schools including Seton Hall, the University at Buffalo, Michigan State, and Georgetown, to name a few. His final decision? Shortly after graduation, Rashaun departs for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMass) to study on a full athletic scholarship. His decision, however, was driven by much more than basketball.

"When the clouds cleared," Rashaun related, "I felt the most comfortable about UMass. Besides basketball, there was something else I was really interested in: their Food Services program and how great it is. That separated UMass from the others. When I graduate with a degree, I could go anywhere for a job."

Rashaun visited UMass and liked what he saw. "I felt comfortable with the basketball coach, who guaranteed me a lot of playing time," Rashaun said. "I visited with teachers in the Hotel, Restaurant and Travel Administration department, and I felt comfortable there. And since Amherst is a college town, there’s a lot going on, but also not too much crime, and I liked that."

Rashaun has always enjoyed cooking--lasagna and chicken parmigiana rank among his favorite dishes to prepare-- and he’s played interscholastic basketball for the past five years. Yet he didn’t set career goals until he "took cooking to a higher level" at Career Tech, spending his junior year in Chef Mark Brucker’s Food Services class and senior year in Chef Paul Dolan’s Culinary Arts class.

"When I was younger," he noted, "I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be in life, but I wanted to be a professional in whatever I did. I’d like to go pro in basketball, but culinary arts is something I can fall back on and do off-season and in my spare time. Millions of places in the world are looking for good cooks. My being a professional chef would open a lot of doors."

Chef Dolan agreed. "It’s nice that Rashaun chose a college by looking not only at its basketball team but also for the education it offers in a career field that he enjoys," said Chef Dolan. "Rashaun has found a good balance of pursuing a career he enjoys and playing basketball at a good college."

Younger students, Rashaun added, should ask themselves, "what do I see myself doing 7 years from now? See if there are other goals, because if you focus on just one thing and that doesn’t work, you should have a backup plan."

Yet despite his success both on the basketball court and in the kitchen, Rashaun’s dual career interest puzzles some of his peers. "Alot of my friends felt it was kind of weird for me major in Food Services in college, but I continue to tell them, ‘You play basketball to play, but you have to eat to survive. Eating healthy food and being healthy is what comes first’."

[6/02]