He hopes the community embraces what they have to offer once again.
Nearly two decades ago, Copeland, Donnie Evege, Chris Wright and Norris Cole shared the athletic stage – and the sports page headlines – in the Miami Valley:
- Cole, a 6-foot-2 point guard, led Dunbar High to back-to-back state basketball titles while also quarterbacking the Wolverines football team and becoming the salutatorian of his graduating class.
- Wright, the high-flying star of the Trotwood Madison basketball team, became one of the most sought-after prep talents in the nation, wooed by scores of schools including Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State, Texas, Florida, Xavier… and the Dayton Flyers.
- Evege – a speedster defensive back at Wayne High who ran the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds – became the first signee in Jim Tressel’s 2007 recruiting class at Ohio State. He left high school a few months early so he could enroll at OSU and take part in the Buckeyes’ spring practices before reporting for his freshman season that fall.
- Copeland played quarterback and defensive back for the Skyhawks and was named the Greater Western Ohio Conference (GWOC) South Division Player of the Year his senior season. He also starred on the basketball team.
The four, all 2007 grads, went on to college careers of varying note and two – Cole and Wright – then played in the NBA.
Credit: Joshua Copeland
Credit: Joshua Copeland
Two months shy of 37, Cole, won a pair of NBA titles with the Miami Heat and still is playing professionally, his globe-trotting career having taken him to China, Israel, Italy, Montenegro, Monaco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France, Spain and now Puerto Rico.
Wright – who had limited stints with the Golden State Warriors and Milwaukee Bucks and spent a few seasons in the NBA’s developmental league and overseas – now owns and runs Flyghtwood, the impressive 32-acre sports life and leadership campus in Trotwood that is home to the Flyght Prep Academy and the Flyghtdome sports facility that’s houses several Flyght teams and camps and recently hosted several athletes from Mongolia and Switzerland.
He also launched the non-profit Wright Way Foundation, which includes after-school and post-grad educational programs, and mentoring sessions with business experts and other professionals.
Evege’s career at OSU – which included one trumpeted season as a special teams’ kamikaze – was derailed by three serious season-ending injuries. Since then he’s written a book and become a principal in Limitless Hope, a mental and behavioral health agency founded by Camille Holman.
After his noteworthy career at Buffalo, Copeland was devastated when he wasn’t drafted or picked up as a free agent by any NFL team. He had defined his life through sports and suddenly he faced an emptiness he had to learn how to fill.
“Each of us has his own story and our own way of achieving some kind of success when we had obstacles,” Copeland said.
Credit: Lisa Powell
Credit: Lisa Powell
The four believe something from their collective experience will strike a chord in any young athlete about to go on the journey they made a generation ago.
And that’s what has led to this “full circle” moment.
Next Sunday evening (Aug.24), the four are presenting “The Athlete’s Edge,” a free, 90-minute program at Fairborn High that begins at 5:30 and is open to the public.
They plan to share their stories and insights through both a round table discussion led by Copeland, and a question-and-answer session with the audience.
“We’ll show some highlights, too,” Copeland said. “Things like that (famed) pass Norris made to LeBron and I’ll ask him what he was thinking.”
He was referring to the highlight reel, on-the-run, no look, backwards alley-oop toss Cole made during his rookie 2012-13 season - over the defensive pressure of Steve Nash – to the airborne James, who slammed down a one-handed, tomahawk dunk with rim-rattling authority.
Yet, for all the “ooohs” and “aaahs” that will elicit, Evege said the night will be about “more than touchdown passes and points on the basketball court.
“It’s about the lessons we learned along the way and how they can help the next generation of athletes.
“The target audience is high school and middle school student athletes, but we welcome parents, guardians, coaches, athletic directors, teachers, little brothers and little sisters, too. It doesn’t matter. There’ll be something for everybody.”
Cole – who arrived home recently after a season with Osos de Manati in the Baloncesto Superior Nacional in Puerto Rico – agreed with Evege:
“Every generation needs someone to show them the way and inspire them. And it’s great when the people doing that come from where you come from.
“It’s one thing to look up to someone on TV who you don’t know. It’s another whole thing to talk to someone who’s actually walked in your shoes. Someone who has lived where you live, played where you have played and gone through the same trials you have faced.
Credit: Ron Alvey
Credit: Ron Alvey
“We’re all from the Miami Valley. We were born and raised here. We know the challenges here. We know the different things going on in the community.
“When you have somebody who comes to you from that perspective, someone who has shared the experiences you have, it resonates differently.
“We want to offer some motivation and tell them, ‘If we can do it, you can do it.’
“We want them to learn from our failures and from what worked for us.
“We want to say, ‘Here is a blueprint for success.’”
The path
Although you wouldn’t know it now – he’s a favorite son of Dunbar, is in the Cleveland State University Hall of Fame, had his No, 30 retired by the school and was inducted in the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame – Cole often was under-appreciated early in his career.
When he got to Dunbar, he was overshadowed by older, bigger – and many thought better - players like Aaron Pogue, Mark Anderson and Daequan Cook.
Coming out of Dunbar, his only scholarship offer was from Walsh University, an NCAA Division II school in Canton that wanted him for football.
Then at the last minute, CSU coach Gary Waters brought him to Cleveland State.
That enabled him to prove wrong all the D-I colleges that he wasn’t good enough. He played 140 games at CSU, started 106 straight from his sophomore through senior seasons, led the Vikings to upsets of nationally ranked teams Syracuse (No.5), Butler (17) and then Wake Forest (12) in the NCAA Tournament, was named the Horizon League Player of the Year and the league’s best defensive player and ended his career with 1,978 points.
Although taken in the first round of the NBA draft by Chicago, he was traded that night first to Minnesota, who like the Bulls didn’t realize just what they had, and quickly dealt to Miami.
He would end up playing 360 NBA games with Miami, New Orleans and Oklahoma City and making the playoffs in five of his six seasons.
He also launched Route Thirty Consulting – an acknowledgment of the jersey number he’s worn throughout his career – and it includes mentoring and teaching how to be a champion and how to handle success, something he’s done better than most pro athletes,
When Wright chose the Brian Gregory-coached Flyers over the college blue bloods recruiting him, some people – especially some here in Dayton – thought he had made a mistake.
The path leading from West Dayton – Wright was raised in Summit Courts on Hoover Avenue before his mom, Ernestine, moved the family to Trotwood – to UD wasn’t well-travelled.
Credit: Contributed photo by Erik Schelkun
Credit: Contributed photo by Erik Schelkun
Although Wright’s uncle, the Rev. J.D. Grigsby did play for Don Donoher’s Flyers in the early 1970s, UD had a past reputation of rarely recruiting West Dayton players who in turn looked at other schools before the Flyers.
Wright changed a lot of that. With his mix of above-the-rim flair and off-the-court warmth – not to mention winning All-Atlantic 10 honors three years in a row – he became one of the most beloved Flyers of all time and is now enshrined in the school’s Hall of Fame.
Wright’s motto then, one that he imparts to the kids who come through his academy now – and likely a thought he’ll share next Sunday evening – is: “Don’t let anybody else define who you are.”
Evege, quite literally, rewrote his script, too. His book, “Athletic Alchemy” includes a forward penned by Tressel. He too is now a motivational speaker and he and Copeland have appeared onstage together several times.
While Evege involved himself in several projects when football came to an abrupt end, it took Copeland longer to find his footing.
“Sports had been my whole life and when my dream ended, I really struggled with my identity,’ he said the other day.
He came back to the Miami Valley and bounced around through several jobs: stocking shelves on the night shift at Meijer, working at a linen factory and at an apartment complex. He got a real estate license and tried his hand at sales at a logistics company.
His best job ended up being a busboy and server at the Texas Roadhouse near the Nutter Center. That’s where he met his wife to be, Amanda, and today they have a five-year-old daughter, Noella.
He now speaks on mental health issues to everyone from teenagers and college students to corporate gatherings, not just in the Miami Valley, but across the nation from New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles to Kentucky and Tennessee.
What is greatness?
Wright – who coached Flyght’s U-15 team to the Final Four of the Under Armour Rise Tournament in Chicago last season – said he asked that team the same question he asks others who come through his academy and likely may ask the audience next Sunday:
“I always ask, ‘What is greatness?’ Most of them say it’s this person or that. A lot of times they mention LeBron or (Michael) Jordan.
“Very few say that greatness is what you put into something, that it’s being the very best version of yourself.
“Kareem (Abdul Jabbar) had the scoring record until LeBron broke it. And he did that because he became the best possible version of himself, not because he was the best version of Kareem…or of Jordan.
“That’s the key for all of us. You become your best version and you can do that by having role models that are the most positive ones for you.”
Each of the four on stage next Sunday has been able to do that, they say, because of the foundation they have thanks especially to their parents.
Wright’s good-natured but no-nonsense mother raised 13 kids. Five were her sons, including Bam, who played in the NFL, and the rest were relatives or foster children, including a nephew who played in the NFL, as well.
Ernestine’s work hard, have some backbone – and some empathy – approach is now propelling Chris, as well.
Evege said his dad, who played baseball at Central State, instilled a motto in him.
“He’d say, it shouldn’t be ‘I’ve got to do’ something.’ It should be “I get to do’ something.”
Credit: Lisa Powell
Credit: Lisa Powell
The idea is to acknowledge and appreciate your opportunity.
Cole had role models at home, as well. His mom, Diane, got her master’s degree at UD and his dad, Norris Sr. was a double major – chemistry and biology – at Bowling Green before studying nuclear medicine at Ohio State.
“I didn’t make it without help from them and a lot of other people who poured into me, too,” he said. “My uncle, L.C., was a top linebacker in the state of Ohio and then played for Nebraska, which was the top team in the country.
“My uncle Johnny went to Texas Southern and was all-conference in football and basketball. I had other people too - like Sedric Toney, Mark Baker, Na’Shan Goddard and Damien Stronger when I was at Cleveland State – and so did my cousin Trent Cole (the longtime NFL defender who’s in the Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Fame.)
Copeland said his parents divorced when he was 12 and he was mostly raised by his mom, Michel Lockett, who now runs a nonprofit – Caterpillars to Butterflies – geared to children with autism.
The lessons the four have learned through all the experiences and the people who have influenced them are something – “nuggets,” Cole called them – they want to pass on to the next generation who deal not only with the rigors of their sport, but also the influences of social media and the new opportunities and pitfalls that can come in today’s freewheeling NIL and transfer portal era.
Copeland said in the future, they hope to expand their concept of roundtable discussions to successful women athletes with Miami Valley ties.
Right now though the focus is on next Sunday.
Tickets can be obtained through Copeland’s website joshcopelandspeaks.com or picked up at the door on the night of the event.
“It’s free. It’ll be helpful and it should be fun,” Evege said. “And afterward we’ll stick around to shake hands, kiss babies and do our thing. I think people will like it.”
Of course they will.
They liked these guys nearly two decades ago when they commanded another stage here.
And like Copeland said:
“This is a full circle moment.”
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