April 25, 2012
By Jeremy Hawkes, ASU Media Relations
This is Part Two of a three-part series, "Making Something Out of Nothing", featuring Arizona State track and field star Daniel Auberry. Part One, released yesterday, discussed Daniel’s rise to prominence as a track and field star. Part Two picks up where Part One left off. You can view Part One, which discusses Auberry's transition into track and field, HERE. Part Three is available at this link.
Meeting the Grade
While Daniel Auberry had all the tools and natural talent to be successful as a runner, he really struggled to establish himself in the classroom. Auberry described himself as an “average” student-athlete in high school and during his time in junior college.
And that hat was where Auberry first started running into trouble. Auberry admittedly didn’t take track or his grades seriously during his first year at Riverside CC. He rarely showed up to practice and only his apathy in the classroom matched his apathy on the track.
“His first semester here, he really did terrible,” Jim McCarron, the head coach at Riverside Community College, said. “He kind of bucked the system and didn’t listen well."
McCarron recalls numerous one-on-one meetings where he would try and convince Auberry to turn it around, to respect himself and the system and to be a good student. None of it really struck home, however, and McCarron watched as Auberry got better one the track but continued to slide backward in the classroom.
At the California State Championships, Auberry was fifth overall as a freshman at 100 meters in 2008. He started attracting the attention of some Division I universities, even receiving a phone call from UCLA with a scholarship offer.
However, his academic apathy came back to bite him as he was unable to meet UCLA’s entry standards. Auberry watched other teammates around him succeed in the classroom and move on to bigger and better things, including current ASU senior Chris Benard who has already earned All-America status and holds the ASU school record in the indoor and outdoor triple jump events.
Even with that lesson in mind, Auberry continued to struggle with his attitude in the classroom.
“I had convinced myself that because I was fast, I was going to end up somewhere,” Auberry said. “I had to learn the hard way that that’s not the case.”
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"I had convinced myself that because I was fast, I was going to end up somewhere. I had to learn the hard way that that's not the case."
-Daniel Auberry
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“He saw some friends doing well and going to universities and he got really discouraged as he was going the other way,” McCarron said of Auberry’s first year. “At the end of the year, I sat him down and said ‘Listen, young man, this is it.’”
McCarron contacted Auberry’s mother, Toya Woods, and after the two had conversation with Daniel that McCarron described as not being “light by any means”, McCarron convinced Auberry that he could go one way or the other. It was that moment where Auberry finally buckled down and got into a groove academically.
Auberry credits McCarron for being one of the first people to really invest in him and help him turn his life around.
“He convinced me that grades were number one,” Auberry said. “He would tell me that you could be the fastest guy in the world but without the grades, you wouldn’t go anywhere.”
Auberry would graduate from Riverside CC with an Associate’s degree in Humanities but even that took him an extra semester to complete, forcing him to sit out a year of competition before joining the Sun Devils.
And even when he came to Arizona State, Auberry still had his struggles.
“Things were way more independent in junior college,” Auberry said. “ASU was more helpful and I wasn’t used to that. I kept rebelling and was really struggling at the beginning.”
Auberry’s academic advisor, Sophia Sledge, also noted Auberry’s reluctance to accommodate the system at Arizona State.
“It wasn’t that he was a bad student, he was just very determined to do everything on his own,” Sledge said. “He was very hesitant to accept help from anyone and he didn’t want a tutor and didn’t want to use the resources available to him.”
When Auberry’s first round of grade checks came in during his first semester, it came to the forefront that he was not doing well in his classes.
“We finally had to sit down with him and have a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment,” Sledge said. “I told him that you need to do things my way at first, and if they don’t work, then you can go back to doing things your way.”
Arizona State men’s sprint coach Ronnie Williams noted that Auberry was in his office once or twice a week to discuss his grades during Auberry’s first year, with Williams seeing his potential and pushing him to reach that in the classroom.
Williams reiterated what Sledge had told Auberry and told him he needed to work with her because she was there to help him. Auberry got the message and decided then that he was going to do what he needed to do to be successful.
The change was night and day. He earned three A’s that semester and posted over a 3.0 GPA for the first time in his academic career, finding himself in Sledge’s office more often just to stop by and talk about how well he was doing in school as opposed to opposite.
Once the track season actually started in the Spring though, Auberry had a bit of a relapse. He found trouble balancing his academic time with his athletic time and his grades began to slip, forcing another heart-to-heart with Sledge. In that conversation, they discussed Auberry’s future and what he wanted to do with it and something clicked, causing him to turn things back around for the positive again.
Now that Auberry has finally bought into the system, he has become a model student-athlete for the Sun Devils, averaging a 3.37 GPA in criminology and earning honors as ASU Student-Athlete of the Month and Student-Athlete of the Semester over the past two years. He was recently named to the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation All-Academic team for the indoor season.
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"No matter how fast he is on the track, that's the thing I'm most proud of when it comes to Daniel - watching him grow into a man and become successful in the classroom."
-Ronnie Williams
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He also has become a role model for other transfer students struggling from the same issues that he faced coming in, and has taken guys under his wing to help them see the light and see what ASU has to offer to help them be successful.
“To watch him mature and have ownership of his academics and find a blueprint for academic success has been great to watch,” Williams said. “No matter how fast he is on the track, that’s the thing I’m most proud of when it comes to Daniel – watching him grow into a man and become successful in the classroom.”
McCarron echoed Williams’ sentiments, noting that Auberry is a “special young man and an inspiration.”
“I love him a lot and he always calls me to let me know how he’s doing in school,” McCarron said. “He was really at rock bottom and he turned his life around and that’s why I coach. It’s not to win championships, but to get that hug in the end from the kids as they move on to do something with their lives.”
Auberry has been nominated for several post-graduate scholarships and, as such, will become the first member of his family to attend grad school after he graduates from Arizona State in just a couple of weeks.
“I can’t say enough good things about Daniel and I really look forward to seeing what he’s going to do when he’s graduated and moving on into the real world,” Sledge says. “This is something that never would have crossed his mind when he first came here.”
This concludes Part Two of the three-part series on Arizona State track and field star Daniel Auberry. The conclusion of the chronicle will be available on Thursday, April 26 at www.TheSunDevils.com and will discuss Auberry’s upbringing, family life and his future. You can contact that author of this story at jdhawkes@asu.edu.