Amsesham Foluke is a former SUNY New Platz basketball standout and professional player with the Hudson Valley Hawks of the now-defunct National Professional Basketball League. Now, he stays connected to basketball through coaching in his native New York City.
He also mixes his own drinks as a side hustle.
This week, VICE released a video featuring his work selling drinks – Oyays – and how it has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. In it, Amsesham Foluke details how he started, how he’s brought his hustle to its current level and what his plans are for the future. The pandemic has severely affected his work, but he is figuring his way through it and still making it happen, as the video shows.
Foluke has featured in The New York Times for Oyays, too, helping give Margot Boyer-Dry some information for her June 20 article on the selling of bootleg cocktails in New York.
“Now I’m in competition not only with these new stores, but with other people that are newly making drinks just because of quarantine,” he said.
In the VICE video, Amsesham Foluke explains how he has adapted for Oyays to survive the pandemic. To learn more about him and his story, check it out!
Amsesham Foluke Basketball Career
Foluke began his college career playing for Division III SUNY New Platz in the 2003-04 season. He continued in the program through his sophomore year, averaging 16.3 points and 6.8 rebounds in his second campaign. But after that season, Foluke made an unusual choice, especially for a player seeing so much success on the court: he voluntarily left the program for a year to focus on his grades.
“I love playing basketball, but I have to prepare myself for life,” Amsesham Foluke told Ken McMillan of the Times Herald-Record in 2006. “My grades weren’t terrible, but I wanted them a bit better so I could get a job. I did what had to be done.”
Even though his decision heavily impacted the program, his coach, Doug Pasquerella accepted his player’s hiatus.
“As adults, we have to make decisions that are going to be best for yourself,” the coach said to McMillan. “It might not have been the best for the team but the decision was best for the individual to meet his own needs.”
Amsesham Foluke came back to the team after an academics-focused junior year. In his senior season, he averaged 18.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 2.0 steals per game with a 60 percent shooting mark from the field. He won team MVP and was named Second Team All-SUNYAC.
After college, he featured in the National Professional Basketball League for the Hudson Valley Hawks. The league lasted for only one abridged season, but nevertheless, Foluke lived out his dream as a professional basketball player.
