{"id":153373,"date":"2019-04-27T08:33:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T12:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nothingbutnylon.com\/?p=153373"},"modified":"2019-08-06T19:49:48","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T23:49:48","slug":"rashad-weekly-mcdaniels-had-to-find-humility-before-finding-offers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nothingbutnylon.com\/rashad-weekly-mcdaniels-had-to-find-humility-before-finding-offers\/","title":{"rendered":"Ra’Shad Weekly-McDaniels Had to Find Humility Before Finding Offers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Ra\u2019Shad Weekly-McDaniels dropped 38 points in an AAU Nationals game as a sixth grader, he became a star.
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At least, that\u2019s how he was treated.
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He remembers his coach showing him articles about his performance while riding the hotel elevator that night.
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\u201cIt was like everybody writing about you, every saying how good you did,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter that day, it kept coming. Everybody started talking to me, everybody started writing about me, getting invited to the top camps. It happened over night. That\u2019s what it felt like.\u201d
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At 12 years old, Weekly-McDaniels let the praise get the best of him. He bought the hype, and assumed he was anointed next.
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\u201cThat attention they were giving him, he had a big head at one point like he had it all figured out,\u201d said Shante McDaniels, his mother. \u201cEverybody was giving it to him, because he was a great kid who knew how to play and score so many points. He is a really great kid, but they didn\u2019t make him work for his position. They were just giving it to him.\u201d
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At first, the attention was weird. But as it continued, Weekly-McDaniels adjusted and went through middle school holding this mindset, with occasionally obnoxious behavior and an expectation that basketball would be easy for him.
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\u201cI started walking around like nobody could mess with me, and that\u2019s what I had to get out of,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know, because nobody ever taught me what to do when it did happen.\u201d
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Then he got to high school, and the bench checked him.
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\u201cComing out of my eighth-grade year, I thought I was one of those kids who was supposed to do this and that as a varsity player, but my coach humbled me,\u201d Weekly-McDaniels explained. \u201cI didn\u2019t start coming into high school. I sat the bench. I played five to seven minutes a game coming off the bench, playing behind seniors and juniors. I had to humble myself, bring myself back down to earth and realize it\u2019s bigger than having a big head and stop being Hollywood.\u201d
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Now roughly two years removed from that learning experience, Weekly-McDaniels is soon to finish his junior year at Trinity Catholic High School in St. Louis and has received two Division-I offers \u2013 Western Illinois and SIU-Edwardsville \u2013 and has been in talks with several other schools, including Princeton, Milwaukee and Alabama A&M.
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The guard was instrumental in Trinity Catholic\u2019s run to the state quarterfinals and a district championship last season, both firsts in program history, and it wouldn\u2019t have been possible without his transformation.
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\u201cHe has changed a lot. He has grown in a lot of areas,\u201d his mother said. \u201cHe is mature for his age. He is very respectable and mindful of others. He helps out a lot with his younger siblings. He\u2019s a kid, he\u2019s growing, but he\u2019s changed a whole lot.\u201d
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Weekly-McDaniels has become a reliable aide in the home. It\u2019s a single-parent household with five kids and a grandmother to nurture. His mom works two jobs is make sure food is on the table, and sometimes that means responsibilities for her son.
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\u201cIf they\u2019re out of school, I can depend on him to be here, or to meet them at the school bus,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen he gets up in the morning, he wakes up everybody. Ra\u2019Shad will come home, do his chores, make sure everybody ate and in their rightful places. My house is together when I come home. I can pretty much leave him in control if I\u2019m not home or if I have to work. I can depend on Ra\u2019Shad.\u201d
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But afternoons when Weekly-McDaniels and his siblings get scooped from school, though, he serves a different role. His 5-year-old little sister, Journie Hatten, insists her big brother accompanies her in the backseat.
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