Rico Cenat lay on the floor of his car by the side of Florida’s I-4 highway. He reached down and felt the blood streaming from the bullet hole in his side.
Yeah, I’m going to die.
He had known better than to go to a house party on a Friday night. His mother had never let him step out on Sabbath when he was younger. His mind went back to the Haitian church he had attended growing up. What was that song they used to sing? He began singing softly in Creole.
He felt calm now, even in the face of death. Strangely enough, his mind also went back to Union Adventist University. He had spent two years there, and he loved playing for the Warriors. When the ambulance arrived, the first question he had for the paramedics was not, “Will I live?” The question he asked was, “Will I be able to play basketball again?”
Cenat had first arrived at Union in the fall of 2019, thinking he was there to help a friend from church move into Prescott Hall. But his mother hadn’t booked a return flight for him. Instead, she secretly enrolled him. It was a desperate scheme to get him off the streets of Orlando. “I was using weed and selling weed,” he admits. Determined to break him away from his shady circle of friends, his mom placed him in a Christian environment. The plan might have failed immediately, except for a chance meeting in the dean’s office.
On move-in day, Cenat walked into the office of Daniel Force, associate dean of men, who was talking to Drew Mekelburg, the men’s basketball coach. “Why don’t you come shoot some hoops with us tonight?” Mekelburg asked. That invitation marked the beginning of a tight relationship.
Cenat was quickly embraced by the men’s basketball team. “I loved it,” he said. “I mean, we weren’t winning games, but I loved the experience. That feeling was just like, wow. I’m actually playing college basketball!”
He was less enthusiastic about the rest of college life. He certainly didn’t like going to class. Melody Gabbert, his psychology professor, remembers when she first saw him in her Introduction to Psychology class. “He made his way in and took up a comfortable position on the back row, reclined, and got ready for what he intended to do in that class, which was sleep,” she recalls.
“You hope that you’ll be the teacher who sweeps in and lights their eyes up with a love for the subject,” Gabber said sadly. “That was not the case with Rico.”
Still, campus was an improvement over his old neighborhood. Cenat sometimes opened up to his coach about disturbing events back home. “He told me once that a friend had been shot,” recalls Mekelburg. Other friends were overdosing.
Union was a safer place to be, but it also required turning in homework. Cenat was sent home. His GPA at the time was 0.05, which might be a school record.
Back in Florida, Rico fell into old habits. “I just went right back to what I was doing,” he said. “Just trying to make money. Just hustling.”
But his thoughts were often drawn to Union. He would watch Warriors games online. And sometimes he texted his former coach. He wanted to go back to Union again. He wanted a meaningful career. About this time, he accepted an invitation from a cousin to attend an Airbnb party. There was drinking and dancing and drugs in a rented mansion, and it ended like they often do, with the cops being called.
Cenat rushed out of the party with his cousin. They were merging on I-4 when two cars, probably from the same party, raced by on his left. He heard five shots. He swerved off the road and touched his side. “I’ve been shot,” he said.
A helicopter took him to the hospital, and as the trauma team stood around his gurney, he posed the same question, “Will I be able to play basketball again?”
It was a long hospital stay clouded by depression. He wanted something different for his life. He picked up his phone and called Coach Mekelburg. “Hey coach, I’m really serious about coming back,” he said.
Mekelburg was encouraging, but had to be honest. “It’s a long shot,” he said. School was about to start and Cenat’s previous academic record caused many roadblocks, including a suspension of financial aid.
Cenat began praying. Two friends joined him in fasting and Bible study. “My prayer was, God, you’ve opened all these doors,” he said. “If it’s not for me, close all doors.”
The doors stayed open, and Cenat returned to Lincoln. He had to retake classes he had failed, including Intro to Psychology. Dr. Gabbert noticed that Cenat was a different student this time around. “He started participating, raising his hand, having questions and comments,” she said. “He was tremendously successful.”
Because of his old GPA, Cenat wasn’t allowed on the basketball team for the entire fall semester. But when grades came out, they showed he had lifted his GPA to 3.25. He was back on the team.
If you go to the Student Success Center early in the morning, you’ll see Cenat doing homework. “The resources that we have here, the fact that they’re so helpful … I felt like if I had a chance to use them, it would benefit me,” he said.
Cenat’s mother is happy. Her boy is focused and doing well in the Business Program. It is easy to think the bullet he still carries in his lower back is the cause of his dramatic transformation. But some of the credit belongs to the coach, the professors, and the friends who welcomed Rico back to school. The five shots in the night certainly changed his life forever. But getting a second shot at Union may have mattered more.
