BRIAN SCHAEFFER (PHOTO BY CUATE SANTOS | LAREDO MORNING TIMES)
One of the best things about my job is working within the nuances of a team. As a beat writer, I love unveiling the little things that make players/coaches who they are. Essentially those bits are what make up a team.
Recently, I got to spend a few days writing a profile on TAMIU senior men’s basketball guard Brian Schaeffer. Schaeffer leads the team in scoring and is second in rebounding as a 6-foot-2 guard. He has grown leaps and bounds since averaging six points for last year’s conference champion Dustdevils, but as you’ll see, he has grown even more as a man during these last few years.
Enjoy
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Not long ago, during the depths of the draining monotony known as preseason practices, Texas A&M International senior guard Brian Schaeffer held court.
Literally.
Sensing a lack of accountability amongst a team of veterans, Schaeffer preached. He reminded his teammates what they were there for (to win basketball games) and, more importantly, for whom they were there for (each other.)
He talked about coming too far just to give up now. He talked about one last ride for the seniors and the chance to do something special, to possibly repeat as NCAA Division II conference champions and maybe even win a NCAA tournament game.
It was a speech of passion, of truth. In essence, however, it was a speech of survival. And that’s something all too familiar to Schaeffer.
The Dustdevils’ leading scorer and second-leading rebounder grew up too fast, too soon. Living with three families as a kid, without a father during his childhood and now a father himself, Schaeffer is the definition of rising through adversity and refusing to fold.
“Brian’s a kid who never got to be a kid,” said Mike Fetters, a 16-year veteran pitcher of Major League Baseball who took in Schaeffer late in his high school years. “He grew up quick. He’s one of those kids who learns from his mistakes and he can be proud that any success he’s had, he’s done it on his own.”
Rough start
The true gift of Schaeffer, 25, is not in his 12.8 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. It’s not in his 56.6 percent shooting or 3.3 assists per game, either.
It’s in his resiliency. It’s in his ability to not cave in when too many rocks were hurled his way.
“I’m somebody that’s always had to work for stuff,” Schaeffer said. “I come from a situation where parents were in and out. Finally met my father at a late age, had a kid of my own. Those are all things that are motivating me this year because I know this is my last go-round.
“I want to leave everything out there.”
Schaeffer’s struggles began at the age of 2, when his mother Tammy was put in prison for the first of two times before he turned 13.
Tammy was incarcerated the first time for eight months for leading police on a high-speed chase. Five years later, she spent another year in prison for borrowing a car that a friend reported to the police as stolen.
“It was tough, very tough,” Tammy said. “Living in a poverty role … I wouldn’t have been incarcerated at all if I could have gotten an attorney. You just learn to make the best of it. Prison, for me, was a good learning experience.
“It was just about me. I started to learn and grow.”
With Tammy in and out during his child years, and his father Floyd Johnson nowhere to be found, Brian lived with three families, but two men in particular left an impact he carries with him to this day.
Direction
Joe Jackson, an older sibling to three brothers and four sisters, took Brian under his wing and kept him out on the field or court, disciplining him and quenching Brian’s thirst for the games. He kept Brian from trouble and only aided his love for basketball.
If Jackson was Brian’s guiding light early during his prep years, Fetters was just that late during those years. It was Fetters and his family who took Brian in prior to his junior year at Hamilton High School in Arizona.
“I was helping coach as volunteer assistant for high school basketball,” Fetters said. “Brian was a good player and a good kid. I liked his desire. One day he came up to me, and he said, ‘Well, thanks, Coach, but I have to quit.’ Well, his mom had gotten out of jail and he was being looked at as a runaway. His mom was coming and he was going to move back with her and get a job. But I took him home and introduced him to my wife, and said, ‘This is Brian Schaeffer. He’ll be staying with us.’ We did our homework and promised him if he stayed, he had to go through high school. From there, he can do what he wanted. We pledged to keep him in school and that’s what we did.
“He was a joy to be around.”
Through it all, Schaeffer never held ill will toward Tammy. But those feelings were not the same for Floyd, who entered back into Brian’s life when Brian was 17.
Beginning to mature into a young man himself, Schaeffer was dealt with a unique hand: welcoming stability back into his family when he had already accomplished much of his growth on his own.
“Especially at that age, 18 and growing up, it was tough,” he admitted. “It was always easy for me to accept my mom, because that was my mother. The times she was there, she took care of me like nobody else. She sacrificed so much for me. She would always try and give me things like other kids had. It was always easy to accept her.
“For my father, it was tougher, because when I finally met him I was already a man. I hadn’t had him growing up and it was tougher to accept him back in my life. But as you get older and have a kid of your own, you start to realize family is important. Even if he didn’t spend time with me when I was younger, now he gets to spend time and enjoy it with my son.
“That’s what’s important to me.”
Making moves
Tammy regrets wholeheartedly the circumstances she put Brian through. However, she does feel she helped guide him toward mentors like Jackson and Fetters who helped make him who he is today.
“When I came back, he was almost a teenager,” Tammy said. “But one thing is, I would always go without before he would. He grew up without a father and I grew up without a dad, too. I’m grateful my mom didn’t give up on us and I feel I put a lot of good mentors in his life he could talk to.
“It was a moment in our life that I did a lot of growing and it changed our relationship from buddies to mother and son.”
Because of his upbringing, Schaeffer tends to put up a guard around others. Smiles are rare, stares are studious and he keeps to himself.
Tammy said that image is not the real Brian.
“Brian was a perfect child,” Tammy said. “So loving … he tries to be hard and tough and it cracks me up. Tell him that’s not who he is. He’s so loving and caring.”
After playing college basketball at a junior college his freshman year, Schaeffer, then 19, was kicked off the team for getting into a fight. He hardly picked up another ball over the next four years.
Over that time, however, is when priorities started to arrange themselves. Approximately three years after he left, he had his son, Dasaan, now 3.
His life would never be the same.
“It was the best thing that could have happened to me,” Schaeffer said. “It put life in perspective. I started taking things a lot more seriously and realized what I needed to do to take care of my son and be a part of his life like I didn’t have. I want to be that father he could always turn to so that he doesn’t have to learn the hard way like I did.
“So the best thing for me to do is get back to school, and then figuring out how to pay for it, well I’d play basketball again like I used to. That’s what led me back to going back to school and playing basketball.”
After playing for South Mountain Community College and earning honorable mention all-conference honors in 2008-09, Schaeffer was recruited by TAMIU head coach Shane Rinner, who had turned around the Dustdevils’ program in his first season on the gig, not even a year after it had been mired in scandal and mediocrity.
Schaeffer fits all of Rinner’s desires: tough, accountable, smart, gritty, unselfish. It was a perfect match. In a matter of three years, Schaeffer went from being done with basketball to contributing 6.1 points in 29 games for a conference champion last season.
This season, everything – from his personal life to his play on the court – has become one, hence a season in which Schaeffer is the backbone of a team looking to repeat and go beyond.
“I’m extremely pleased with Brian,” Rinner said. “He’s definitely taken everything to another level. He’s grown a lot, not only in basketball but his personal life as well. He’s been our most consistent player and our strongest leader.
“His attitude is superior and his mindset is great. When you coach, you hope everyone’s moved the way Brian moves. You hope they all make the strides Brian has.”
A happy ending
Brian’s and Tammy’s relationship remains strong. His and Floyd’s is still a work in progress, but headed in the right direction.
Brian holds no bitterness toward any of them.
“Every one of us is continuing to grow and that’s all you can really ask for,” he said. “Everybody’s healthy, everybody’s still living and that’s what’s important.”
He may play with a chip on his shoulder – after he left that junior college team his freshman year, a coach told him he would never play basketball again – but he is admirably appreciative of what’s been thrown his way.
“I’ve had a lot of people that really wanted to see me make it,” he said. “They helped me to this position. While my own situation was not stable, I had families take me in who really believed in me and saw me through things, like finishing high school.”
“Part of his upbringing is what makes him who he is,” said Fetters, now an assistant to the general manager for the Arizona Diamondbacks. “He’s tough as nails. He didn’t have a great life growing up, but I’m proud of him for getting through it.”
Schaeffer has grown from someone who needed a role model to someone who is one.
“By the grace of God, he is where he is today,” Tammy said. “He could have been anywhere else. A lot of people in our neighborhood have a lot of respect for him and they look up to him for not going down the wrong path.
“He’s done an excellent job. He’s done an awesome job.”
When he looks back on it all – from living family to family, to being a conference champion and now on the brink of earning his degree in business administration with a minor in management information systems – Schaeffer has taken it all in stride, almost as if it’s simply a rollercoaster he’s had no other choice but to keep riding.
“I didn’t expect anything when I came to Laredo, when I came to TAMIU,” he said. “All I knew is I was coming to a place where coaches wanted hard workers and they have a winning mentality and a winning philosophy. I just wanted to fit in.
“I didn’t see any of this for me, but that’s what happens when you stay positive, believe you can do things and just trust. For all this to happen, it’s been a blessing.”
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