Imani Tate. The 5’11” guard and captain of the UAlbany Great Danes Women’s Basketball team. The Most Outstanding Player of the American East title (2016-17) and “top scorer” of her team, whose name has been dropped from ESPN to Wikipedia. For many aspiring student athletes at Albany High School, meeting her (pictured sitting on the left) would be a transcendent experience.

Well, that’s exactly what happened on Thursday, May 4th, when she was invited to speak to student athletes, to share her experiences succeeding as a combination basketeer and successful pupil at a good school. The event was sponsored by the Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP) at UAlbany and Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP), which were working together to give students more chances to succeed.

Tate’s talk was very informal, taking in a conversational style and interacting with the students. It was held in the auditorium directly after school, and attracted about thirty listeners, mostly from the AHS girls’ basketball team and the boys’ football team, partially because of the interest in meeting Tate and partially because of the offered extra credit for P.E.

“I’m just here to, you know, give the student athletes a different perspective,” said Tate, who graduated from college this year. “You have teachers constantly telling them what to do, but it’s good to hear it from someone like me… every little thing we do is going to contribute to our careers and being a great athlete, and these kids need to know that.”

“It went very well,” said one student, of the talk. “I learned a lot”. Many of the athletes present seemed enamored with Tate’s words, and it seems that she has broken through to at least a couple of them.

The UAlbany Great Danes just won their sixth American East title in a row for women’s basketball, an unprecedented amount. Tate has four rings, a great leap from her situation in high school, where one of her teammates was tragically killed due to gang violence. Clearly she was able to leave a less-than-desirable situation for great success elsewhere, and maybe she has inspired students here to do the same.