Achieving Life Success, With Cameron Murphy

   I received an e-mail from Cameron Murphy, star lineman for Northeast's
football team in 2000 and later a player at Florida A&M, and then asked him
to provide a few more thoughts for posting on the site. The talkative Cameron
was a fun-loving guy at Northeast and popular with everyone in the school, as
well as around the Public League. I feel it's important that kids read his thoughts,
especially those who feel that the deck is somehow stacked against them. Cameron
may be reached at cameron.murphy@genmills.com.
    I thank him so much for his time and effort on this!!
    -- Ted
    Here's a note about Cameron from a 2000 website report . . . At one point I
kiddingly told sr. OT Cameron Murphy, an all-time talker, while he was watching
and encouraging the defense, "The longest you've gone without talking today has
been 4.2 seconds." He smiled brightly, then cut the intervals to maybe 2.5 seconds.

Just wanted to drop you a note to see how everything’s going. As for me, I’m doing pretty good. I just started a new job over at General Mills (Progresso Soup Division) working in Logistics. It’s a new challenge for me coming off a 3-year stretch at Lockheed Martin working in Finance. My fiancé (a Central grad…I don’t know how that happened j/k) and I recently bought our first home over in Sicklerville, NJ, so that’s been pretty exciting. We are getting married in September of '09 at our church (Mt. Airy Church of God In Christ).

Recently, I have been involved with coaching basketball in my church’s summer league (“Peace on the Streets” Summer League). This is my third summer coaching and I really love giving back to the kids and working with them, not only through sports but also teaching them about life. The summer league has been a huge success and we have kids from 10-13 and 14-16 from all over the city but more specifically the Mt. Airy/Germantown/East & West Oak Lane/Olney/Logan areas. We have some guys who play JV/Varsity ball at their respective schools and we also have guys who never played organized basketball before. Don’t worry, the same Cameron who was hyped/rowdy and supportive of his teammates is still the same guy, it's just that now I’m shouting/high fiving teenagers. LOL! Ultimately, the goal is to keep the kids active throughout the summer and provide them a safe haven where they can develop their basketball skills and have positive people around to provide some mentorship. All in all I feel really blessed to be coaching and mentoring. It genuinely feels good when I come into the gym, aka FLC (Family Life Center), and talk with the guys and find out what’s going on in their lives and how they are doing in school. Overall, the league has really done a great job of working with the kids and we have. These kids simply want someone to let them know that they care about them, and they understand where they are coming from.

I make it a point to let kids know that there is life beyond high school and college. What I also try to tell kids is that everyone isn’t going to make the same decisions. The decisions that I’ve made over the years were good for me, but they might not be ideal for everyone else. I went up to NE last year and I saw coach Hinton, Gormley, and Pelbano and they asked me to speak to the guys about the college experience. It was funny because I remember those days after practice when then-coach Schumer would have alum come and speak to us. I remember how those guys would talk to us about college and our futures. I would be thinking to myself, “Yada, yada, yada” . . . thinking that they were giving us an after-school special. But now when I think back, I really appreciate those talks that really reiterated the importance of getting an education and making something out of yourself, even if it meant that you didn’t become a professional athlete. I was also lucky to have that same message being reinforced at home.

Thanks for hearing me out, Ted, and keep doing what you’ve been doing!

Respectfully,
Cameron Murphy

P.S. -- the website is tight!