Kenny Greene is, in a sense, a time traveler. The year is 1985; the place is Waterbury, CT. Greene had just graduated high school, and his collegiate future hung around him in a state of dynamic flux, all hinging on his basketball skills. He’d received multiple offers from a few smaller division one schools over the course of the year, all of which remained pending for the time being. It just so happened, however, that Mrs. Malone was in attendance at one of his games. Her interest — while initially in one of his teammates — peaked as she watched Greene play. She had a quick chat with her husband, and, after watching Greene play for himself, Brendan Malone, coach of the URI men’s basketball team, gave Greene a ring to make an offer. Little Rhody was not on Greene’s radar yet; however, after his mom and aunt explored the school, they immediately called him and told him he would be attending. As the saying goes, mother knows best, and Greene decided to commit. 

Greene’s new life as a member of the URI basketball team had just begun, and he enrolled as a Communication Studies major for a fairly straightforward reason: “People always told me I talk a lot,” he says, “I was really interested in it, but a lot of guys on the team were in business. My advisor told me to take a communications course, and it felt like the right thing to do.” With basketball as his top priority, however, Greene’s academics fell to the backburner. His eyes on the NBA or a career overseas, Greene did just enough in school to get by, valuing play over work. It wasn’t long, though, until his dreams came true. “I was picked up by a team in Italy after I went to the NBA summer league,” he says, “I left with only a few credits to go before I could graduate, but I promised my mom I would come back and finish school at some point.”

That point just so happened to be 25 years in the future. After an extensive career playing and coaching in Italy, it was a conversation with his daughter that brought Greene back to the world he’d once known. “My daughter plays basketball for Indiana Tech, and one day she told me she was going to get her degree before I did,” he states, “That lit a fire under me, so we made a bet. If she finished before me, I would buy her a car, but if I finished before her, she had to whatever I told her to do for a month.” Greene returned home in 2017, and, after a conversation with President Dooley and the Provost, he found himself back on track in the fall of 2018. Yet being in an Italian time capsule for over two decades had taken a toll: “It was hard transitioning from school in the 1980’s to the modern day,” he states, “I walked into my first summer session, and everyone was taking notes on laptops while I was working with a pen and paper.” He soon fell behind, but, not letting that discourage him, he had a chat with his professor, who gave him some helpful tips that got him through the rest of his academics. Greene graduated in May 2019 with a B.A. in Communication Studies, beating his daughter at their bet and fulfilling his promise to his mother. He now works as a personal trainer for middle and high school basketball players in Waterbury, and he plans to stay in coaching for the time being. When asked for advice to future students, Greene thinks back on the times he’d had to ask for help himself, stating, “The best advice I can give is to utilize all the resources that are offered to you. Don’t be embarrassed or nervous to take up a professor’s time outside the classroom. Professors appreciate kids showing interest in their class and what they’re teaching. They’re caring and giving people, use them and their resources.”

~Written by Chase Hoffman, Writing & Rhetoric and Anthropology Double Major, URI Class of 2021