AAGS 2021

37 because of the way I am or is it because I was molded by my sports? I competed in it for so many years that that is just what I’ve grown to like or be comfortable with. I love track and field because of its sole reliance on my body only. And its complete measurability and kind of objectiveness if you will, because as long as we believe that the timing systems are true and the heights and the weights of the stuff, things are true, then the results can kind of speak for themselves. I was always pushed by trying to get that one-hundredth of a second faster, or one centimeter higher. Now that I’m retired, I will say that might be the most comfortable I’ve ever been in my life. A large part of it is because I’m in control and I don’t know if I’m like a control freak or this is something with athletes. But I knew that environment, I could control every aspect of it, and it helps that I was good at it. As it was, it was an awesome place to be as far as I was concerned. What is something from basketball that football doesn’t have but could use? Scola: I really don’t think there’s something that basketball has that football doesn’t, I think that I learn a lot from other sports, and I love that. I always find something from any sport that will help me in my sport. I just don’t believe there’s something that we know that they don’t know. I do believe that sometimes in these environments, you create these truths that are actually not the truths. There’s something that people have been saying for years, and it just seems that this is the way it is, we have done it always like this and this is how it is. Then you go to another sport, and they do something totally different, the opposite. Why are you doing this, this is wrong, but then you’re thinking, why is it wrong? Why are we doing what we always do? And then it’s kind of makes you think, sometimes the answer that you come with is, no, we were actually right it’s better how we do it, but it makes you question. A lot of times, we create these environments, these micro-worlds that we don’t question things because we assume, they’re right, just because we’ve been doing it for a long time. I don’t think we have a secret that soccer doesn’t, but I do think that the experience, the crossover of sports will be very, very good for either a basketball player to go to a soccer team or soccer team to go to a basketball player or any sport. As I was listening to Ashton, I was learning, he was unbelievable. I was putting myself in that situation. I was trying to figure out how would I react? Like the fact that he was explaining about the two fails and the third one. That’s a unique situation for his sport, but we are in that kind of situation all the time. That it’s the last second, we got to shoot a free throw. The way he prepares has a lot of carry- ons to our sports, you can get a lot of things, because they’re a specialist in that particular situation, and you can find those crossovers all over the sporting world. I think in my response to that question, we have to continuously pursue these experiences that make us think out of the box. It would make us question the things we’ve been doing in our micro-world because the world is a lot bigger and the body is just one. I’m taller, he’s faster, but you know, the body has the same genetics. There’s a lot of similarities involved. When we are talking about sports that at the end of the day, it’s just performance. How do you define success? Scola: To me, success is being able to prepare yourself to the point that you reached your absolute peak, that you reached your absolute zenith, you became the best possible version of yourself. Eventually you arrive to the competition, and you empty yourself. You leave it all there on court. This is all that I accumulated during the process, during the preparation process, I accumulate, I put things in my backpack. I fill it with all these things that are going help me perform in the competition, and when the competition arrives, I would use them all and empty myself. If you arrived at that position, you feel right at that point after the competition is over, I have won because I’ve reached my absolute peak. Eaton: It’s exactly the same. To me, success would be completely realizing your genetic capability. Basically, I think success from a societal standpoint would be when one generation reaches one level, how can the next generation go to the next level and hopefully through knowledge and practice and training and other things, we pass on enough so that the capabilities of the next generation are far than better than the former.