A Wealth Tied Up in Relationships
Isaiah Sampson
By: Chase Muro
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When Isaiah Sampson thinks about the kid he was at Camas High School, one word comes to mind.
“Immature”
He laughs about it now, but behind the word is an acknowledgment of just how much has changed.
Sampson had people around him giving him good advice. His parents, coaches and others in his circle were trying to teach him lessons that would eventually prove invaluable.
The problem?
Like a lot of teenagers, he wasn't always ready to listen.
“I would reject sort of what I was being told,” Sampson said. “Some of the wise things I was being told.”
There was one thing, however, that he understood clearly: basketball could take him somewhere.
Sampson had a goal of playing after high school and using basketball to help pay for his education. His focus was narrow, and the work ethic necessary to accomplish that goal was beginning to take shape.
A major influence was his dad.
Sampson remembers his father working out with him, pushing him and showing him what hard work actually looked like.
At first, Isaiah resisted that too.
Eventually, something clicked.
By his senior year, and especially the summer before college, Sampson began embracing the work rather than fighting it.
Looking back, he sees those years in Camas as the foundation for everything that followed.
But foundations don't prevent storms.
When Basketball Wasn't Enough
The transition from Camas to college was harder than Sampson expected.
His freshman year took him away from the friends and support system he'd known at home. Naturally reserved, he didn't find it easy to approach strangers and form new friendships.
Even though he was surrounded by teammates, he often felt alone.
He spent a lot of time in his room. His eating habits suffered. Then an injury in practice caused him to miss roughly a month of preseason training.
For a freshman already trying to find his place, it felt devastating.
Sampson remembers thinking there was essentially no chance he'd play.
He was discouraged.
And basketball, the thing that had given him direction for so long, wasn't enough to pull him out of it.
Then he found a church downhill from where he was living.
He went.
And slowly, his perspective began to change.
Sampson realized that basketball, playing time and everything happening around him had begun consuming too much of his attention.
“I needed to keep God the main thing in my life, and I wasn't doing that,” he said.
His circumstances didn't magically change.
He didn't suddenly become healthy.
He wasn't handed playing time.
His problems didn't disappear.
What changed was his perspective.
With his faith back at the center of his life, Sampson attacked rehab with a different mindset. He couldn't control whether his coaches would play him.
He could control whether he gave himself a chance.
Eventually, that chance came.
In his third game coming off the bench, with his parents in town watching, Sampson played nearly the entire second half. He finished with 11 points and eight rebounds and knocked down a clutch three.
For a young player who had wondered whether he'd play at all, it meant something.
It felt like seeing the fruits of his labor.
But his freshman story wasn't suddenly a fairy tale.
Another consequence was waiting.
Owning His Mistakes
While Sampson had been struggling personally, his academics had slipped too.
At the time, he was studying computer science, and he had fallen behind in math and computer science courses.
Once he regained his focus, he tried to catch up.
Some professors allowed him additional time on assignments.
It wasn't enough.
At semester, Sampson became academically ineligible and missed the second half of the season.
Years later, he doesn't make excuses for it.
“The consequence of my own choices,” he said.
That sentence says a lot about the person Sampson has become.
His journey would continue through different schools and eventually take him to Adams State in Colorado.
And there, something unexpected happened.
He stayed.
Sometimes It's the People, Not the Place
Sampson doesn't pretend that life in Alamosa is overflowing with entertainment.
He describes it as a small, rural community surrounded by the natural beauty of Colorado.
During his playing days, life could be pretty simple: school, practice, home, time with teammates, repeat.
But Adams State gave Sampson something he valued more than things to do.
It gave him people.
He developed relationships throughout the university, not only with teammates, but with students and faculty.
He also found a church home and another community of people who supported him.
“The thing that's kept me has been the people,” Sampson said.
Eventually, the place he hadn't necessarily expected to call home became somewhere he genuinely enjoyed being.
And when his playing career ended, those relationships helped open another door.
From Player to Coach
Coaching college basketball wasn't originally the plan.
Sampson had thought about coaching someday, but he pictured something different. Maybe coaching his future children's team or working at the high school level.
Professionally, he wanted to work in sports marketing.
He had earned his undergraduate degree and began interviewing and trying to break into the business side of sports.
Nothing materialized.
So he talked with his coach.
An opportunity for a graduate assistant position was being developed. About a month later, Sampson learned the position was available.
He decided to take a chance.
Two more years of school.
Two years to find out whether coaching might be where his path was leading.
It turned out to be far more meaningful than he expected.
Sampson earned his MBA with an emphasis in business leadership while learning the realities of college coaching.
And those realities aren't glamorous.
There are long days.
There are late nights that turn into early mornings.
There are road trips, preparation and countless hours most fans never see.
But Sampson found something in coaching that made those hours worthwhile.
The players.
“Being able to be around a group of guys that we have, and being able to just contribute, even just a little bit, to their success,” Sampson said, is what drives him.
For Sampson, coaching isn't ultimately about drawing up the perfect play.
It's about people.
It's about doing whatever he can to make a positive impact on someone's life.
“If I wasn't about that, there's no way I would do this,” he said.
Maybe that's why his path makes sense now.
The kid from Camas who once resisted the wisdom people tried to give him has become the coach hoping to pass wisdom on to somebody else.
The player who once felt isolated in his college dorm room now values relationships as one of life's greatest forms of wealth.
And the young man who once thought basketball was primarily a way to get somewhere has discovered that basketball can also be a way to help someone else get somewhere.
Everyone Has a Story
At the end of our conversation, I asked Isaiah the same question at the heart of this blog:
What does “Everyone Has a Story” mean to you?
His answer brought everything together.
“I think it means that everyone starts somewhere,” Sampson said.
No worthwhile story, he explained, is entirely good.
There are ups.
There are downs.
There is adversity.
There are hard times.
Everyone is traveling a different path, and nobody's ride is completely smooth.
But Sampson believes there's something hopeful in that.
“Everyone's their own author,” he said.
We can't control every circumstance that enters our lives. But we can control the work we put in, the intention behind it and what we choose to do next.
And perhaps most importantly, Sampson has learned that a great story doesn't look the same for everyone.
For one person, success might mean money, a beautiful house or an expensive car.
For somebody else, it could look entirely different.
“I got a beautiful family. I'm in a small town, but I'm able to just impact a ton of lives positively,” Sampson said, describing what another person's great story might look like.
Then came a line that, to me, captures Isaiah Sampson's story better than any statistic ever could.
“A Wealth Tied Up in Relationships.”
In Isaiah's own words:
“I'm not this wealthy dude, but my wealth is tied up in relationships.”
Maybe that's the point.
Isaiah Sampson's basketball journey has taken him far from the kid I knew back at Camas High School.
There have been wins and setbacks. Injuries and opportunities. Mistakes and second chances. Different schools, different roles and a path he couldn't have predicted when it began.
But underneath all of it are the things that stayed, or became, most important:
Faith.
People.
Relationships.
Impact.
Basketball may have opened the door.
But the story Isaiah Sampson is writing has
become about something much bigger than the game.
And he's still writing it.
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Thanks for the story, Ezzy. Glad we have stayed connected all these years later. Appreciate our friendship. Let's get a bite or something around the Holidays with Bell and Green. Thanks again.