Demarion Ware (Football, Missouri Baptist University) grew up in Saint Louis. HelloNation asks student athletes one question about the place that raised them and records the answer on camera. This is Demarion Ware’s, in full.
The question
If someone had never been to your hometown, how would you describe its character and reputation? What makes it unique, memorable, or influential?
The answer, as recorded
Transcript. What follows is a transcript of the video above, in Demarion Ware’s own words. It has not been rewritten, and no part of it was drafted for them.
So, one of my friends had never been to St. Louis, ever, and he was so surprised when he came down, because he had heard all the news, how bad it was, how trashed out it looked, how low-down it looked, it looked like a bad city. And when he got here, so we are athletes, I took him, we went to the Wolves on the north side of St. Louis, and he was in there hooping with some guys, and he's just like, dang, I've never knew St. Louis to be like this deep. The guys in there that's hooping, they're telling them stories, you don't do this, giving them advice of what not to do so you can make it to the league, everything that they didn't have. St. Louis reputation is really good when it comes to giving advice, sports, news outlets, it's really good for all that. So when he figured that out, he was kind of shocked, he came back four times, he came back four times because it had influenced him to keep pushing, and he stopped doing so many things because of the people that influenced him in St. Louis. They telling them, we all been where you been, we done ran this, did this, did this, and they telling him this to make sure he never does it and he can preserve his future.
Recorded by HelloNation as part of its athlete voices program and published by Hello Newswire, HelloNation’s good news newswire. The words are the speaker’s own.
Reported by Hello Newswire.