On Monday, May 8th, our freshmen, juniors, and sophomores were given a gift sponsored by Holy Cross’ Fendt family, which includes Mr. Brian Fendt ’04 and Mr. Christopher Fendt ’05. This gift was guest speaker Chris Herren formerly of the Boston Celtics (2000-01) and the Denver Nuggets (1999-2000). While Herren’s professional career peaked in the early part of 2000, his health, personal, and family life was completely deteriorating due to an addiction to oxycodone, which escalated to heroin. His message to students:
“Ask yourself why… why do you need to take something? Why are you not enough…?”
Herren highlighted how his days of addiction took everything from him and how it far surpassed the needs of his own family. Completely sober from both drugs and alcohol since mid-2008 Herren has successfully “refocused his life to put his sobriety and family above all else. He attends meetings daily to support his substance free lifestyle and often speaks before groups trying to overcome addiction to share his experiences and road to sobriety.” The very next year, in 2009, Herren reached a one-year milestone of sobriety! Inspired by this, he started his own basketball athlete development company, Hoop Dreams alongside Chris Herren, Inc. Fast-forward eight years, Herren has been involved with the training of hundreds of basketball players, which include a roster of top prospects in New England.
When he’s not working with athletes-in-the-making, Herren shares his struggles to audiences with the goal to change the life of “just one person.” Herren’s powerfully personal memoir, Basketball Junkie, was released in 2011 “followed by the Emmy nominated ESPN Films documentary, Unguarded, directed by Jonathan Hock.”
Today, Herren and wife Heather reside in Portsmouth, RI with their three children.
We would like to thank Mr. Herren and the entire Fundt family for making the very special afternoon a possibility and inspiration to us all.
NON-PROFIT INFORMATION
In addition to his two basketball player coaching organizations, Herren is the founder of The Herren Project—a nonprofit “dedicated to providing treatment navigation, educational, and mentoring programs to those touched by addiction and to educate people of all ages on the dangers of substance abuse. In 2012 The Herren Project launched a national anti-substance abuse campaign, Project Purple, to encourage people of all ages to stand up to substance abuse.”
For more on Chris Herren, please click here!
Media inquiries: Teresa Augustyniak, Director of Communications and Marketing; taug@holycrosshs.org
Photo sources direct links:
https://hattersherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/chris-herren-900×820.jpg; https://cbsboston.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/chris-herren.jpg?w=300
