Twenty years ago this year, a kid finally got off the bench. He’s been on the floor ever since.
There’s a story behind that.
This is your daily message from Chad number 1192 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. And this message is dedicated to Jason McElwain.
Here’s the upgrade:
You think your best moment is the whole story, but upgraded thinking knows your best moment is just the first line of a much longer one.
Here’s the story:
On February 15, 2006, it was senior night for the Greece Athena Trojans, a high school team in Greece, New York, a suburb of Rochester. Jason McElwain had been the team’s student manager for three seasons. He was diagnosed as autistic at two and didn’t talk until he was eight. At five foot six he had never played a single second of varsity basketball. His job was water bottles, towels, and the scorebook.
His coach, Jim Johnson, dressed him for the final home game as a senior-night gesture. Nobody expected him to play. Athena was blowing out Spencerport, a team that would finish the night with 43 points total. With three minutes and nineteen seconds left on the clock, Coach Johnson put Jason “Jmac” McElwain in.
His first shot was an airball. His second one got blocked. Then something changed. He caught the ball a third time, squared up, and buried it. Then another three. Then another. By the final horn he’d made six three-pointers and a two-point basket — twenty points in three minutes and nineteen seconds. The crowd stormed the court and carried him off on their shoulders. That year he won an ESPY award for the best sports moment.
That part of the story, most people already know. Here’s the part most people don’t. Jason didn’t take the moment and recede back into the stands. He became a volunteer assistant coach at Greece Athena, working the same bench under the same coach who’d put him in. In a February 2026 interview marking twenty years since that night, he said, “I’ve coached for 19 years.” He’s coached AAU ball. He’s coached for the YMCA since 2008. He’s a girls’ basketball official now, and employee of the Athena School District in upstate New York. He also runs a show spotlighting other athletes still trying to get their four minutes and is a speaker with the All American speaker’s bureau. He didn’t get famous for one night and disappear. He got famous for one night and built a career on the floor.
The better story to tell yourself is, “My special moment isn’t a mountain top, but my opportunity to keep climbing.”
Tell me a story about the moment that started something for you, to fromchadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and ask them, “What did you build after your best moment ended?” You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are always available at http://www.fromchad.com.
