Florida Tech Panther Scholar-Athlete Spotlight Recognizes Basketball Player Chase Thompson

Thompson is majoring in business

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Being a scholar-athlete at Florida Tech takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to excel both in the classroom and on the field. We caught up with Panther basketball player Chase Thompson, a junior majoring in business, for this edition of Scholar-Athlete Spotlight.

Thompson is in his second season with the Panthers after transferring from Division I Southeast Missouri State, where he was named to the Ohio Valley Conference Commissioner’s Honor Roll. In 28 games this season, Chase averaged 12.5 points and 3.9 rebounds per game.

With the Panthers’ season having just wrapped up, we sat down with Chase to talk about what made him choose Florida Tech and what he wants to do with his degree.

Tell us a little bit about your major, what made you choose it and what do you want to do with it?

I’m doing business and business has always been a big part of my life. I’ve always had different startups that I’ve been doing since I was a little kid.

I’ve always been a very entrepreneurial kid, I do workouts with some younger kids for basketball since I was younger and of course, my grandpa is a big business owner.

So, I want to get into family business, I want to make sure that there’s generational wealth, and I think with business, there are a lot of skills you can learn, but everybody needs somebody in business, no matter what trade you’re in, no matter if you’re an engineer, no matter if you’re the smartest guy in the world.

You need somebody that can articulate your thoughts, business-wise if that’s your plan, and that’s something I think I can do. So that’s why I got into it, I know I can expand a lot of stuff that my family is doing, and I have plans of my own.

When you made the decision to transfer, what was it about Florida Tech that made you want to be here?

It’s crazy, I never thought I’d be at a school like this. I took a bunch of visits, mainly Division I, I only took two Division II visits, which was here and Florida Southern.

This school not only is it beautiful weather and it’s a beautiful campus, but I’ve heard so much about it academically and I never thought I would get the opportunity to be at a school that is so acclaimed for how they do things in the classroom.

At my last school, as much as it was great, we had great teachers, it’s nothing compared to the strenuous academic work that this school is and it’s helping me prepare myself for if I decide to be in a workplace with other people instead of owning a business.

Also relationships, of course, the coaches recruited me at other schools, so relationships plus knowing how great this school is with connections, and how many big business owners I’d get to meet and work with, this was a no-brainer.

What’s something you’ve learned at Florida Tech about a business that you didn’t know before?

Believe it or not, it’s actually a group of teachers that I’ve met that stood out to me. I’ve met a lot of people who have owned businesses, but talking to some of my teachers, a lot of them have been in Fortune 500 companies or own businesses, they’re just people who are tired of the hustle and bustle, they want to chill out and educate us.

So, talking to teachers like Mr. Muth, one of the big things that they have talked to me about is just getting it done. There is no excuse in business, the reality is everything has a cost, even if it’s time, it’s an opportunity.

They’re telling me how to adjust my time and my priorities to try to put what needs to be put first, and that’s what all these teachers are really stressing to us, no matter how much work it is no matter what class it is.

They’re trying to tell you that there’s some work that has priority that you need to do and sometimes you just need to do it and you can’t do other stuff. So, that thing is learning how to take different opportunities and learn what opportunities I need to take.

Your season starts with practices in September and can run into March, how do you stay balanced to make sure you don’t fall behind either in class or on the court?

It’s tough and sometimes you get behind, but my biggest key to keeping a good balance is I started to evaluate myself weekly, and I realized that you can do anything you want. You can do the right thing or the wrong thing, but at the end of the day, you have to evaluate yourself.

So, I started evaluating myself before and after weeks. What do I want of this week? What do I want to be productive with this week, and what do I need to get done this week?

And it’s still hard, it’s not something that you just flip your mind on and do. I still have some assignments last minute I’m trying to get done and I think that’s just the workload and how hard the school can be, but I think that’s a good thing.

The biggest thing with balancing is prioritizing work and doing work ahead of time, reaching out to teachers. One thing I’ve done more is reach out to teachers, which I haven’t been good at in the past just because I feel like I can get stuff done myself, but it’s more than that, t’s bigger than that. Reaching out to teachers, asking them ‘Hey, can I get this stuff to work on?’ All it does is build that relationship and all you can do is ask. That’s one of the biggest things is asking people around for help and they are willing to help if you’re willing to ask for it.

How has being a collegiate athlete prepared you for what you’re doing now and are there lessons from the court that you apply to your studies?

For sure, basketball is the biggest life lesson that I’ve been taught, it’s all life lessons within itself. You’re going to have situations you don’t like, you’re going to have situations you like, you’re going to have to things you do that you have to do that you don’t want to do. Just like in school, just like in the workplace and I realized that in basketball, no matter what happens, no matter who tells you what, just like in the real world, they’re only going to judge you by what you do, so you have to get it done.

Sometimes that means you have to go above and beyond, just like getting extra shots up or working out three, four times a day besides practice and school, fitting it in somehow.

If that’s getting your extra studies in because just like in the real world, sometimes you don’t want to bring work home, but you’ve got to bring that work home because you’ve got to get it done.

Every little thing in basketball, every workout, every film study, every game is a life lesson within itself and you have that opportunity to build on those skills as you continue to play basketball I think that’s why people love hiring athletes because they realize that life is competition.

There are ways to handle it, there are right ways and wrong ways, and there are people that are more prepared for that and I think being an athlete has got me more than prepared to do that.

What advice would you give to an athlete coming to Florida Tech that wants to study business?

One thing is to get a good relationship with your teachers and I think that’s the biggest thing because the opportunities are going to come, there’s going to be internships, that your teachers are going to suggest you for if they feel like you’re qualified, that nobody else might hear about but your teacher knows so they’re going to suggest you for it because they like you and they like the way you talk and they like what you do in their class.

So go to class, I know at my last school we were always traveling so I wasn’t always in class, so I’m not used to having the everyday class thing, we had a lot of online classes [at my old school], here, you have to.

Go to class, get that relationship with those teachers, stay a little bit after, and just talk to them for a couple of minutes because those people just want to know that you care.

As long as they see you putting the time in and effort in, to know that you care about your study and you care about what they’re talking about, then they’re going to do everything in their power to help you.

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