University of New Hampshire Athletics
Sutherlin Helps Minneapolis Recover
6/3/2020 1:00:00 PM | Men's Basketball
Wildcat senior volunteered in community in wake of George Floyd’s murder
MOUNDS VIEW, Minn. – Just days after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, UNH senior men's basketball player Sean Sutherlin (New Brighton, Minn.) relayed his experience living in the epicenter of the tragedy and discussed how he and his friends came together to help their community.
Sutherlin, the America East Conference's leading defensive rebounder in 2019-20, talked about how he is helping Minneapolis rebound in a one-on-one conversation with UNH associate athletic director for communications Mike Murphy (transcript below):
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Q: How you are doing there in Minnesota?
A: I'm doing good. Me and my family are safe, so that's the biggest thing. Yeah, I'm doing pretty good.
Q: We've seen media reports, certainly of how it must be, but in real life, living there, how has it been, the effects of the last week?
A: It's just been crazy. You know, it's just been something that I never imagined would happen in the city of Minneapolis. It's really devastating, what happened to George Floyd. My prayers and condolences go out to his family. It was just a horrible thing that happened, and the impact on our city has just been crazy. When you go downtown, you just see all the burned buildings and the looted stores. It's just really sad to see.
Q: What do you remember about first finding out? What were your emotions? Was it anger, was it scared, what do you remember about that?
A: My first emotion was just 'why'. You know, it's been happening in this country for so long, and just why, why does it keep happening? What can we do to make a change? My first reaction was really just anger, just because it seems like it keeps happening over and over again. And it seems like our voices aren't being heard by the people in charge, so just anger and sadness.
Q: Did you go and protest? Did you feel like you should go out there, or how did you respond in the immediate aftermath?
A: I didn't go for the first two days, just because it was actually pretty dangerous out there in Minneapolis. There were a lot of fires and looting going on, so I didn't actually go the first two days. But the next two days after that, after most of the fires and stuff was done, I went once with my sister and her friend, just walked down there to protest. The next day after that, me and a group of my friends, we decided to get together and clean up the city.
A: The person on the far right is actually one of my best friends. His name is Justin Davis. He owns a clothing brand called 4TheCity. He just has a great impact in our city, a positive impact. We got together a couple days ago, and we came up with the idea to get a group of people together -about 50 people- and just go down to the city and do whatever we could to clean up.
A: We all met up about an hour away from the city, so we had to walk about an hour. Just when we got to the city, it was a crazy scene. You see all the buildings that are burnt, whole streets that are burnt, so we stopped at a couple buildings and saw people cleaning up. We decided to help them clean up. We cleaned up about three or four buildings in a span of two to three hours.
A: That's my older sister Rachel. She came down with me the past two days. She's just been a great big sister to me, just mentoring me. She is a great influence in my life.
Q: And then this picture here I saved, because this is, to me, the best one, the idea of the George Floyd mural.
A: Yeah, it's just beautiful spray paint that me and my sister wanted to take a picture in front of. There's a lot of beautiful murals down there of George Floyd.
A: Yeah. I just felt so blessed to be able to have an opportunity to go down and clean up my city. I feel like everybody has a voice, and my voice was to go down there and help clean up just a little bit. It just felt great to go down and do that.
Q: So back here at UNH, have you had a chance to talk with your teammates, Coach Herrion, what's the support been like from far?
A: It's been actually great. Coach Herrion has called me every day just to see how I'm doing. All my coaches have called me every single day since this happened, and they've just been great support. We actually had a Zoom meeting yesterday and a former player, Ferg [Myrick], he shared a very powerful poem with all of our team. It was just a great opportunity to listen to what he had to say. It was very powerful. After his poem, we just talked about ways we can help make change in our community and each of our own communities – especially at UNH. We just brainstormed ideas and started the conversation, which was great.
Q: I can't relate, most of the people watching can't relate, to what it's like to be a young black man or woman, the idea of racial profiling and racism, but I think everyone wants to know what do you think we can do in this community to help make the change?
A: I think that the first step is just to educate yourself on black lives and racial injustice. That's the first step. Once you educate yourself, just start a conversation. Everybody has a voice, and the biggest thing is just to talk about it. That's the first step in change, in my opinion.
Q: Do you think that as the nation tries to heal, tries to come together, it can take some lessons from athletics, basketball in particular, where, yes, it matters if you're white, if you're black, but once you're in that locker room, it doesn't matter. You are part of the team in coming together. Those lessons should be what we take into our everyday lives.
A: Exactly. I feel like sports -in every sport- it doesn't really matter what race you are, what color you are. That's the beautiful thing about sports is everybody comes together for a common goal. I feel like that's how I've got my mindset because I've been playing sports for so long. And I feel like all athletes should come together and try to make a change.
Players Mentioned
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