From Seeds to Trees

Growth, Guidance and Everything in Between

WRITTEN BY RO WIGGINS

While many people have happy, blissful memories of being in a field full of flowers, what I recall most from my childhood was never wanting to pluck one and leave it isolated. Although the gROw player development program works with kids and basketball, not flowers, the gifts I developed over the course of my life (through various ups and downs) were meant to be shared, and I do so through gROw clinics. The fact that we are all planted in different places and have many different gifts should not distract us from the fact that all our roots connect to each other one way or another.

My name is Ro Wiggins. My roots began in Louisiana, where I lived for the first 21 years of my life. Growing up in the south gave me the social skills to truly never encounter a stranger. gROw player development campers are often shy when I first meet them, but once I interject with my southern approach, you can just see a weight lifted from them. As a kid, I gravitated toward good male influence, because I didn’t come into the world with it. I believe numerous kids are robbed of the opportunity to show who they are when authority figures don’t establish that “bond bridge.” The best compliment parents can give a child is for that child to know that they are “seen,” even when in a gym full of others. Over the years I have gravitated toward the idea that every kid deserves to feel seen and thus become determined to plant seeds elsewhere.

The seeds of gROw were planted in Wyoming in 2017 when I attended Central Wyoming College. Post-graduation I worked as a bag boy at Smiths and after my shift I’d go to the Wind River Indian Reservation to run skills clinics with the youth there. The interest of the program grew with reviews from families, community members and parents expressing that gROw clinics had far more to do with the overall character of their kids, and not just their basketball abilities. I wanted to expand these gifts to Big Sky country because I saw Montana as a person that felt familiar when we met for the first time.

Over the past three years gROw has positively impacted thousands of kids in more than 25 towns across Montana. To someone with a child who is nervous to attend I’d say, “Come as you are.” My wife and children have been warmly accepted by Montana whenever they travel to camps with me. We are treated like family. The work ethic of these kids that I get the opportunity to work with speaks volumes to the examples being set at home. From working out of my trunk in Louisiana to 28 states and counting is a testament to the same work-ethic foundation set by my mother who was a single parent. Watching her work three jobs to support us allowed me to realize I could truly make anything of myself if I put in the work.

Allowing myself to branch out and plant positive seeds within numerous communities has given me the chance to continue to show up and watch these kids grow. There have been so many nonbasketball feel-good stories that have come from the trust and bond-bridges that are built from these basketball camps. I hope every child is afforded the opportunity to experience a gROw camp at least once. You’ll come to see that there is a stranger who is truly rooting for you to win, while only being your best self in the process. gROw, together we can.

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