Editor’s note: Sunday morning, May 19, the Evanston Township High School Class of 2024 celebrated its commencement with a ceremony held at Northwestern’s Welsh-Ryan Arena. Click here to read the senior class remarks from Mia Muñoz. Below is a complete transcription of the Evanston Township High School 2024 commencement keynote speech given by 2009 graduate Daniel Poneman, a professional basketball agent and scout as well as filmmaker and nonprofit leader.
So, I have to tell you guys, I was very surprised when they asked me to come speak at this year’s commencement. I was surprised because I wasn’t invited to my own class graduation in 2009.
You see, I ended my senior year two credits short. I had to graduate in summer school.
Had they remembered this fact, they might not have invited me to speak today. But I’m already on stage, so it’s too late.
So, this is, in fact, my first time walking the stage at ETHS commencement. And I could not be more proud than to have made it here with the class of 2024.
Ever since I was uninvited to my own class graduation, it was always my dream to come be a commencement speaker at Evanston graduation. Some people dream of Oscars, Grammys, Pulitzer Prizes, but this right here has always been my dream. I’m so deeply proud of where I come from that I couldn’t conceive of a greater honor than this invitation.
I can’t say it enough. I love where I’m from. I’ve been all over the world scouting basketball players in Tanzania, Taiwan, Australia, making movies, attending NBA Drafts, NBA Finals, Final Fours, but there’s no place like Evanston.
My group of friends growing up covered the entire spectrum of what it means to be from Evanston. Our backgrounds, home lives, the struggles we faced as kids and adults. But we are bonded over a common love for each other in our community. My phonebook is filled with names and numbers of a Who’s Who in the sports world. But the numbers that matter most are my brothers I met between Howard and Isabella, Sheridan and McCormick.
Pauly Jackson, Teddy Golden, Ricky Byrdsong, Asher Stamell, Tyler Chatz, all my homies in my fantasy football league – I love you all. I am who I am because of you, mostly your constant bullying keeping me humble and grounded.
Everything I’ve accomplished in life can be traced back to Evanston. My career as a basketball agent all started with the high school basketball website I created in the computer labs at ETHS. The website became a resource for college coaches across the country, and was the springboard for my career.
I’d like to take this moment to thank all the teachers who pretended not to notice while I texted college basketball coaches under my desk during class. I think you all knew even then that that was also an important part of my educational experience at Evanston.
A few years after high school, two other Evanston grads – Dustin Nakao-Haider and Ben Vogel – and I decided to make a documentary together about the Orr High School basketball team on Chicago’s West Side. Seven years later, our movie, Shot in the Dark, premiered on Vox and was nominated for Best Documentary at the sports Emmys.
That movie was executive produced by Dwyane Wade and Chance the Rapper, and you might ask, how did I get Dwyane Wade to executive produce my documentary? Well, his agent, Austin Brown, was also an Evanston alum.
When writing this speech, I thought about what advice I’d want to give to 18-year-old Dan P. on his graduation day, had it happened. I realized that, although my path from ETHS to this stage was often challenging, all of my success can be traced back to a few core ideas or rules that served as my guiding lights, so I wanted to share them with you guys, and hopefully you can find them helpful.
My first rule is to follow your curiosity until you find what lights you up. Follow what makes you curious. Follow what interests and excites you. For me, I liked high school basketball – playing it, watching it, being around it.
When I was in high school, this was a time before social media when college coaches couldn’t watch recruits on YouTube, because YouTube hadn’t been invented yet. If you wanted to watch a player, or if you wanted to get a coach to recruit you, you had to send a DVD in the mail. So I started going to basketball games and writing about what I saw, and to my surprise, people cared about what I had to say. Did I know when I started blogging that 19 years later, I’d become the top agent in college basketball? I couldn’t have conceived it. But I found something that excited me. I woke up every day and pursued what gave me a spark, until that spark turned into a flame, and now, I wake up every day on fire.
Your curiosity will will reveal the passions that will lead you to your purpose. Your heart has the roadmap. Follow it.
My second rule is to run towards your fears instead of away from them. Fears are the universe’s way of showing you the next challenge it wants you to face in order to become the person it ultimately knows you can be. The universe rewards courage. If you run away, that challenge will keep coming back to you until you learn the lesson that it’s there to teach you with. With each challenge you face in life, you’ll become stronger, and the next one will become easier.
Third, when following your dreams, remember that you’re going to fail a lot. But remember that every L is a lesson. When telling my story, it’s easy to skip from highlight to highlight. I had a hit recruiting site in high school. I was featured in Sports Illustrated. At 18, I founded a nonprofit that sent over 700 kids to college since then, along with Pauly Jackson, who’s sitting over here.
When I was 19, I discovered Anthony Davis, who became the No. 1 pick in the draft. At 24, I became an agent, and the rest is history, right? Wrong. I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 17 to take on the world, and I moved back at 18 because I wasn’t ready for the world. I reached many peaks, and I hit rock bottom after many of them. But I look back, and I’m so grateful for every single one of my failures. The path to success is littered with failure. The only ones who never failed are the ones who never tried at all.
My fourth rule is to remember that the entire universe is conspiring in your favor. There is nothing that the universe wants more than for you to become the greatest version of yourself. Nothing in this abundant universe is out of reach. All that to say: Stop worrying. Worrying doesn’t solve anything in the future. It only ruins the present moment. Walk your path fearlessly, and it will work out better than you ever could have imagined. I am living proof.
You don’t need to know your destination to move in the direction of your dream. Don’t wait until everything is perfectly in place. You don’t even need to know exactly where you’re going. Just start moving forward, and the path will reveal itself to you in time. Martin Luther King famously said faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.
My fifth and final rule is to remember that you are the best in the world at something. You’re all No. 1 ranked at being you. The greatest gift you can give to the world is to be uniquely yourself in every single moment that you’re alive. Don’t follow another person’s path. Pave your own. The road map is in your heart already. Don’t be afraid to follow it.
And you know what else is unique about you? You’re from Evanston. There’s really no place like this on Earth. Wherever you go, don’t forget that you’re a Wildkit, because that’s a really big thing to be. I’ve been all around the world, and there’s really no place like this. It’s no accident that you were born into this town, surrounded by the people in this room. There are no coincidences in life. You were put here for a reason.
Embrace your roots, the good and the bad. It’s who you are. It’s the special stuff we’re all made of. Each one of you is going to go out and change the world. What I’ve accomplished is nothing compared to what you, the class of 2024, are about to do. So I want to thank you so much for letting me finally graduate with you guys.
And never forget, it’s always a great day to be a Wildkit. That’s all I got.
Great speech by Daniel Poneman, kudos to ETHS for inviting him to give the commencement address, and thanks to the Roundtable for publishing the transcript. I wish I had heard his words of wisdom when I was a high school senior.