Sportfolio Journalism

In the United States of America, the competitive spirit of young men and women is put on display with the competitive spirit of college athletics. But for most of the student-athletes who play sports at a high level for a college sports program, the end usually comes for them after they have graduated with no professional future for a sporting career. That is the reality currently facing Jackson Tucker, a Senior player on the men’s basketball team at Concordia University Irvine in Southern California.  

The 2025-26 basketball season just concluded for the Concordia Golden Eagles, who play in the PacWest Conference in Division II of the NCAA. Tucker’s final game occurred a few weeks beforehand, and he is now moving onto the next steps of his academic and personal life.  

But Tucker maintains a deep passion for the game he started playing when his father “put a little foam basketball in my hand” when he was a toddler growing up in Bakersfield, Calif. He started playing organized basketball around the time he was in first grade and took a trip down to Irvine, Calif in his junior year of high school.  

While visiting the Concordia campus, Tucker said he “really enjoyed talking to the coaches and trusted them”. Tucker also appreciates the more intimate setting of the school and that he got to “build special relationships with people that you wouldn’t be able to build anywhere else”.  
 

Tucker also feels grateful for the time he spent playing under outgoing men’s basketball coach at CUI Ken Ammann, who announced a couple of weeks ago that he was stepping down from his position after 25 years at the helm. “He did a great job at leading me and developing me as a person and a basketball player, and he’s done that for countless of other student-athletes. He led in a way of Christian moral values and trying to push us on the basketball court and outside of it to be great humans as well.”  

As for the college sports landscape that he entered four years ago, Tucker has noticed some changes in terms of NIL funding and the transfer portal transforming the dynamic for student-athletes. “I think that it’s a great opportunity for a lot of these college athletes to be able to make money off their name, image and likeness”, Tucker said.  

However, Tucker added that he thought there needed to be more restrictions on the transfer portal that currently allows for almost unrestricted movement of student-athletes from one institution to the next. “Over these past years with NIL and the transfer portal going crazy, you see less student-athletes graduating, which is ultimately what we go to college for. Someday, basketball and sports is going to end and it’s great to have that education as a backup plan and your main goal”, Tucker said.  

On the matter of balancing academic priorities with his basketball schedule, Tucker said that there was a lot of mandatory time that he had to commit towards practicing and playing basketball at Concordia. With this daily dynamic, Tucker said that he had to schedule out his time more correctly and added a piece of advice to aspiring student-athletes, “As long as you make your schedule right and try not to have too many fun nights, then you’ll be fine.”  

As for the best game he can remember playing in, Tucker said that performance occurred in his freshman year at Concordia when the Golden Eagles played against the now-defunct Holy Names University men’s basketball team on the road in Oakland, Calif. “It was a big crowd there, a lot of trash talking and I was able to score ten of the last 13, 15 points in the second half and then got us to tie it for overtime and we ended up winning that game”, Tucker said.  

Now that his basketball playing career is over, Tucker is looking to pursue his Master’s degree and potentially become a Physician’s assistant in the future. He left the door open for a potential coaching career in youth basketball down the road, but for now Tucker only plans to play in “a couple men’s leagues here and there just playing for fun and the love of the game”.  

From his perspective, Tucker is thankful for the friendships he has made over the years while playing competitive basketball and he is proud of himself for fighting through adversity and that he “wouldn’t trade this experience for anything else.”