The lives of most Division I college basketball players are almost always tied to basketball in some way.

In a culture where the sport inherently dominates almost every waking minute of those involved, finding people who have done nothing but live, eat and breathe basketball is more the rule than the exception.

In that regard, Todd Townsend is not so unusual.

A basketball fan since kindergarten, he has played various organized and unorganized versions of the game for almost his entire life.

What truly stands out about his story is how inextricably basketball is woven throughout the plot.

Leading to new friends, a new family, a new school and an opportunity to graduate from college, the game affected him in such a way that the sport somehow transcended itself, becoming one of the most important things in his life while simultaneously and dramatically making it about much more than basketball.

The Game

He was destined to like basketball. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago with four basketball-loving older brothers, Townsend played the game by any means necessary.

"I grew up in the city, where our playground was the alley," he said. "We put a crate up on the light pole and then on the other end of somebody's garage, and the court would be obviously not straight, and it would go to the side, but that's how I learned to play.

"We'd play with anything from a mini basketball to having to ball up a sock and take a metal hanger and bending it into the shape of a hoop, to go on top of the door."

Despite not beginning his organized career until sixth grade and not getting "serious" about the game until eighth grade, Townsend found himself on the Illinois Warriors AAU team. His teammates included future stars Darius Miles, Dwyane Wade and future Stanford standout Matt Lottich.

"The first time I saw Todd, we had a game, and I was playing in the game, and Todd rolled in about 10 minutes into the game," Lottich said. "He immediately got checked in, and the first thing he did was launch up about two NBA-range three-pointers and drained both of them. So I was like, 'Who is this dude?' And we became friends from then on."

The friendship the two formed via basketball would play a pivotal role in the drama that would unfold in Townsend's life just a few years later.

The Life

As his basketball career was building, Townsend's family life was disintegrating.

"My family broke apart when I was a sophomore," Townsend said. "My brothers went their separate ways, and my mom and dad went their separate ways … That just kind of left me all alone. I lived alone for a long time, and it's probably one of the worst feelings in the world, to wake up and have nobody there or to go to sleep at night and have nobody there."

Townsend's parents — Wilbert Gatherright and Denise Beloch — had been divorced for a while before he, his mother and his brother moved into a separate apartment during Townsend's sophomore year at Morgan Park High School on the South Side. Soon after, both his mother and brother moved out, and Townsend was, as he said, all alone.

"My mom had already moved on … she would have to get up early in the morning, too, because of the type of job she worked. She didn't really work a nine-to-five, she worked from pretty much six o'clock in the morning to nine, 10 o'clock at night," Townsend said.

With nothing for him at home, Townsend found himself spending more and more time playing basketball — and hanging out with Lottich and Lottich's father, David, at their house in the northern Chicago suburb of Winnetka. He also did a little work with the elder Lottich, who, Townsend said, also helped tutor him in geometry one summer.

Townsend spent so much time with the Lottichs without ever calling home that they eventually figured something was wrong.

"They asked me, flat-out, and probably the first time I was really honest with anybody in my life as far as what was going on in my life, and I just pretty much told them everything that was going on," Townsend said.

"Just being with them, each summer. I met a lot of people, and I met Matt's godmother, who is now my mom, my legal guardian, Kathy Schwaba."

Schwaba was doing volunteer work for an agency called Lawrence Hall Youth Services at the same time that the Lottichs were trying to find a way to help Townsend, and David went to his friend for help. After helping the Lottichs research ways they could help, Schwaba and her husband Joe decided that she should become Townsend's legal guardians and add him to their family, which already included three boys.

"My son Kevin met Todd first, and then my husband and I met Todd later," Schwaba said. "We didn't know each other real well when he moved in with us. We were going on faith that it was all going to work out … It worked out really well … Todd has never let me down once in his entire life."

Townsend did not lose touch with his mother or brothers, and he does not blame them for what happened.

"She wasn't a bad person," he said. "My mom went her way at the time, she started a new life, she got remarried. In a way, I started a new life, also. I had another family, and I didn't disown my other family. My brothers, they care for me."

The Schooling

Basketball kept calling Townsend, and when he transferred to New Trier High School — where Lottich was also attending and playing basketball — it seemed natural for him to join the team.

But the Illinois High School Associaton had other things in mind, declaring him ineligible and accusing Townsend of transferring to New Trier strictly for basketball reasons.

After a long and ugly legal battle, during which Townsend's saga made the Chicago papers and was debated on the sports talk stations, a judge ruled that Townsend's motives were honest and that he could play for the Trevians.

That year — his and Lottich's senior years — New Trier went to the quarterfinals in the state playoffs, losing to Miles' East St. Louis team.

After New Trier, Townsend attended New Hampton Prep School in New Hampshire — where he played with, among others, current North Carolina star Rashad McCants — for a year, allowing him to work on his study skills and improve his grades, before coming to Marquette.

His career here ran the gamut of experiences, from starting his sophomore year and going to the Final Four to hardly starting his junior year and everything in between.

Still, he had a good career and would not trade his experience for anything.

"A lot of people would die to play college basketball," he said, "and I got a chance to play big-time college basketball … "

It All Comes Together

Townsend said, without a doubt, playing basketball has been worth it, and it has taught him much about life.

"I'm so excited right now, because I've learned so much that maybe a regular student wouldn't have learned," he said. "I've been through so much. I've been through the ups, I've had success, and at the same time I've had failure. When I'm struggling, I know how to handle it better. I know how to take criticism."

"Todd has had his ups and downs in the game, but that's like life. Sometimes it's working for you, sometimes it's not, sometimes you know why, sometimes you don't," Schwaba said.

Townsend doesn't know what he's going to do yet after Marquette. "Other than my schoolwork, I don't know what to do with myself," he said. He is fairly certain he would like to be around basketball after he graduates this May, saying that he would like to play in Europe after working this summer in Chicago.

This doesn't surprise Schwaba.

"I think at some point in time Todd will be coaching," she said. "I think quite a few things will happen, but I think they might kind of revolve around basketball. He really loves basketball. He loves that game."

And, it seems, the game has loved him back.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Mar. 17 2005.