Two summers ago, while living and working beside the Hudson River, Nick Muniz had many moments he’ll remember.
He worked as an intern in the general manager’s office for the city’s minor league baseball team, Staten Island Yankees. He walked to the stadium in the morning – it took him no more than five minutes – and he’d walk home to his apartment, sometimes a little past midnight after a game.
He’d hit John’s Deli, a three-aisle grocery store, and pick up a sandwich or a plate of lamb over rice. Then, he’d sit at a kitchen table with his two roommates, two other interns with the Staten Island Yankees, and they’d talk and laugh for hours.
In those moments, Muniz would say to himself, “I’m 20 years old, and I’m in New York City, one of the biggest cities in the world. I am growing up.”
Muniz is HPU’s Extraordinary Leader for November. He’s a senior from Fort Worth, Texas, majoring in business administration and minor in sports management.
He’s also a Presidential Scholar, a member of three campus honor societies and a student who has attended an undergrad leadership conference in Arizona. He also traveled to the Northeast with admission counselors to talk with potential students and their families.
Muniz is busy. But he’s always been busy. Muniz plans to attend law school after graduation. Marquette University’s law school has already accepted him. Whatever law school Muniz chooses, he wants to focus on sports law and become a sports agent – an idea he first got from watching the movie “Jerry McGuire” at least a dozen times.
But who helped him realize that could really happen?
HPU.
A Dream Spoken
There was a time when Muniz refused to ask for help.
He saw it as weakness, and growing up the oldest of three in a military household, he believed in the daily discipline of adhering to a task and finishing it – whether you failed or not.
Then, when he came to HPU, he found himself 20 hours from home. And he came a few months after his family moved from Pennsylvania to Texas for his dad’s new job.
Muniz felt rudderless. His dad — the Army veteran, the graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, now a company executive – had always been his go-to. But his go-to was far away, and Muniz realized he needed that fatherly guidance.
He found Akir Khan.
Khan was a freshman success coach when he met Muniz during early registration. Khan had 160 first-year students on his roster. Muniz was one.
But Muniz, Khan found, was different.
He saw in Muniz a desire to succeed. He asked good follow-up questions and started stopping by Khan’s office in the fourth floor of the Smith Library every day to talk about school, sports, just everything.
It was then Khan heard what Muniz wanted to do.
“I want to be a sports agent,” Muniz told him.
“Well, if you want your dream to come true,” Khan told him, “you need to be attached to my hip for four years.”
A Dream Realized
Khan had interned for the Charlotte Bobcats, and he had worked in politics as a Muslim liaison at both the local and national level. So, every day Muniz came by, Khan turned his office into a classroom and used his white board as a teaching tool.
He helped Muniz manage his time and his academic schedule. Khan then helped Muniz stair-step toward his sports-agent dream.
Khan plugged Muniz into his student leadership team with HPU athletics. He then started doing mock interviews with Muniz to prepare him for the interview with the Staten Island Yankees.
Muniz practiced with Khan at least a half dozen times, and with every question, Muniz would write down his answers to make sure he remembered them.
Then came the real interview. Afterward, Muniz went to see Khan right away.
“What questions did they ask you?” Khan asked.
Muniz laughed.
“The very same questions you asked me,” Muniz responded, smiling.
“I Learned What I Can Do”
Muniz interned with the Staten Island Yankees for two summers. He first worked in the ticket office. A few weeks into his first summer, he was promoted to work in the general manager’s office, a job he did his entire second summer.
Since his sophomore year, Muniz has supervised the student leadership team with HPU Athletics. Muniz has managed 20 students and has become the athletic department’s lead marketing intern for promoting HPU’s 16 teams.
That includes dressing up occasionally as Prowler, HPU’s panther mascot.
“If you want something in life, you have to eat it and dream it,” says Khan, now HPU’s coordinator for student leadership and success. “And that’s what Nick did. He was determined with what he wanted.”
Muniz also works as a University Ambassador – he’s one of ten captains – as well as an intern at the headquarters for the Atlantic Coast Conference 20 minutes from campus. He helps handle the conference’s replay center during college football season.
Now, do the math. That’s three part-time jobs. It keeps Muniz’ Apple watch buzzing with messages. But Muniz believes his frenetic pace in college will help him become his own Jerry McGuire.
“High Point helped me believe,” he says. “It helped me find myself and my place in life. I learned what I can do.”