By: Drew Aggus<\/p>\n
Sundance (Sunny) Wicks<\/a> has one of the most unique names on campus. To go right along with it, Wicks, the men\u2019s basketball<\/a> coach, also has one of the most unique personalities on campus.<\/p>\n With a name as uncommon as Sundance, one may think that his parents did it for a very particular reason. Instead, he claims it comes from a combination of numerous things, including Sundance Sparkling Fruit Juice, Robert Redford\u2019s role of \u201cThe Sundance Kid,\u201d nearby Sundance Mountain and neighboring Sundance, Wyoming, and even the fact that his dad\u2019s car had a sun painted on top of it, which he called \u201cthe Sundance mobile.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI got picked on as a kid [for my name], but now, it\u2019s a cool talking point,\u201d Wicks said. \u201cI always tell my parents that they need to come up with a better story for why they named me Sundance.\u201d<\/p>\n Wicks, a native of Gillette, Wyoming, played high school basketball under Wyoming high school\u2019s winningest basketball coach of all time, while playing against big-name players, such as Jamal Crawford. Subsequently, he played college basketball at Division-II Northern State<\/a> University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Following his exceptional career there, he played professional basketball in Sweden\u2019s top basketball league for a year.<\/p>\n Wicks described himself as a \u201cjunkyard dog\u201d during his playing days.<\/p>\n \u201cI shot threes, rebounded and played really hard,\u201d Wicks said. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t slide a cardboard pizza box under my feet when I took a jump shot, so I wasn\u2019t extremely athletic, but I thought I played the game the right way. I respected it, and I played really, really hard every single possession.\u201d<\/p>\n One of Wicks\u2019 bigger attributes, as a coach, is his ability to help players develop their game, but Wicks remains very humble in this regard.<\/p>\n \u201cI can push them, and I can help them find a different, better, or more efficient way to do something, but the guys who make themselves great have something special inside of them,\u201d Wicks said. \u201cI always say that I\u2019ve never made a player great, because at the end of the day, they made the choice to come in to the gym every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n Wicks has helped many big-name players develop their games. This includes basketball stars like Kawhi Leonard, Isaiah Thomas, Marvin Bagley III and Xavier Silas, who recently made his NBA<\/a> debut.<\/p>\n \u201cThose guys were so good already,\u201d Wicks said. \u201cThey push you so far out of your comfort zone, because you\u2019re trying to find ways to make them better.\u201d<\/p>\n Wicks enjoys coaching at Division II<\/a> more than Division I<\/a>, simply because of the \u201cpurity\u201d of the game.<\/p>\n \u201cI love Division II, because, not that it\u2019s impossible, but there\u2019s no pressure for a kid to go to the NBA,\u201d Wicks said. \u201cYou can still win championships, and a championship is a championship at any level.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only does Wicks aspire to be a large mentor in his players\u2019 lives, but he claims that all of his coaches played huge roles in his life. He can still name every coach he\u2019s ever had, dating all the way back to middle school, and he said that he has learned something from everybody who has coached him.<\/p>\n \u201cI can learn something from anybody at any stage in time,\u201d Wicks said. \u201cIf you really are open to learning, it\u2019s insane to think about how many people can impact your life.\u201d<\/p>\n Sundance Wicks is a unique person, one who is well-liked all over campus. If Western\u2019s men\u2019s basketball team is as open to learning and remaining humble as Wicks is, the program has a Sunny future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Drew Aggus Sundance (Sunny) Wicks has one of the most unique names on campus. To go right along with it, Wicks, the men\u2019s basketball coach, also has one of the most unique personalities on campus. With a name as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[171],"tags":[418,419,420,172,205,421],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3973"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4292,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions\/4292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}