TROY, N.Y. >> Students in the Alternative Learning Program at School 12 in Troy received some positive advice from a special visitor Thursday afternoon.
At-risk students in grades 8-12 from School 12 received a special visit from Matt Breida, a running back with the San Francisco 49ers.
Breida has been visiting some local schools during his first NFL offseason to share his success story after being adopted by two white parents and attending college at Georgia Southern and persevering through injuries to make the 49ers in 2017 as an undrafted free agent rookie.
During his roughly 30-minute presentation to the students Thursday afternoon, besides sharing his success story, Breida, 23, also spoke to the students about the bad decisions his adopted brother Josh, who came from a separate black family but was adopted by the Breida family too, has made in his life.
“I just want to give back to the communities and let kids know that they always have a chance to do anything they want to do,” said Breida after his presentation to students. “I remember when I was young and I would have speakers come [to my school] and I would look up to them and think that this really helped me and it really changed my life around, so I just want to give back to kids.”
Breida shared the story of how his brother, who is one year younger than him, got pulled over by police with marijuana in the car along with a gun and spent time in prison for gun charges.
“He finally got out for that, I believe two months ago, I haven’t talked to him, but I just want to make sure that he gets back on the right track and that he changes his life around,” said Breida, who noted that he hasn’t talked to his brother in roughly three years. “It’s been hard because when we were younger we were close, we would go out in the yard, play football and shoot around the basketball; as he got older we kind of separated more and that got hard for me because I felt like I lost my brother, but hopefully one day we can get that relationship back.”
Breida also spoke to the students about the importance of going to college and having a backup plan even if you want to be a professional athlete. Breida told the students that he studied and earned a degree in accounting in college and said that one day he intends to earn his CPA in accounting.
“You always want to have a backup plan, I went into college as a sports management major and it wasn’t what I thought it would be, there was more journalism and I’m not into that stuff, so I took an accounting class,” said Breida.
Troy City School District teaching assistant Curtis Nobles helped to organize the presentation with Breida because he felt that the students in the alternative learning program could benefit from hearing his story.
“Matt is a great story, number one, he can relate to our kids, he’s close in age and he has typically the same story as some of our kids coming from the type of background that he had and the outcome that he created with multiple other external factors kind of drawing him other ways kind of brought him to playing in the NFL,” explained Nobles after the presentation.
Students in the program like senior Thomas Laboy did say that they enjoyed hearing Breida’s story and that his presentation did impact them.
“I thought it was a great presentation, he actually opened my mind a little bit because I’m from a bad neighborhood, so he did open my mind and I took a lot from that presentation,” said Laboy after the presentation.
