Video Transcript
My name is Vincent Boumann, I’m from McMinnville, Oregon. I’m about six nine 6’9″and my position on XOs is a lock.
I started playing basketball. I think I was about eight or nine. Some neighbors who are older than me. I live in a cul de sac and they would just be out there playing, and I took an interest to start playing with them, kind of figured out I was pretty good from a young age and just kind of took off from there.
When I was in elementary school I played soccer and baseball, and as I got older, I stopped playing those and just kind of only played basketball.
Yeah, I would probably say high school. That’s why I just started growing and started realizing that I could probably do something with it.
Well, I started off going to community college and I did two years there. So when I transferred it was not to western Oregon, it was to a school in San Diego called Point Loma.
Things didn’t really work out there too well, and for my senior year, I was just like, I’m going to go home. They had a good program there. It was close to my family and I knew I’d be successful and it was going to be a good year,so I decided to just make that move. And it ended up being a good one, because we were nationally ranked the whole year, we were like third in the nation. We lost only two games the whole year, one time in December, and then we lost in the Sweet Sixteen. So it was a pretty amazing, amazing experience at Western Oregon.
And then by August, I was in Germany playing my first job. From Germany, I did a tour in China, I played in Armenia, played in Thailand. I was in Mexico for two weeks in March 2020, but obviously that didn’t work out.
I got recruited to XOs by Luke Gross. I didn’t have any basketball opportunities, thanks to Covid, so I was just kind of lost.
I was working a job that I didn’t want to work for Amazon, just delivering packages. And I remember one day I was in the work truck just going about my day and I got a Facebook message from him and I was just like. No chance I’m doing this. I never saw myself playing rugby. Never even played a contact sport. So I honestly didn’t respond to his message and he stayed persistent, he kept our messaging me and I wasn’t super happy with my life at the time.
And I would I would have rather had played it smart than to work a regular person job, you know, just. There’s not a lot of guys like me out there in the world and I was blessed with size and ability, so I started considering it a little more, and talked to him, and I missed the tryouts because I wasn’t serious about it in November, and he offered to bring me out here for one day, just kind of get a feel for what things were about out here. And came out here, and I liked what I saw. So I was like, let me give this a shot. And I’m glad I did that.
He’s been a big part of my development. I feel like I’ve come a long way since I first got here. It’s funny because he made the switch from basketball to rugby at the age of twenty four, which is the age I am now, and I feel like he just has a good understanding of me.
You know, we’re the same size, play the same sport and everything. So he knows kind of what I’m going through, and he kind of knows how to talk to me and kind of just how to work with me and help me understand things. So like I said, he’s been a big part of my development.
I’m enjoying it, especially since the more games I get under my belt, the more confident I feel. And I can just feel myself becoming a better player and I’m enjoying it’s becoming more and more fun, I would say the more I get the hang of it.
I like the physical part. In basketball I was never really able to be real physical and impose my will completely onto somebody, you know. That’s been a new experience for me, and I’m starting to fall in love with it.
When it comes to my teammates, there’s nobody that can come close to being me in a game of one-on-one.
My roommate, he’s a he’s a decent basketball player. He can shoot a little bit. His name is Ricky, but it’s just not fair. I think I’m going to have to start playing with my left hand only just to make it maybe closer, but yeah, nobody can beat me.