Most dreams come with a clock ticking in the background.
For Division I athletes, that clock starts as soon as they arrive on campus. It lasts five years, and once the buzzer sounds, there’s no going back.
The rules are different at the NAIA level, where athletes are given 10 semesters of competition. Unused eligibility never expires, which is how Jay Mayernik could pursue his dream of playing college basketball at age 29.
“There’s no clock,” said Mayernik, a forward at Northwest Christian University. “I guess I’m living proof of that.”
The rules of time still apply, though. Eleven years after giving up his basketball career, Mayernik had moved on. He had a wife and three kids, plus a full-time job with a local taxi company. Real life was setting in.
City league courts were the only basketball venue left for Mayernik, a former prep star at Thurston High School. That was until he ran into Luke Jackson, the Oregon legend and NBA veteran now in his second season coaching the Beacons.
Jackson watched Mayernik in a city league game and encouraged him to attend an open gym with members of the Oregon basketball team. When Mayernik showed up and held his own, Jackson offered him a spot on the NCU roster.
Mayernik hesitated at first. He had a job and a family, and now he was thinking about riding around the Northwest in a bus, studying for college classes in his spare time?
Jackson had a feeling that, deep down, Mayernik wanted another chance, that something about his first brush with college basketball had left him unsatisfied.
“It felt really good,” Jackson said, “because I know he probably wished things would have turned out a little differently the first time.”
Jackson was right. Even though Mayernik had made peace with his past, part of him still wanted a re-do.
It was 2003, more than 11 years ago, that Mayernik sat in his coach’s office at Southern Oregon and found out he was academically ineligible. Hearing that news, he figured his college career was over after a semester.
“I hopped on the next bus home,” Mayernik said. “That was it.”
There’s a reason Mayernik’s departure from Southern Oregon felt so final. A year earlier, when he was dismissed from the Thurston basketball team for an alcohol-related violation, SOU had been the only school willing to stick with him.
The Division I schools that expressed interest after Mayernik’s junior year — Loyola Marymount and Santa Clara, to name a couple — disappeared. Mayernik was a good player, but no one wanted to gamble on him after his dismissal.
“That’s why I was so fortunate that Southern Oregon gave me a shot and why I was so upset and depressed when I ultimately screwed that one up,” he said. “I’d kind of viewed that as my second chance, and I had sort of made a mess of that, also. I thought I was done at that point for sure.”
Mayernik sees now that he wasn’t focused on the right things, that he didn’t have the discipline for college basketball. He tried to play it cool, but flunking out of Southern Oregon left a deep wound.
Mayernik moved back to Eugene and started working as a dispatcher at the taxi company. He took a few classes at Lane Community College, but it didn’t stick.
Things started to turn around, Mayernik said, after he married his wife, Rachel, and they had their first daughter, Jayden.
“It gave me something to focus on, something that’s important,” he said. “You realize it’s not all about you anymore. It’s about other people.
“Definitely, that’s when I started to mature.”
At 29, Mayernik’s priorities had shifted. That’s why he hesitated at first, wondering whether he still had time to pursue the basketball dream.
Jackson explained how it could work: Mayernik could take classes at night and online, and the Beacons would adjust to accommodate his schedule. With approval from his family and his employer, Mayernik decided to give it a shot.
So far, he has no regrets. A sprained ankle limited Mayernik’s minutes in Saturday’s win at SOU, but he’s averaging 7.1 points while starting nine games for the Beacons, who are 15-7.
Returning to playing shape took some time, but Mayernik found his feel for the game hadn’t lapsed.
“I couldn’t be happier with the way things have gone,” he said. “It’s just been such an amazing experience. You never think you would get that chance again, and it’s just been awesome.”
The best part is, Mayernik is only a sophomore. More than a decade after his first shot, he still has time on the clock.
Follow Austin on Twitter @austinmeekRG . Email austin.meek@registerguard.com .