NEW ORLEANS — When it comes to spring graduates navigating their next life steps, Andrew Fava is in the driver’s seat. His journey, though, is one with more than a few pit stops at Armstrong International on Final 4 weekend, where networking opportunities have landed.
“I’ve gotten really close with the cell phone lot down there,” laughs Fava, behind the wheel of his Ford Escape. “It’s been fun. It’s been really cool.”
Fresh off Loyola's basketball championship win, and finishing up his Master of Science in Marketing and Communications degree in May, this lifelong basketball player is hoping to get his foot in the door as a coach.
It was over dinner earlier this week that Fava and two friends, who are assistant coaches for different teams, came up with a plan for Fava to network with coaches in town.
“I was trying to figure out what the best way would be to meet people,” Fava said. “[My friend] said if this was his first Final Four, he would just rent a car and pick people up from the airport. And I said I can do that.”
Fava and his friends authored a tweet now shared thousands of times, offering free rides to college basketball coaches flying into New Orleans for the weekend.
“So I clicked send, and sent the tweet, and both of them retweeted it and it just blew up from there,” he said. Soon after, the tweet was picked up by Barstool Sports and other sports professionals.
Fava says his inbox began filling up with coaches asking for rides.
What better way to steer your future than with a little guidance from someone in the back seat?
“It’s a blessing. Just the fact that the Final Four is here and I just finished my career playing at Loyola down here and having a car and being able to do this is unbelievable,” Fava said.
Now, this 24-year-old has more ride requests than he can keep up with. When we talked with him Friday morning, after dropping off one coach at the airport, he’d already made six trips.
“I want to say 11, 12 coaches so far,” he said. One of them, Sacramento State Assistant Coach Sam Kirby, tweeted a photo of he and Fava.
But Fava is too humble to name-drop the other coaches, wanting to respect their privacy. “Some of them have been coaches that people would probably know. A good bit of them have been Division 1 coaches. I took a couple of NAIA coaches,” he said.
But in creating his own opportunity, Fava says he’s learned a lot, one twenty-minute car ride at a time.
“Everyone’s telling their stories, how they got into coaching, any advice that they had for me. And I was just asking questions, kind of picking their brains,” said Fava.
The best advice he’s gotten?
“Stay open-minded and be yourself.”
It’s a learning opportunity, he says, as coaches look in their own rear-view mirrors.
Meanwhile, Fava is looking nowhere but forward.