While retired professional basketball player Shaun Stonerook’s competitive nature helped motivate his love for sports, since leaving the court, he’s focused on helping others.
In May 2015, he founded the Association of American Athletes Abroad, which seeks to provide a network of trusted professionals to help athletes deal with insurance and other financial responsibilities while playing abroad. In 2012, the Westerville resident founded the Shaun Stonerook Foundation, which aids children and families with the adoption and foster care process.
The Stonerook Foundation raises money to help parents who can’t afford adoption fees. The organization also partners with Choice Network, a Worthington-based adoption agency, to provide therapy for children who are either in foster care or going through the transition of being adopted.
Adopted himself at 9 months old, Stonerook says he’s aware of how lucky he was. His mother was a social worker, and Stonerook says she was forthright with him about his adoption.
“I wanted to be able to give back,” he says.
Born in Tiffin, Stonerook grew up with his parents and older sister, Amy, in Clintonville. As a kid, Stonerook was a fixture after school and during weekends at the Whetstone Recreation Center, playing basketball, soccer, football, dodge ball and ping-pong.
“I pretty much lived there,” he says.
While many kids now are focused on a specific sport from an early age, Stonerook says, he loved playing everything.
Still, Stonerook’s height made him a prime candidate for basketball. Now 6’7”, Stonerook says height was always a prominent attribute of his growing up. For kindergarten and first grade school photos, he was in the back row, dead center.
After moving in with his father, who lived in Westerville, Stonerook attended Westerville North High School, playing center on the school’s basketball team. He didn’t give much thought to playing college ball until he started receiving letters of interest from colleges.
“You start understanding you’re going to play somewhere,” he says.
Stonerook played power forward at The Ohio State University and later at Ohio University, graduating in 2000 with a degree in sports management. After graduating, he tried his hand at an NBA summer league for the New York Knicks.
Instead of remaining stateside, Stonerook soon headed to Europe and spent 12 years playing abroad: first in Antwerp, Belgium for a year; then for four years in Cantù, Italy; and finally for seven years in Sienna, Italy.
The money was good, he says, and the situation was much better than an office job. Assimilating to a new culture wasn’t hard for Stonerook. Language was a barrier, but it was made less so by the fact that everyone in the sport around him spoke English. The experience made him realize that the place where he grew up didn’t necessarily represent the world.
Still, he did face the challenge of being away from his family and friends for eight to 10 months at a time.
“You get used to that pretty quick,” he says.
Players also have to adjust to taking care of themselves.
Stonerook’s association seeks to help athletes who, like him, were abroad and dealing with things such as financial planning and insurance coverage. The goal is to provide trusted financial planners, CPAs and other legal professionals to athletes abroad to make sure they don’t get taken advantage of.
“You’re a young athlete with a lot of money,” Stonerook says.
There’s also the situation of insurance coverage. When an athlete plays overseas, the team provides health insurance. Once the contract is up, however, that coverage expires. Stonerook realized his fellow sports players needed help when, after retiring, he was contacted by his agent to assist the agent’s athletes in finding insurance.
From there, Stonerook made it his mission to provide a one-stop shop for help with insurance and other important matters that an athlete’s agent couldn’t necessarily provide.
“I just want to keep expanding it,” Stonerook says.
While Stonerook is working to help athletes abroad, he now calls Westerville home once again.
Stonerook met his wife, Manuela, in Italy when he was playing in Cantù, where she’s from. In 2012, Manuela was pregnant with their first child, Alexi. Stonerook was in his mid-30s. He realized that if something happened to his family back home, he would be unable to reach them and ultimately regret it. Wanting to have kids of his own and start a family, he retired.
Stonerook and Manuela now have 3-year-old daughter Alexi and 7-month-old son Kai. Stonerook doesn’t expect them to follow him into sports.
“I just want them to be successful and educated in life,” he says.
Sarah Sole is an editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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