Leaving the place you love to pursue the game you love requires courage. Thankfully for senior ULM basketball player Nika Metskhvarishvili, Monroe has proved to be the perfect place to call home.
Nika hails from Georgia, a small eastern European nation no larger than Louisiana. As a child, his father, a former player, taught him basketball.
“He played for four or five years, but he couldn’t really achieve anything,” Nika said. He wanted his kids to chase those dreams. It was really my father’s idea to get into basketball.”
While his father pushed him to play, Nika began to develop a love for the sport, and the two became inseparable.