By Matt Winkeljohn | The Good Word
– The Q is back in the house, and Quinton Stephens is a two-way professional crossing t’s and dotting i’s while working on his futures.
That’s plural on purpose.
The former Georgia Tech basketball standout recently returned from his first season as a professional, playing about nine months in Europe after a short stint helping coach a youth team in China.
When he works out at the Zelnak Practice Facility, he’s focusing on his game and planning to play more ball. And while playing ball primarily in the Italian League for the Fiat Torino, he created relationships that he hopes to carry into a career as a financial advisor.
He’s working as an intern of sorts presently with Northwestern Mutual, and plans open his own practice. He’d like to advise professional athletes.
“I’ll be certified next week,” Stephens said. “I’m going through training with other interns. I’ve had a lot of meetings the past couple weeks … I’ll begin helping people find financial security. There’s a lot of things I can use to to help them.”
Stephens has been networking since arriving at Georgia Tech from the Marist School, where he was a two-time all-state player.
The lean, 6-foot-9, 196-pound forward became a jack of all trades, and set a Tech record by playing in 135 games over four seasons.
He played in 32 games for the Yellow Jackets as a freshman reserve, started 12 times as a sophomore, 14 times as a junior and then in all 37 games as senior, when he averaged career highs of 10.4 points and 7.6 rebounds with 80 assists.
Soon after graduating last May with a degree in business administration, Stephens went to China to try out for a job. He didn’t land on the roster with the Shinjin Leopards, but he said, “they hired me to train their under-17 team. I was in China for a little less than a month.”
The next stop was Torino, where the first division team in the Italian League is sponsored by Fiat, an automaker headquartered in that city.
“I was there by August 8th or 9th, and I also played in the Euro Cup,” Stephens said.
