BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Today we continue a new series called Student-Athlete Spotlight, presented by Coca-Cola, that will highlight Samford's outstanding student-athletes. Today's eighth episode features men's basketball senior guard Richardson Maitre.
 
Maitre was born in Haiti, but grew up in Montreal, Canada. He talked about the experience of leaving his home at a very young age.
 
"I moved with my dad, my brother and my mom," Maitre said. "The idea behind that was that my parents wanted to look for a better future for me and my brother. Therefore, they decided to move to Canada. My brother and I didn't want to leave, because it's the Mother Land to us."
 
Maitre lived in Canada until moving to the United States to play basketball. He said that was an interesting experience when he first came to the U.S.


 
"In 2012 or 2013, that's when I got a scholarship to West Oaks Academy down in Orlando," Maitre said. "Everything was new. I barely knew how to speak English, and God kind of blessed me because West Oak was kind of like a boarding school, which means they had a lot of foreigners. Therefore, I had teammates that speak French, that speak Spanish and that's where the multilingual came in."
 
Out of high school, Maitre played at Indian Hills Community College. He talked about choosing to start his college career at Indian Hills.
 
"I was being recruited by Boston College, Cleveland State, UTEP, a lot of different schools were recruiting me because I think I had a pretty good senior year," Maitre said. "And going into my junior year, that summer, I had a pretty good AAU season, you could say. As a young athlete I never had the dream to go junior college, I didn't know what junior college was, it was Division I or nothing else. But, I guess the coaches from Indian Hills knew that my grades from Canada weren't going to translate to the United States, so they knew I was not going to be eligible to go to the Division I level. Therefore, they stuck with me, and from there, I just enjoyed their perseverance and I fell in love with their program."
 
After two seasons at Indian Hills, Maitre signed with Florida Atlantic University. He said the transition was smooth to the Division I level. 
 
"It wasn't as hard, because Indian Hills is highly ranked in the nation," Maitre said. "It's basically like a mini-D-1. And the way our organization was handling things, it was mainly like D-1. We would practice, we would have walk-through, just like the D-1 level. Therefore, it wasn't as hard, and I think that was a blessing because I didn't have to adjust as much compared to other guys, because it kind of prepared me to get to that point."
 
Following the 2019-20 season, Maitre entered the NCAA's transfer portal, eventually choosing Samford. Maitre talked about his reasons for choosing Samford.
 
"Samford was mainly a Godly decision," Maitre said. "I prayed about it and God just pointed out Samford to me. I had many, many, many, many calls, because of the season I had before that at FAU. I narrowed my list to Georgia, Wake Forest, Georgia Southern, Samford and DePaul. And you know, things started going down, coaches getting fired, players committing to other schools. You know, it just came down to Samford after I prayed, I asked God to show me the door that's for me and doors that aren't for me. Doors started closing and doors started opening. That's how I ended up at Samford and I don't regret my decision."
 
This year's Samford men's basketball team features a lot of new faces. Maitre talked about how the team is working together so far as they prepare for the season.
 
"We have a lot of new faces, which I am used to, because at the junior college level, every year we have a new team," Maitre said. "So, I kind of got used to it through junior college. One thing I've been doing more is basically having a relationship with the guys outside of basketball, because once you have a relationship outside of basketball, you build confidence, and that confidence translates to the court. That's when chemistry happens, so as a leader, I just had to learn things like that."
 
This year's team also has an almost completely new coaching staff, led by Head Coach Bucky McMillan. Maitre gave his thoughts on the new staff as well.
 
"Coach Bucky is a winner, like we all know," Maitre said. "He won many, many, many titles at Mountain Brook. He knows how to win, obviously. We have Coach (Sergio) Rouco, who used to be a head coach when he was at USF. Coach Tra (Arnold) was at Iona, they all made it big time, they went to March Madness, they've seen what it is to win. Coach (Duane) Reboul, he's a Hall of Famer. Therefore, they bring that culture and that same value out here, you can see it and you can feel it during practice as well. That winning culture is there."