When Matt Woods graduated from Dade County High School in 2005, the thought of one day heading off to medical school at Johns Hopkins was probably the last thing on his mind.
Having been a solid point guard for the Wolverines, college basketball intrigued him, especially if the lifelong North Carolina Tar Heels fan could parlay an athletic scholarship into a coaching gig. There was also marine biology to consider, given his childhood fascination with the sea.
And the military was always there to fall back on for someone whose father, Bob, had risen to the rank of Brigadier General in the Army before retiring to run the General Woods Inn in Rising Fawn, Ga., with Matt’s mom, Nadine, who was once an Army captain.
“I really didn’t know what I wanted to do,” admitted Matt, who joined the National Guard while attending Kennesaw State without a basketball offer that first autumn out of high school. “College was just what you did. It was the next step.”
But when he came home in December 2009 after a tour of duty in Iraq as a military policeman, he also hoped walking on to join the basketball team at Georgia Northwestern Technical College the following fall might help him take the next step toward finding his future.