Former Shawnee star's book touches on depression

Tyson Hartnett remembers his darkest days, although he's tried to put them behind him.

There was a time when the former Shawnee High School and Rowan University basketball standout would attempt suicide because he felt he was a failure.

Stuffing a tennis ball in his car exhaust and taking a handful of pills would do the trick, or so he thought. That was one of several failed attempts to take his life.

He got help soon after and began to get his life in order. Hartnett, 28, has written a book titled "Hoop Dreams Fulfilled: An Athlete's Failures and Redemption on His Journey to Professional Basketball."

The book touches on depression, failure, bullying, recruiting, the political side of sports and more.

The Medford native felt writing the book was something he had to do, even if it helped only one or two athletes.

"What prompted me to write it, honestly it was kind of inside of me and I felt like I needed to write," said Hartnett, who works at The Ladders in enterprise sales. "I was working a job in New York City. The sport, basketball, kept pulling me back in. I was playing on the courts in New York City but I felt like I had been through so much with it, in high school and college, and overseas for two years.

"I just feel like they're not normal experiences. Not what a typical person goes through in their early 20s. I started telling people ideas for it. For a few months I didn't even write anything. I was just talking to people about it and just saying 'Hey, what do you think?' Almost every single person was like, 'Write your book.' "

So he did.

Over the Christmas holiday, he wrote every day for four to five hours. Over the last few months, he put the book together.

"Young athletes would relate to it and it would help them."

Hartnett said reading articles about Madison Holleran at Penn (who committed suicide in 2014), helped him realize this isn't something only he went through, "lots of athletes go through things like this."

The 6-foot-6 Hartnett was a basketball star with a bright future. He gained a scholarship to the University of Maine, a Division I school, and had hopes of one day playing in the NBA.

But his career at Maine ended during his second year when he was told he'd never play meaningful minutes. He left school and that helped send him into a downward spiral.

He landed back in Medford with too much time on his hands and feeling out of place — like he'd failed. Eventually, he ended up at Rowan University, where he had a solid playing career for the Division III school and later graduated with a business management degree.

"The depression, it stemmed definitely from basketball," he said. "Basketball was the one thing I knew I could kind of escape to. I was extremely dedicated. Once I saw the reality of the political part of the game in high school and then in college, it made me feel like all this work that I did doesn't even matter because I'm dealing with the politics.

"For a while when I wasn't playing, I was questioning what I was doing. Growing up, I was focused on getting to the next level of my sport, whether it was in college or overseas or whatever, without cultivating other areas of my life. I was very one-dimensional."

Hartnett, who played professional basketball in Sweden, Chile and Argentina, doesn't like thinking about those dark times too much, but he had to in order to write the book.

"I had to go back into that world, that mindset; it was terrible," he says. "At the end of the day, looking at it, I'm still here. I did deal with stuff like that where it got to the point where I thought, 'I'm a failure, I'm not playing basketball anymore, I've got no reason for any of this.' "

Hartnett's father AJ Hartnett is thankful to have his son alive.

"I am blessed to still have him by my side," he said. "And with the work ahead, if there is one life we can save or lives we can help change course, it will be a job well done. Our student-athletes deserve the resources to get the help they need."

His son's main goals in writing the book were to have a cathartic experience and to help others.

"Once I wrote it, it was like a weight lifted from me," he said. "It was so amazing. Toward the end, I was like, 'If I affect two kids with this and I help them out, it'll be worth it.'

"All these things I had to go through, getting kicked off of teams, dealing with coaches ... writing the book is really just about feeling like I'm doing my part in this world."

Celeste E. Whittaker; 856-486-2437; cwhittaker@courierpostonline.com