University of Tennessee Athletics
Cannington Keeps Filipino Spirit Close To His Heart
January 16, 2010 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 16, 2010
BY JOSH PATE, UTSports.com
Quinn Cannington didn't about know the episode of Seinfeld with Keith Hernandez. He didn't know about the popular show's Close Talker and never uttered the phrase "Yada, yada, yada." Cannington didn't have a favorite Friends character, didn't know the chemistry between Ross and Rachel, never sang "Smelly Cat."
Seinfeld and Friends are two of the biggest television sitcoms. And yet Cannington wasn't knowledgeable when he moved to Knoxville as a 13-year-old searching for a sense of familiarity. That's because Cannington was raised in a suburb of Manila, Philippines. His parents, Jimmy and Vicki, were missionaries and his father worked at an international school for missionary children. Cannington attended the school with kids from more than 20 different nationalities.
So when the Canningtons decided to move back to Knoxville where they first met as University of Tennessee students, their son was in for a culture shock.
"On the outside, you look like an American. You walk like an American and talk like an American," Cannington said. "So people laugh when you don't know things, like when you don't know popular TV shows. I never knew those things growing up. In a third-world country like the Philippines, we just didn't have those things growing up. We had different things."
He had basketball. Cannington and his friends would shoot hoops every day after school in the Philippines. He dreamed of playing in the NBA, and in Manila he was good. So in Knoxville, with all his friends back home and a unique sense of homesickness that at times became overwhelming, Cannington turned to his only bridge to the new life in the United States.
For those watching, there was nothing to see. But if you looked closely, Cannington missed his old life.
"I think on the outside, Quinn made that transition really easy," said Jody Wright, Cannington's coach at Fulton High School. "I think probably on the inside was where it was hardest for him, moving back here and leaving his friends and guys he had gone to elementary school with all his life. Now he was going to a different high school. On the outside, I think he was fine. But on the inside, he had some real struggles I think."
Fortunately for Cannington, he landed in the right place. Wright had heard of Cannington's talents, even if the kid was playing ball across the globe.
Pete Stone, who played basketball under Wright in the early 1990s, was serving as a missionary in the Philippines and coaching middle school basketball as part of his outreach. He e-mailed with Wright consistently, kept in touch, and always talked basketball. One of Stone's e-mails still lingers with Wright.
"Oh coach, I've got this kid, this fifth-grader, you'd love him," the e-mail read. "He's just like you. He's eat up with it. He can't get enough of it. He loves basketball."
It was Cannington.
When the family moved to Knoxville in 2000, Cannington was still good. But basketball was the least of his concerns.
"When my family moved back here to the States in 2000, it was really a difficult transition for me," he said. "It's a real complex: missionary kids who move away from their home like I did in the Philippines and they go to a foreign world. To me, the United States was completely foreign and yet it was my family's home country."
That's when the questions started: Where are you from?
"It's a tough question when people ask, `Where are you from?' because I hesitate," Cannington said. "And sometimes people laugh and that hurts because I don't know where I'm from. I tell them I grew up in the Philippines. We feel like we're from the Philippines, but we're not Filipino."
Why did you grow up in the Philippines? You're not Filipino.
"Then I tell them my parents were missionaries," Cannington said, noting that the natural quizzing does lead to a window to build relationships with people. "I don't try to push anything on anybody, but I enjoy being able to tell people about me and my experience. And I loved growing up there."
Anyone who was around Cannington knew how important the Filipino culture was to the youngster. Manila was his home. He missed friends. He missed the traditions. But he was getting used to Knoxville, fitting in, playing basketball, being a high school student, building Falcon pride at Fulton High. On the outside, at least.
"The neat thing about Quinn is his personality," Wright said. "He was able to fit in and blend in here. Unless you knew his background and knew his parents were missionaries, you would never have known that he grew up in the Philippines and just moved back. There's no doubt that I think he not only looked at that issue, but other issues and setbacks and trials that we all have to go through. He handled those head-on."
Basketball was his outlet.
Cannington was small as a freshman, adjusting to the U.S. style of play. And Fulton provided a good transition with its rich history of basketball success. By the time he was a junior, he had grown from 5-foot-6 to 6-1 and improved his shot. He was a valuable sub on a 27-2 team. His senior year, he grew again to 6-4 and led the Falcons to the district title. He chose to stay in-town and go to UT and try to walk on in head coach Bruce Pearl's second season. Hard work paid off, and so did his talent. Cannington impressed the staff enough to earn a position on the team.
Now he's a senior guard on the scout team, and recently has played the role of the opponents' best player in practice. The trust and respect shown by both coaches and teammates, Cannington said, makes the long hours worth it. His practices are full of driving the paint and getting slapped around and pushed aside to make the Vols a better team. And it's made him a better player, going against talent like former Vols Chris Lofton and JuJuan Smith, and now point guard Bobby Maze.
"It's fun now to be able to be effective and go out there and do my best," Cannington said. "I don't feel quite as inferior now to those guys, and they respect me, too. I've had some good practices every now and again, and they know I've gotten better. So it's good to have that respect from them and the coaches. It's fun to be a part of the team in that way."
There was a point when Cannington didn't feel a part of anything when he first moved to Knoxville. Life as he knew it in Manila was gone. But it has never been forgotten.
Cannington has gone back to his old home for visits several times, and he's been going more frequently in recent years. The last two summers he spent six weeks there on visits.
"If I look back on it, I really also love being in middle of the Filipino culture because Filipino people are so hospitable and friendly," Cannington said. "So being in that culture, I think if I could go back I would get to know some of those people more and maybe put myself in the middle of their culture a little bit more. So going back there, it's a therapeutic process to be able to get back to my roots and just remember how it was there."
It's that type of therapy that Cannington wants to provide for others. The psychology major is applying to graduate schools with the goal of pursuing a master's degree in counseling psychology or clinical psychology. In a perfect world, he'd like to counsel missionary kids who are going through the same adjustment anxiety he felt.
"Everyone has got things in their lives that cause pain," Cannington said. "For me, one of the main things in my hard times that helped me was someone else to talk to. I really enjoyed that. In five or 10 years, I'd really like to counsel people going through hard times because I certainly needed it. It's a really difficult thing to work your way through. So if I could somehow meet with those kids and work with them, it would really be good for me."
Cannington's experience and his example, in turn, would be good for them.
"Quinn is a survivor," Wright said, "and a winner. He's a guy that's going to make it in whatever he does."
