Eric Kindler, a junior walk-on on the Saint Joseph's men's basketball team, hails from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and attended Trinity High School, where he scored over 1,600 points. He was named to the All-District III First Team for three consecutive years and was a Pennsylvania All-State selection. During his senior campaign at Trinity, he averaged around 20 points per game. He played basketball during his freshman year at Canisius College, but after one year transferred to Saint Joseph's for the fall semester of 2011.

Kindler attributes his success on and off the court to his family. His parents, three brothers and sister have all shaped and supported him in both his journey as a basketball player and his journey developing into a man.

“As I grow up, I am starting to see how valuable they are to me and how much they have shaped the player that I am,” he said.  “They really sustain me; if anything, they are the people that I want to play for. I find power and courage in my six closest friends: my brothers, my sister, and my parents.

“My parents gave me everything; they gave me unlimited resources of things to work with to allow me to be whoever I wanted to be,” he continued.  “My parents were always behind me, and they always put me in a position that allowed me to succeed and get better as a player.”

Kindler continued to praise the support he received from his family.

“It started back when I was in grade school and on my way into high school,” he remembered.  “When I graduated eight grade, my older brother Steve painted a foul line on the driveway for me and put 'Shamrocks' [the nickname of Trinity High School] down on the bottom, and that was his gift to me. He knew that I liked basketball and he knew I liked shooting outside and he wanted me to use that.

“I had just watched him and my older cousins become a perennial powerhouse for high school basketball in the state of Pennsylvania at Trinity,” he went on.  “That's something that, as younger kids looking up to them, we wanted to emulate. So when my brother went and painted a foul line on my driveway, something so little, I knew that my brother was behind me and everything I had seen him accomplish on the court was behind me, and he wanted me to take that next step.”

Kindler's second-oldest sibling, Marie, is the only girl in the family, but Kindler notes that her drive and determination are qualities he wishes to embody himself.

“Marie supports me unconditionally,” he said.  “She supported me when I was scoring 20 points a game in high school and was [the team's] go-to guy, and she supports me as a guy at St. Joe's who sits on the bench. She deserves a tremendous amount of credit for what she does.  She is the one girl out of four boys.  She grew up with a tough childhood, growing up with all these boys, but she's got a certain amount of toughness and tenacity in her life that I have always admired and sought to really bring into my own life. It is not a mistake that she is successful in her own respective life.”

As for his brothers Joe and Nick, Eric had the opportunity to play with both of them in high school. Nick just finished his football career at West Virginia University this past fall.

“My brothers have been with me all along the way,” he said.  “We hung out with the same kids growing up in grade school and in the neighborhood, and when it came to high school we actually got the opportunity to play together. I played with Joe for two years [as a freshman and a sophomore] and we had some really nice moments, and there are some really great photos that capture what Joe and I were able to do. Joe prided himself on defense; I was the go-to scorer and he was the pesky defender that came after me every day in practice.

“He is really gritty when it comes to defense,” Eric continued.  “He was that guy that not only took pride in helping one of the better scorers on the team get better, but I knew he was giving me something there. When he was shouldering me or giving me a bump through the lane or boxing me out really hard or getting real close to me to force me to make a good move he was really just trying to make me a better person and a better player.  At the end of the day he really just wanted me to succeed.”

Joe, who currently resides in Georgia, supports Eric's Hawks and Nick's Mountaineers from miles away.

“He is the kind of kid that when he is with his friends he really promotes us,” Eric said.  “He promotes his family and he wants his brothers to succeed and he has no problem sharing it.  When we play on TV he has made the whole bar stop to make them watch the game. It was the same for my brother Nick when he played football at West Virginia.  There was never any question where Joe's brothers played and whether he was proud of them or not.”

Kindler's journey from playing basketball at Canisius to walking on to the basketball squad here at Saint Joseph's is a dream come true.  He left Canisius at the conclusion of his freshman year, and during his sophomore year at Saint Joseph's, Kindler got involved with various activities and organizations here on Hawk Hill.

At that time, Kindler did not want to play basketball anymore. He thought that his time as a basketball player had come to an end.

He went on several service trips including a trip to Guatemala and a trip to Virginia via Campus Ministry.  Kindler also joined a fraternity during his first year at SJU. But as the old saying goes, “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” and Kindler would once again return to the sport that he once loved so much.

“I would sneak into Hagan Arena and pretend I was a baseball player or lacrosse player, and when I saw the person working the front desk I would give him a nod and just walk in and get dressed and walk into the practice gym,” he said.  “I didn't have the audacity to walk into the main gym, and if I did I would shoot the ball and catch it before it hit the floor because if it did bounce then someone would come in and kick me out.

“So I would go to the practice gym and got kicked out several times.  Different workers would come up to me and ask me who I was and I wasn't going to lie to them, so they always kicked me out,” he laughed.

But one time, Rob Sullivan, the Hawks' Director of Basketball Operations, spotted the 6-foot-4 guard shooting in the practice gym.

“One time I was shooting in the practice gym and Rob Sullivan was training people down on the other side on the court,” he remembered.  “I guess as I was shooting and made a few shots I caught his eye.  He came over and asked me who I was, and I told him my story about how I went to Canisius and was now going to school here.

“It was kind of funny when you look at it, you have a kid who just a year before was playing Division I basketball and was now just hanging around shooting in his gym,” Kindler continued.  “He asked me to come and talk to him and we had a very nice conversation.  I really enjoyed it, and I enjoy any time I can talk to Rob about basketball because he has a tremendous wealth of knowledge and is a great guy. He asked me where I was and my story and I told him that at the time, I really didn't want to play anymore.  I asked him if I could still shoot in the gym and he respected that and he said yes.  So I continued shooting in the gym and at the end of the year I called Rob to try and get on the team.”

That summer, Kindler worked out in order to join the Hawks during the 2012-2013 season.  On a Wednesday morning in the fall, Kindler sent a text to his biggest supporters.

His family received a photo of the bleachers of Hagan Arena and a message saying that he would be wearing number 25.  Once again, Eric Kindler would be playing basketball.