  | Injured out of a promising basketball career, Marc Upshaw is now a successful health services entrepreneur in Atlanta. | ||||||
A Blessing in DisguiseBy John Pantalone '71 URI basketball fans of the early '80s have vivid memories of a teen-aged Marc Upshaw shooting rainbow jump shots or roaring to the basket to dunk over a bigger defender. They have equally vivid memories of Upshaw at 20 and 21 struggling through two painful seasons marred by injuries. Upshaw was an aggressive player. That quality, combined with a deep religious faith, helped him overcome misfortune to become a successful businessman. A 6-foot, 6-inch forward recruited by major college basketball programs throughout the country, Upshaw played at URI in the era after the school's late '70s NCAA tournament teams. During his first two years he set a tone of success for a team in transition that featured players such as Phil Kydd, Roland Houston, and Horace Owens. In his sophomore season, Upshaw led the team in scoring as they compiled a 21-8 record and won a berth in the National Invitational Tournament. Expectations of more NCAA appearances followed that team, but five games into his junior season Upshaw hurt his knee. He missed the rest of that season, returned to limited action his senior year, when he was diagnosed with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, then played his fourth season after he had technically completed his degree in communication studies. Without his offensive punch, the Rams suffered two dismal seasons. "What I learned from that experience," Upshaw recounts from his home in Georgia, where he oversees Global Diagnostics, a health care services corporation "was perseverance through adversity. It was a blessing in disguise for me to have to go through that. It made me a stronger person." Upshaw believes it was also a blessing to attend URI. A Georgia high school sports star, he signed a letter of intent with the University of Georgia, but then he got a call from his cousin, former URI star Claude English, who was an assistant coach to Jack Kraft. "URI didn't really recruit me," Upshaw said. "Claude wanted me to visit Rhode Island. When I visited the campus and met the players, I hit if off with Roland Houston right away. That sealed it." "Here I was, a young African-American kid who had grown up in an all-black neighborhood and an all-black church. I wanted to meet people who were different. There was a lot of pressure for me to go to Georgia. It was tough when I changed my mind. I remember teachers in high school not talking to me after that." Despite his injuries at URI and the team's lack of success during his final seasons, Upshaw never regretted his decision. "I never expected to go to college," he said. "My parents both worked hard, but they didn't have the resources to send me to college. Without basketball, it never would have happened. I didn't believe I was going to college until the day I moved into the dorm. I sat in the room, looked around, and just said, 'Thank you, Jesus.'" His most lasting recollection of URI occurred as he was about to graduate when he turned in his final paper for a speech class taught by Agnes Doody. He recalls her saying: "Marc, I have no doubt that you will be successful no matter what you choose to do." It was a motivational moment. "I can't tell you how much that meant to me because I really wasn't sure what I was going to do or whether I could do anything." Upshaw didn't bank on a pro basketball career but when scouts showed up during his junior and senior years, he began thinking it would be possible. Drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in 1984, he spent three weeks in their rookie camp. With his left knee still not at full strength, he suffered an injury to his right knee. "I knew then that someone was telling me something," he said. Filled with disappointment, Upshaw drifted into a few unsatisfying jobs. One day in 1985 when he was selling sporting goods, a woman came into the store and bought about $1,000 worth of merchandise. He asked her what she did for a living and she told him she was selling insurance. "How can I get into that?" he asked. Two years later, he had established himself as a first rate salesman. His company offered him the chance to start his own agency in North Carolina, so Upshaw and his wife, Debra, moved there in the mid-'80s and built an agency that employed 40 sales representatives. Homesick for Atlanta, they were thinking of moving back when the recession of the late '80s hit, taking with it his company's biggest contracts. "We lost everything," he said. "I had to find something that was recession-proof. Medical services made sense to me, but I had no background in the field. One day I started going to offices in any tall building in Atlanta that had anything to do with medical services. I ran across a company that needed a medical salesman. They asked me if I had any medical or health background, and I said 'Sure I do.'" Atlanta was booming with construction in preparation for the Olympic Games, and Upshaw landed workers compensation personal injury contracts. "I became the office wonder boy," he said. With no formal business training, Upshaw relied on aggressiveness and resilience to learn how to run his businesses. "I watched and listened to people who knew what they were doing," he said. "I learned that if you give people good service, they'll reward you." He started Global Diagnostics in the mid-'90s when he realized that doctors were reluctant to buy expensive diagnostic equipment, such as ultrasound machines, and were instead sending their patients to hospitals and clinics for tests. "I asked two doctors who were just starting their practice if they would utilize my service if I brought the testing equipment to them," he recalled. They went for it. Today his company has contracts with 12 doctors and over 40 prison locations, and he has added consulting services and medical staffing to the lineup. "What convinced me that it was God's work happened shortly after we started the business," Upshaw said. "The state prisons were transporting shackled inmates for this kind of testing, which was uncomfortable for them and for the medical personnel. I thought, why wouldn't the prisons take advantage of this service? "It took me a month to find the right guy to talk to. He looked me in the eye and told me he'd give me work, but if I screwed up, that would be the end of it. I said, 'You must have been a coach, 'cause the last guy who got in my face like that was a coach.' He laughed. He had been a coach." And Global Diagnostics had secured a lucrative contract that services all prisons in the State of Georgia with on site diagnostic services and nurse staffing. To learn more about Global Diagnostic Services, Inc., visit the Web site at www.globaldiagnostic @aol.com |
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