Ryel Daye was a standout at both football and basketball at East Kentwood and decided to hit the gridiron in college at Central Michigan.
He quickly realized he had made the wrong choice.
"When I got there," Daye recalled. "I just knew it wasn't for me."
The Falcons won both a district and regional championship his senior season.
Basketball was where his heart was, so he came home.
"We went on that run my senior year of basketball," Daye said. "That's when I knew that basketball was where I wanted to be."
Daye came home and joined the GRCC basketball team playing 23 games two years ago averaging five points per game.
"Had some stuff happen my freshman year," Daye said. "Took a year off but now I'm back."
During the year off, Daye used his extra time to become a star on social media.
"Quarantine kind of hit so everyone was on Tik Tok," Daye said. "Made a couple of videos, posted some basketball stuff, apparently people liked it, just kind of happened out of nowhere. It is something that I have just kind of grown into loving."
Daye has more than 477 thousand followers and 16 million likes but coming up with ideas is not easy.
"A lot of content creation goes into it," Daye said. "You go to sit down and think about a ton of stuff, it's a lot harder than people think."
"It's not something he has lucked into in his time, " Grand Rapids Community College head coach Joe Fox said. "He commits to coming up with content and there is some strategy to it. It's really impressive."
"It's been fun," Daye said. "I put some of my teammates in Tik Toks, it has been a good experience overall."
He has met others on the app and made videos with them in places like Florida and Ohio.
"It's definitely been crazy," Daye said. I've gone out of the state for some stuff, there could be a future in it. I'm going into marketing for my degree so just using that and public relations is kind of what we want to do in the first place, it's been nice having that as my background right now."
Now he's back playing basketball too, Daye had a triple double last Monday and is second on the team in scoring.
