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Published Wednesday, April 6, 2011 Click Here to Return To Archive Contents |
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| Artist of the Month Part 1 of 4 Jody Lee Petty By Charlton Wiggins 
In sitting and talking with Jody Lee Petty I came to the realization that here is a man who embodies the aphorism of a self-fullfilling prophecy or to put it another way - he makes his own luck. Born in Sumner on the southside of Greensboro, the future country singer showed no inclination towards a future in music. Jody was, however, blessed with a competitive spirit, finding success early on as a child playing basketball, baseball and football. "My childhood revolved arounds sports completely," says Jody, "if I had any free time I was out playing sports." By the tenth grade Jody set football aside and applied his physical talents to baseball and basketball, a choice that led to a scholarship to play hoops at Lenoir-Rhyne College. Playing for his education, Jody claimed several school and conference records and also led the nation in free-throw shooting during his senior year. Indeed, some of his school and conference records have yet to be broken. As his college career was winding down Jody discovered a new outlet for his competitive craving - Professional Volleyball, learning how to play during his breaks from college while working at Emerald Point water park where they had a couple of sand volleyball courts. "We didn't know what we were doing," Jody recalls "we would watch it on TV and pick it up - we really just taught ourselves how to play." Along with a friend Jody decided to play two man grass tournaments and began moving up through the ranks, and then went to the beach and entered beach sand tournaments. Success didn't come right away but Jody persisted and with another friend he began qualifying for pro tournaments which led to playing in the professional beach volleyball circuit. "We traveled around in an old beatup Volkswagen bus. We didn't have to make a lot of money to survive... we did pretty good for some kids playing volleyball." Jody continued to enjoy success playing professional beach volleyball for eight years but his future wasn't to be in sports, in fact his next career wasn't in music either, that story had to wait twelve years. A chance encounter in a mall would lead Jody down an entirely different path and to several different countries. For that story though, you'll have to wait until next week. |
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Top: A young Jody Lee Petty. (screenshot from LeAnn Rimes video for "Something's Gotta Give") Bottom: Jody successfully segued his professional volleyball career into a modeling career.. |
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