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Ask Casey Boston why he embarked on a career as a social worker, and he’ll tell you it all began on the football field.

Can’t see the connection? Neither could he, at first.

“I always knew I wanted to do two things: play football and help people, and one of the first things you’re taught in football is that it’s 90% mental and 10% physical,” Boston said. “That’s when I realized how mental health and sports are correlated and just how much our mental health affects so many aspects of our lives.”

During his undergraduate years at Alfred University, with 14 touchdown passes. He majored in clinical psychology but didn’t give much thought to becoming a social worker until his senior year. He chose that route instead of gambling on whether he could make it to the NFL.

After enrolling in the Master of Social Work program in ������Ƶ’s College of Community and Public Affairs, it became even more clear that helping others was Boston’s calling. He’s used his faith and his experiences growing up in a challenging Brooklyn neighborhood to guide him.

Boston said he hopes to take the skills he’s honed over the last two years at Binghamton into larger city settings — New York City or Philadelphia — and provide mental health therapy to adults and adolescents who struggle with mental illness, substance abuse, even the obstacles linked to living in low-income neighborhoods.

Growing up in a supportive family helped keep Boston away from those detractors, but he also came to appreciate that avoiding them wasn’t easy.

Police officers were frequently called to his junior high school. There were fights. He knew friends who became the victims of crimes, and others who turned to it. But he had a supportive family, one that kept him on the right path, and it’s a favor he’d like to return to people less fortunate.

Boston’s enthusiasm and desire to lend a helping hand whenever possible will help him become a catalyst for many life changes and are exactly the qualities that will help him be an outstanding social worker, said John Vassello, director of admissions and student services in the Department of Social Work.

“One of Casey’s major strengths is his quick ability to connect with people and speak with them as though he has known them for a long time,” Vassello said. “He creates a comfortable, non-judgmental and respectful environment where people feel like they can be vulnerable and tackle big issues they may be struggling with.”

Boston’s faith has also given him a unique understanding of how valuable something as simple as patience can be when it comes to working through complex avenues of how to best help someone mired by difficult situations in their lives.

“There’s nothing better in the world than providing therapy for somebody whose life is not how they wanted it to be,” Boston said. “In becoming a social worker, especially coming from the inner city, I want to be able to help those people deal with their own traumas, issues they might not even realize they’re externalizing on each other.”

Over the course of Boston’s two years at Binghamton, he’s also gained valuable insight into what it takes to help someone in their darkest days through his internship at the Addiction Center of Broome County.

There, he came to understand better just how integral one’s family support can be on the road to sobriety.

“Support you get from your family can be a great preventative factor, and if you do fall to the cycle of violence or addiction, then the family support can help reduce your chances of returning to use,” Boston said. “When they start to develop that resilience, they start to get support from other places as well.”

Boston also drew from his experiences growing up in Brooklyn as part of a presentation, “Break the Cycle of Community Violence,” he gave in March during the TEDxBinghamtonUniversity annual conference. As part of the event, speakers share ideas they deem worth spreading in their local community.

Recognizing negative influences and finding ways to not let them define what you do with your life can be crucial in breaking that cycle, Boston said. Showing people in need of help how to do so is one of the things he’s looking forward to most in his chosen profession.

“Violence is always going to be a thing. Addiction will always be a thing. Poverty isn’t going away,” Boston said. “But if you can make a positive change in someone’s family, neighborhood and friends, then that individual is going to thrive and be successful.”