Allan Chaney never mapped out a detailed step-by-step game plan for his life.

He just kept heading down the road and discovered interesting turns to take along the way.

His latest stop is Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., where he just completed his second season as an assistant coach for the women's basketball team.

"It's a blessing that I'm here," Chaney said. "I'm happy they gave me an opportunity at Iona. It's been great so far. I'm just looking to get better as a coach and as an individual."

During a Sunday afternoon phone conversation, Chaney, 30, talked about a journey that's covered numerous destinations, including Baltimore, New London, Gainesville, Fla., Blacksburg, Va., High Point and Mount Olive, N.C., and now New Rochelle. He's dealt with adversity in the form of a life-threatening heart problem.

He didn't plan on taking this route. It just sort of gradually happened that way.

"Everything that's happened to me as far as basketball, I've never pictured," Chaney said. "None of this stuff really occurred to me until it happened. That's the same thing with coaching. I didn't think I would coach until I got a call from coach Joey Higginbotham at the University of Mount Olive."

So Chaney took his first coaching job as an assistant at Mount Olive in North Carolina. Next he spent a year as a basketball operations intern with the Delaware 87ers, Philadelphia's NBA G-League affiliate, before leaving for Iona.

At one time, Chaney also never thought he'd move to New London, where he became one of the all-time greats to wear a Whaler basketball uniform.

While living in Baltimore, Chaney traveled with his father to Connecticut to watch Old Saybrook's Division IV state championship game in New Britain in 2005. His brother, Cassius, played a starring role for the Rams.

They also saw New London's Division II state tournament game. Then a high school freshman, Chaney knew what he wanted to do after that.

"I asked my grandmother where the school was," Chaney said. "I was impressed with Kareem Brown, Lee Mitchell, Aaron Bryant and Mike Morgan. I was impressed by everybody that they had on their team and the atmosphere. I was like, 'Man, that's a team that I want to play for.'

"The day before school my sophomore year, I just looked at my mom and told her that I didn't want to go back to the school that I was at. And it happened that way."

Chaney's journey, which has been bumpy at times, continued to just happen.

While in college, Chaney learned that he suffered from a serious case of viral myocarditis, an infection of the heart that causes inflammation. His playing career prematurely ended after stops at Florida, Virginia Tech and High Point despite his best efforts to overcome his problems.

His health is great now, he says.

"I live by what I say and I always talk about positive adversity, turning something negative into a positive," Chaney said. "If you talk to a lot of my friends, they're like, 'I don't know how you did it. I don't know how you dealt with almost losing your life twice and being able to shake it off, graduate school and then go get your Master's.

"... I never once looked at it that I've got a defibrillator and I've got a heart problem, oh, I can't do this. I've got to be careful. No, I went out there and gave everything I had. Basketball has brought me a lot of success. I've learned how to turn those negatives into positives and this is why I'm where I'm at now."

An important lesson that Chaney can teach his players at Iona and his son, Trust, too.

Chaney takes great pride in being a father. He lives in West Haven with his girlfriend and Trust, who turns three years old next month.

He's found a ray of sunshine during a stormy time.

"The worst thing about this whole situation with this coronavirus is that we can't go anywhere," Chaney said. "But the best part is I get to spend my days with him all day. He wakes up next to me where before I was probably headed out to work or just coming in. It's been really great hanging with him all day."

Chaney wants his son to take his own path in life, whatever that may be. Like his father did, he plans on teaching Trust about the value of not only sports but a good education, too.

Before ending the conversation, Chaney had something that he wanted to say to kids in New London.

"There's a lot of different ways you can define success," Chaney said. "Success isn't only because you put on an NBA uniform, MLB uniform or NFL uniform. It's about what you do with your life after you didn't make it (to the professional level). Success can come in anything — being a lawyer, being a doctor, being in finance.

"I don't think we do enough to shine the light on those individuals. I hope whoever reads this that they'll start to look at things just a little differently."

g.keefe@theday.com