Leader Spotlight: Wes Trammell
The Chosen Ones GR | Grand Rapids, Michigan
Wes Trammell grew up in a sports family. His father played college football, his older brother was a hall of fame athlete for his high school who went on to shine in college, and Wes followed close behind, chasing something more than a trophy. He was chasing acceptance.
As a kid, Wes struggled with anger. He was made fun of, chubby, and the one who did not feel like he fit. But when he picked up a ball, something shifted. His dad, who lit up watching his brother compete, started showing that same pride toward Wes. So Wes kept playing. First for his dad's approval. Then for friends and girls. Then, as a teenager being recruited by college coaches, he continued to play to protect a reputation he never asked to carry.
By the time he arrived at Grand Valley State, following his brother's footsteps onto the basketball team, Wes was running on fumes. He had no safe place to talk about the pressure. No older men in his life he could tell, "I don't want to do this anymore," without disappointing them. He played two more seasons after his brother graduated, but the anxiety that had built for years came rushing back. He didn't finish out his college career. Walking away from the sport that had defined him for as long as he could remember brought relief, and it brought a crisis. The identity he had built his whole life on was gone.
What followed were three of the hardest years of Wes's life. He tried to fill the void with a relationship, with partying, with anything that could numb what basketball had left behind. Then, during his final semester of college, Wes gave his heart to Christ. It wasn't instant. It was a slow, ongoing repair. He got baptized in 2014, walked away from the relationship that had become an idol, and started the work of building a faith that was truly his own, not just the faith he'd inherited from his parents.
A friend named Ernest became part of that repair. Ernest kept pushing Wes to see the gifts he had outside of basketball, especially with young people. Wes started volunteering in youth ministry and discovered he had a gift for listening, for walking alongside teenagers, for helping them feel seen. One day Ernest asked him a simple question: if money weren't the obstacle, what would you actually want to do? Wes said he'd want to run a sports program and mentor youth. Ernest told him to go do it.
In 2017, The Chosen Ones Grand Rapids (GR) was born, first as a highlight-film ministry for young athletes, then, over time, into something much deeper.
The turning point came during the pandemic. Like a lot of people, Wes had time to reflect, and two things kept surfacing. First, the men in his life had genuinely loved him, but their care had gotten tangled up with his performance on the court. He needed men who would love him the same whether he played or not. Second, he needed peers who could be honest about their own struggles. Athletes look strong from the outside, Wes says, but they carry a lot of silent weight. He remembers a trip with friends to watch a game in Boston, where they finally opened up to each other about how miserable they'd felt playing years earlier. None of them would have said that back then. Wes started wondering what it would have meant to hear it sooner.
Those two needs, a male figure who loved him beyond the game and a community that could be honest, became the foundation for everything Wes builds into young athletes today
As Wes shared, the ministry now centers on three things:
Identity. Helping teens understand who they are outside of their sport, their performance, or what anyone else expects of them.
Healthy relationships. Giving young people the kind of honest, safe relationships Wes didn't have as a young athlete himself.
Mental health. Creating space for youth to name what they're carrying instead of suffering in silence.
Wes puts it plainly: "I believe that every teen and adolescent has a unique purpose given by God. I am so driven to help them find that, their God-given purpose, and to help them understand their identity, healthy relationships, and how to care for their mental health." He's watched what happens when those three things are missing, even in people who look successful from the outside. He wants better for the kids in his program. He wants them to know there's life after the jersey comes off.
Tarren's Story
Few stories capture this better than Wes's relationship with Tarren.
Wes met Tarren when Tarren was a seventh grader and Wes was still filming basketball highlights. Tarren was the first to sign up for every program Wes started, first for Chosen Mentality, then, when he brought friends along, for The Chosen Academy. Over four years, Tarren showed up to everything, and in between programs he and Wes stayed in constant contact, texting about basketball and about life.
By his senior year, Tarren reached out and told Wes he wanted to be baptized and if he knew someone to baptized him. Wes asked his own pastor, Pastor Clarence, who also happens to sit on Wes's board. Pastor Clarence met with Tarren and his family and, knowing exactly why Tarren wanted this, turned to Wes and asked if he wanted to be the one to baptize him. Wes hadn't thought he could. But Pastor Clarence had watched their relationship grow over the years and encouraged Wes to do it himself, since he was the one who had discipled him. Wes calls it one of the best days of his life.
Not long after, Tarren, now playing college basketball, reached a crossroads and texted Wes that he wasn't sure he wanted to keep playing. Wes thought back to what he'd needed most in that same moment as a young man. He affirmed Tarren's feelings, encouraged him not to make a rash decision, and made clear that Tarren's worth in their relationship had nothing to do with basketball. Tarren finished his season, transferred schools, and kept playing, but with a different kind of freedom this time.
Later, Tarren returned home and reached out to Wes to see if he knew of anyone hiring. Wes felt the pull of the Holy Spirit and asked Tarren if he wanted to work with The Chosen Ones GR. Despite no guaranteed funding, Wes trusted God was leading him to bring Tarren on. He wrote up a job description on the spot. Tarren was hired, not just to fill a role, but to be a leader in his own right, someone Wes is actively setting up to run his own ministry one day.
Not long ago, Wes overheard someone at church ask Tarren how he knew him. Tarren answered, "He's my mentor." Wes tried not to let it show, but he says his heart was overjoyed to hear it, the same relationship he needed as a young man now living on in someone else.
"It's crazy," "meeting Tarren as a seventh grader and making a highlight video for him, to have him support and attend every program offered, to now becoming a leader himself. If I only had fifty Terrens, it would be incredible. He's a diamond in the rough."
Wes Tramell
Why It Matters
Wes stepped away from a corporate career in February 2025 to give himself fully to The Chosen Ones GR after years of running it as a side calling. Not long after, UYWI's Len Pascall invited him out to Los Angeles for a strategic storyline session, an invitation Wes says changed everything for him. It was at that time he fully laid down the idols that once defined him, basketball and the need to please everyone around him. In doing so, real repair in his own life began.
Today, Wes leads close to 100 youth across his school programs, basketball ministry, and speaking engagements in Grand Rapids, with a growing focus on raising up young adult leaders who came through his own program, just as Tarren did. Every relationship he builds is rooted in the same conviction: young people need to know who they are, need people who won't leave when performance drops, and need somewhere safe to say when they're struggling.
Wes is living out, for a new generation of young athletes, the relationship he spent years searching for himself.
To learn more about the UYWI Certification Program or to support the leaders being trained, visit uywi.org/certification.