{"id":22215,"date":"2017-05-12T13:31:56","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T19:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=22215"},"modified":"2017-05-12T13:31:56","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T19:31:56","slug":"wayne-suits-up-for-legislative-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=22215","title":{"rendered":"Wayne suits up for legislative session"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Coach Justin Wayne poses with his third grade team to celebrate winning first place in a 2014 tournament.<\/em><\/p>\n

For the past 16 years, Sen. Justin Wayne has coached basketball for a youth sports program in Omaha and serves as its president. In 2008, a few of his players noticed his grousing about Omaha\u2019s public schools, so they encouraged Wayne to follow the same advice he gave them: if you are going to complain, be a part of the solution. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019ve got things that I\u2019m complaining about, I can\u2019t sit on the sidelines,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got to get in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

With two players as campaign managers, he ran for and won a seat on the Learning Community Coordinating Council. In 2010, he was elected to the Omaha Public Schools board and later served a year as its president before leaving to take his seat in the Nebraska Legislature.<\/p>\n

In high school, Wayne had intended to walk on to the University of Kansas basketball team, but he was hit by a drunk driver his senior year. The resulting back injury forced Wayne to give up that dream, and he transferred to Creighton University, closer to home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in a funk,\u201d Wayne said.<\/p>\n

Judge Darryl Lowe, a Douglas County district court judge who coached Wayne as a young basketball player, called him to his office and told him he should attend Creighton\u2019s law school. Wayne, who is biracial, said the first day in class was a shock. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was the darkest person in the room,\u201d he said, \u201cand I\u2019m not that dark.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wayne felt out of place, but the judge encouraged him to stick with it. Wayne later became president of Creighton\u2019s Black Law Students Association and its Student Bar Association.<\/p>\n

When making decisions as a senator, Wayne said, he is guided by loyalty to the people in his district, the ones who have known him his whole life and who are the resident experts on what is happening in their community. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the district I was born and raised in,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom Hartman Elementary down to Florence Boulevard, that\u2019s been the core of the district since I was little.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Wayne\u2019s district, the most pressing problems are a lack of good jobs, high property taxes and education. Investing in education would boost the state\u2019s economy and prevent more children from ending up in the juvenile justice system, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe as a state have got to narrow our focus on our children,\u201d Wayne said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t figure out juvenile justice and education, Nebraska will get left behind.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wayne said his variety of experience \u2014\u00a0he owns a construction company in addition to his law practice and spent much of his childhood on his mother\u2019s family farm \u2014 will help him find common ground with rural and urban senators alike to address those problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople generally want to help out Nebraska,\u201d he said. \u201cHow we get there is what differs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his free time, Wayne enjoys spending time with his wife Katie and daughter Mya. He also spends at least six hours a week doing what he loves most: coaching basketball. <\/p>\n

If University of Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst ever needs a basketball consultant willing to work pro bono, Wayne said, he need look no farther than District 13. <\/p>\n

\u201cJust get me on the floor,\u201d Wayne said. \u201cNo charge \u2014\u00a0I will get it done.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past 16 years, Sen. Justin Wayne has coached basketball for a youth sports program in Omaha and serves as its president. In 2008, a few of his players noticed his grousing about Omaha\u2019s public schools, so they encouraged Wayne to follow the same advice he gave them: if you are going to complain, be a part of the solution. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[191],"class_list":["post-22215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senator-features","tag-sen-justin-wayne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/MeetWayne_blog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22221,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22215\/revisions\/22221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}