University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Montross Continues To Make An Impact
June 17, 2002 | Men's Basketball
June 17, 2002
By Adam Lucas
TarHeelBlue.com
 Eric Montross held his annual Father's Day Camp last weekend in Chapel Hill.  |
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But maybe the best way to appreciate him isn't to watch him shoot a jump hook, or to look back at the photographs of that 1992 game against Duke in the Smith Center, when a bloody Montross led the Tar Heels to an upset.
Maybe the best way to appreciate him is to have to spend the night on one of the convertible sofas in the North Carolina Children's Hospital. All private rooms at the hospital, which opened in February 2002, have them. It's the kind of luxury that's impossible to appreciate until it's your child who is hooked up to the kidney dialysis machine, your child who has to spend the night at the hospital.
Those are the types of extras that have been funded by the Eric Montross Father's Day Basketball Camp, which returned to Chapel Hill this past weekend for the eighth straight year. More specifically, the camp also funded the Jason Clark Teen Activity Center, which is stocked with music and video games. It's the kind of place where you can almost forget that you're in a hospital, which is exactly what Clark would have wanted.
Montross first met Clark in the fall of 1993. The boy eventually lost his nine-month battle with cancer on February 21, 1994, but not before he had a profound impact on the Tar Heel center. And even almost a decade after his death, he's still impacting children who are admitted to the Children's Hospital. When asked shortly before his death what could make the hospital more child-friendly, he responded with three pages of suggestions.
"We started the camp in the memory of Jason," Montross said. "Originally we were strictly doing things in the cancer wing, but then we thought we really had a great opportunity to branch out and help out in other ways.
"Jason's maturity really touched me. The sense that a young man who had a terminal illness was able to greet me every day with a smile was just amazing. He was the one who was so upbeat when people around him were realizing how grave his situation could be."
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On Friday afternoon, while their children were ignoring all recommendations to let their lunch settle and instead dashing headlong up and down the court, Scott Montross, Eric's father, took the assembled dads into the media room to pass along his message of how fleeting the time with their children can be.
Montross's son can be rugged on the court. But off the court, he said, that has never been the case. "I'm really proud of him, but I'm not surprised," the elder Montross said. "He's always been very compassionate and caring. As a kid, he didn't even want to step on bugs. On the basketball court, of course, he'd step on anybody who got in his way."
Some of those he stepped on got in their shots this past season, when Montross's beloved Tar Heels fell to an 8-20 record. But even from afar--he spent this past season with the Toronto Raptors--the big man could tell that it was only a temporary setback.
"I've met the staff and really enjoy them," he said. "It's a group of guys who are all working for a common goal, and they'll achieve it. All I can say to people is not to sleep on us, because we're still the Tar Heels. We'll be back."
So will most of his campers, many of whom make a habit of returning every year. They'll go home at the end of the weekend to their own bed and tell their friends about the big guy who taught them the proper way to shoot a left-handed layup. And maybe, a few years from now when they have kids of their own and understand just how precious a child can be, they'll develop an even greater appreciation for a Tar Heel whose contribution goes far beyond points and rebounds.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com
