Lucas: The Toughest Tar Heel

By Adam Lucas

WINSTON-SALEM—Saturday afternoon, Roy Williams orchestrated Carolina's biggest win over Wake Forest in program history.

Friday night, four miles from Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum, he did something much more impressive.

Close observers of the Tar Heel head coach might have noticed that Williams has been wearing a blue bracelet in recent weeks. The bracelet is in honor of LewLew Whayne, a junior at East Chapel Hill High School. For over a year, LewLew has battled a series of gastrointestinal and digestive disorders that have completely changed her life. It started with Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome, a disease so rare that it took three months just to find a surgeon who was capable of attempting to fix it. According to doctors, approximately .013% of the world's population has SMAS.

You don't need to know the medical details, and you probably wouldn't understand them even if you did. Here's what matters: for the last 443 days, LewLew hasn't been able to eat normally. There hasn't been a single day that life has been normal, no day when she can go grab a burger with friends, no day when she can stop and get a sandwich after volleyball practice (no strength to even play volleyball), no opportunity to stay up late eating ice cream and watching television.

She has been sick every day for the last 443 days. Every day, her family has worried. Every day, she has wondered if this is the day she gets better…or worse. Parents will understand this: you know how when your kid is sick, it overwhelms everything else that's happening in your life? LewLew's family has lived like that for 443 days.

But they are not miserable. LewLew won't let them. When you look through pictures from her illness, something eventually becomes oddly obvious: LewLew is smiling, all the time. Photo after photo, there's the smile. Sometimes there is an IV in the shot. Sometimes it is clearly taken in a hospital room. But there is always the smile.

And that's what Roy and Wanda Williams saw on Friday night at Brenner Children's Hospital in Winston-Salem. The Carolina coach is a longtime friend of the family, and a frequent golfing partner of LewLew's grandfather. He's worn the Team LewLew bracelet on the sidelines, but with his team in Winston to face the Deacons, he wanted to stop by in person.

If you know Roy Williams, you know routine is important. Friday night, he demonstrated that people are more important, showing up for an hour visit with no cameras, no fanfare, and no mention of it to anyone other than the family (he was surprised when asked about it a day later; LewLew's mother, Laura, had told me about the visit). It was around 16 hours before an ACC game, and Roy Williams was hanging out with a 16-year-old in a hospital room.

Maybe that's impressive to you. Now imagine that was your 16-year-old in that hospital bed, who for one hour was able to feel like the most important person in the world. She loves the Tar Heels like you do, and for 60 minutes, with Roy and Wanda Williams sitting in that room, the Tar Heels loved her right back, at a time when she needed it most.

Saturday, after his team's 38-point win, the head coach was marveling not over his squad's impressive performance, but over the toughness of a 16-year-old girl.

"We walked in last night, and even with all she's been through, she had the biggest smile you could possibly see," Williams said.

That's because LewLew is one of the biggest Tar Heel fans you'll meet. When Carolina played NC State on Feb. 5, she watched the game in her hospital room with her mother. As you might remember, a Presidential address made that game difficult to find on regular network television. That evening, when LewLew and her mother were struggling to find the game on TV, was one of the only times her mother has seen tears in LewLew's eyes over the past year.

"It's the one thing I look forward to!" LewLew told Laura. "If I can't watch the game, I may fall apart."

Fortunately, they found it. And that's how LewLew Whayne was able to watch the Tar Heels hang 113 points on NCSU, as she alternately threw up the bile that had backed up in her stomach, managed the nutritional tube to her stomach that was keeping her alive, and cheered on her favorite team.

We've all been there, in some way. We've all had the days or weeks or months where nothing seems right, but for two hours, there's Carolina basketball. And for those two hours, life is a little bit more manageable.

It was while watching one of those games that LewLew noticed Roy Williams and family friend Hubert Davis were wearing one of her bracelets. "Tears fell down her cheeks," says Laura. "She could not believe how kind they both were to think of her. As a mom, when your child is as sick as LewLew has been, you can not imagine the amount of appreciation that created."

The Carolina family is the players and coaches, of course. But it's also the way that same family takes care of their own. Williams helped facilitate LewLew traveling with the Tar Heels to the Bahamas for the exhibition games in August. But it's not just the head coach. Ask her about her favorite recent games, and she'll tell you about the Carolina-Duke game at the Smith Center last season.

She was too weak to walk very far that day. That's what happens when you can't eat. But it was the Duke game, and of course she didn't want to miss it. So Woody and Jean Durham arranged for her to ride with them to the game, so that they could pull her right up to the back door of the Smith Center, where Davis was waiting with a wheelchair. That's the family, far out of the shine of any spotlight.

Saturday, LewLew watched the win over Wake Forest on her laptop. On the wall of her hospital room is the same photo you see at the top of this story, and in a place of honor is a blue Carolina jersey specially made for LewLew with her name stitched on the back, signed by the entire team, and hand delivered by the head coach.

Williams has coached Tyler Hansbrough, and he's coached Raymond Felton, and he's coached Joel Berry. He knows toughness. He is an expert on the subject.

Friday night, he sat with a 16-year-old girl who turns 17 this week. She can't dunk. She's never drawn a charge. She wasn't even able to carry her own bag when she checked in at the hospital in late January.

And Williams saw undeniable toughness.

"She has handled a tremendous amount of adversity better than anyone I can imagine," Williams said. "I admire her, I really do. And I know she is one very, very tough-minded young lady."

To learn more about LewLew or to leave her a note of encouragement, visit her blog.

University of North Carolina Athletics

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