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University of North Carolina Athletics
Photo by: J.D. Lyon Jr.
Lucas: The Ultimate Team Players
July 24, 2020 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Roy and Wanda Williams tried to quietly boost Carolina athletics in a time of financial peril.
By Adam Lucas
The best way to assess Roy Williams' impact on the Carolina athletic department is Jenny Levy's complete lack of surprise when she found out that Williams and his wife, Wanda, were footing the bill for all 2020 spring sport seniors who want to return in 2021.
"I didn't know that it was him originally," said Levy, Carolina's two-time national champion women's lacrosse coach. "But when Bubba (Cunningham) told us we had an anonymous donor step up, my hunch was that it might have been Coach Williams. He's just been so generous. Everything he is about is the team.
"As a non-revenue sport, you hear so much about revenue sport coaches at other schools being in their towers and not really caring about the other coaches who work at that university. At Carolina, it's not like that. Because Coach Williams isn't like that, nobody is like that. He's the ultimate team player."
The world Cunningham inherited on March 12, when the NCAA canceled all spring sports, was a difficult one. There were the on-field implications, where Carolina had multiple spring squads with legitimate national championship hopes that were suddenly snuffed. There were also immediate financial ramifications.
But as the unanswerable questions accumulated on his desk—some of which still can't be answered four months later—there was one problem with an easy solution. While some of Carolina's peer institutions struggled with the issue of how to pay for spring sport seniors who wanted to return in 2021, Cunningham never had that worry.
"Coach Williams called me the very day that the NCAA canceled spring sports and said, 'I cannot imagine being a senior and not being able to compete for a championship. We need to figure out a way to make this happen for them, and Wanda and I want to do it.'
"I was blown away. His very first thought was about somebody else and was about those students and their experience. The next thing he told me was that I couldn't tell anyone else."
That requirement meant Cunningham had to be vague, even with the Rams Club, the organization responsible for footing Carolina's scholarship bill. The athletic director finally revealed the identity of the donor to spring sport coaches on Thursday morning.
Just a reminder, then, that you're reading about this particular donation. You haven't read about dozens of others. There's a reason why Levy immediately suspected Roy and Wanda Williams as the donors behind the anonymous gift. She didn't just make a lucky guess. She knows what they've meant to her program both financially and beyond, and knows they've been just as generous to every other coach on campus.
"Roy and Wanda Williams are philanthropists, and they truly gauge the impact of each gift," said Rams Club executive director John Montgomery. "This gift absolutely ensured that these student-athletes could return, be part of their respective teams and compete for championships. It created certainty for those students, teams and their families in a time of great uncertainty."
Even as recently as Thursday afternoon, athletes directly impacted by Roy and Wanda Williams' generosity were still learning the details of the gift that facilitated their return. Makenna Jones was a 2020 senior on the Tar Heel women's tennis team, which had already won the ITA indoor national title and had realistic NCAA championship hopes.
Jones is so in love with the Carolina experience that as soon as the NCAA granted her class another year of eligibility, she began hunting for a Chapel Hill apartment. She'd dreamed of a perfect senior season, not just on the tennis court but on campus. Now she'll get another opportunity.
"If there's anything that represents Carolina in the best way possible, it's what Roy and Wanda Williams have just done," she said on Thursday afternoon when she learned the details. "His athletes aren't even part of a spring sport. He had no reason to do that. It just shows how much Carolina as a whole cares about our athletics family. We have so many talented teams at Carolina, and it's bigger than any one of us. It's all of us together, and that's what has made me love being at Carolina so much. It's one big family."
The best way to assess Roy Williams' impact on the Carolina athletic department is Jenny Levy's complete lack of surprise when she found out that Williams and his wife, Wanda, were footing the bill for all 2020 spring sport seniors who want to return in 2021.
"I didn't know that it was him originally," said Levy, Carolina's two-time national champion women's lacrosse coach. "But when Bubba (Cunningham) told us we had an anonymous donor step up, my hunch was that it might have been Coach Williams. He's just been so generous. Everything he is about is the team.
"As a non-revenue sport, you hear so much about revenue sport coaches at other schools being in their towers and not really caring about the other coaches who work at that university. At Carolina, it's not like that. Because Coach Williams isn't like that, nobody is like that. He's the ultimate team player."
The world Cunningham inherited on March 12, when the NCAA canceled all spring sports, was a difficult one. There were the on-field implications, where Carolina had multiple spring squads with legitimate national championship hopes that were suddenly snuffed. There were also immediate financial ramifications.
But as the unanswerable questions accumulated on his desk—some of which still can't be answered four months later—there was one problem with an easy solution. While some of Carolina's peer institutions struggled with the issue of how to pay for spring sport seniors who wanted to return in 2021, Cunningham never had that worry.
"Coach Williams called me the very day that the NCAA canceled spring sports and said, 'I cannot imagine being a senior and not being able to compete for a championship. We need to figure out a way to make this happen for them, and Wanda and I want to do it.'
"I was blown away. His very first thought was about somebody else and was about those students and their experience. The next thing he told me was that I couldn't tell anyone else."
That requirement meant Cunningham had to be vague, even with the Rams Club, the organization responsible for footing Carolina's scholarship bill. The athletic director finally revealed the identity of the donor to spring sport coaches on Thursday morning.
Just a reminder, then, that you're reading about this particular donation. You haven't read about dozens of others. There's a reason why Levy immediately suspected Roy and Wanda Williams as the donors behind the anonymous gift. She didn't just make a lucky guess. She knows what they've meant to her program both financially and beyond, and knows they've been just as generous to every other coach on campus.
"Roy and Wanda Williams are philanthropists, and they truly gauge the impact of each gift," said Rams Club executive director John Montgomery. "This gift absolutely ensured that these student-athletes could return, be part of their respective teams and compete for championships. It created certainty for those students, teams and their families in a time of great uncertainty."
Even as recently as Thursday afternoon, athletes directly impacted by Roy and Wanda Williams' generosity were still learning the details of the gift that facilitated their return. Makenna Jones was a 2020 senior on the Tar Heel women's tennis team, which had already won the ITA indoor national title and had realistic NCAA championship hopes.
Jones is so in love with the Carolina experience that as soon as the NCAA granted her class another year of eligibility, she began hunting for a Chapel Hill apartment. She'd dreamed of a perfect senior season, not just on the tennis court but on campus. Now she'll get another opportunity.
"If there's anything that represents Carolina in the best way possible, it's what Roy and Wanda Williams have just done," she said on Thursday afternoon when she learned the details. "His athletes aren't even part of a spring sport. He had no reason to do that. It just shows how much Carolina as a whole cares about our athletics family. We have so many talented teams at Carolina, and it's bigger than any one of us. It's all of us together, and that's what has made me love being at Carolina so much. It's one big family."
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