University of North Carolina Athletics
Justin Jackson - Home in Carolina - Rams Club
I first met Roy Williams when I was 14. Well, I shouldn't really say I met him — all we did was shake hands and pose for a picture together at a Tar Heels basketball camp. To me at 14, Coach Williams was this larger-than-life guy to me. I only knew him from TV. And I had this one specific image of him — wearing his blue blazer during the 2009 Final Four, looking so serious and pacing the sidelines. The man was all business. So professional. I was a 10-year-old going crazy in front of the TV at home.
I remember rooting for that team — Ty Lawson, Danny Green, Tyler Zeller and everybody else — and when the Tar Heels won the national championship, it was glorious.
So to be 14 and playing on the same court that those guys had played on — and to see Roy Williams in real life — was pretty surreal. During the camp, I naively believed that Coach Williams would notice me out of the crowd of hundreds of kids. Maybe he'd pull me aside to chat one day, or single me out in a drill for having made a nice play. (I'm sure I wasn't the only camper who thought that.) But that's not how it went down for me.
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Justin Jackson's "Home in Carolina" appears at theplayerstribune.com