‘It was time’

‘It was time’ Marvin Williams showed his usual unique perspective when explaining his NBA retirement

BY ADAM LUCAS // PHOTO BY MARVIN WILLIAMS

Even as a college freshman, Marvin Williams always possessed a uniquely mature viewpoint on life. So it’s no surprise that as he chose to end his 15-year professional basketball career this summer, he had a perfect explanation for why the time was right for retirement.

“It’s more about off the court for me than on the court,” he said. “My personal life is so different now. I have two young daughters, one of whom is five years old and has a hard time when it’s time for me to go on the road. She doesn’t understand if I’m going to be gone for two nights or two weeks. That hurts me to leave my family like that. At this point in my life, actual living is more important to me than playing basketball. It was time.”

That’s exactly the perspective you’d expect from a player who left Carolina after his freshman season— having never started a game, but as a national champion who was picked second overall in the NBA Draft—and then returned to Chapel Hill every summer for a decade to work towards his degree. He remains the only one and done college basketball player to earn his degree, and he also earned over $120 million during his professional career.

Williams is beloved by the Tar Heel coaching staff and Carolina basketball alumni. His commitment to Carolina is tangible—the weight room at the Smith Center is named in his honor. So it’s not implausible to imagine him making his way back to Chapel Hill at some point during his retirement.

For now, though, he has other ideas.

“I know I want to stay around the NBA game,” Williams said. “I don’t want to coach or be in the front office. That’s too much stress. I want to find something a little less stressful. I would love to stay around basketball and teach kids about basketball. If I could do something that involved traveling and teaching kids the game, that would be awesome.”

PREPARATION PAYS OFF

BY PAT JAMES // PHOTOS BY JEFFREY CAMARATI & BORN AND BRED STAFF // GRAPHICS BY SOUTHWOOD

Handling the pandemic required cooperation from a host of athletic department staff

In working with organizations such as the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, the Atlanta Paralympic Organizing Committee and the Special Olympic World Games in the 1990s, Jaci Field was first exposed to the world of emergency planning.

It wasn’t until years after she joined the Smith Center staff in 1999, though, that the emergency management community really started growing.

UNC specifically joined the movement in 2003, when the Gillings School of Global Public Health launched its certificate program in community preparedness and disaster management. The school then doubled down on that program in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, establishing a graduate program in disaster management in 2007.

Observing all this, Field decided to enroll in the graduate program, from which she earned her certificate in 2008, so she could further contribute to the Carolina community. For much of the last 12 years, though, she wished she wouldn’t ever have to use the skills she acquired.

“Every emergency manager hopes that they’re semi-bored and just in planning phase all of their career,” said Field, now a member of UNC’s athletic facilities and planning staff and the director of Eddie Smith Field House. “But it’s good to be prepared when you need it because you know it’s going to happen.”

Finally, in March, it did.

As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic brought the sports world to an abrupt halt on March 12, college athletic departments started brainstorming how they could safely bring studentathletes, coaches, staff and fans back to campus. At UNC, Field found herself at the center of such talks. But she was far from alone.

As the athletics department’s emergency response officer, John Brunner – the associate athletic director for event management – performs emergency response tasks when an incident, namely a natural disaster, occurs. His early conversations regarding the virus, he said, focused on how the department could help the University by disinfecting surfaces and installing safety signage and physical distance markers. Those talks escalated once sports were shut down.

“We were preparing for a triage unit in one of our athletic facilities given what was happening overseas,” Brunner said. “Is our health care system going to be overrun? And then we worked on supporting the hospital. We did a bunch of donations of food and snacks for hospital workers.

“We also put in time to invest in our emergency response system. FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) offers a free professional development series course, so our staff all did that. A lot of the stuff was very relatable to emergency responses, whether it’s a long- or short-term response.”

Because many infectious disease experts at first believed the virus could be gone by the fall, Dr. Mario Ciocca – UNC’s director of sports medicine – said his staff initially focused

on how they could continue to support the student-athletes while they were away from campus.

Once it became apparent, however, that the virus would be sticking around, Ciocca turned to his peers at other ACC institutions to figure out how they were attempting to keep everyone safe.

“We definitely sort of fell upon each other where we started doing weekly conference calls – and we’re still doing them,” said Ciocca, who represents UNC on the ACC’s COVID-19 Medical Advisory Group, which formed in May to share information related to the impact of COVID-19 on college campuses and the return of college sports.

“It was like, ‘Let’s get together weekly.’ And now we’re doing it every two weeks. But let’s go over and answer each other’s questions because we all have the same questions and are trying to figure out the best way to do things. So there was a lot of collaboration among the ACC docs, and that continues to happen.”

Brunner and Field also participated in several calls with their colleagues at other institutions, highlighted by a weekly call that Bubba Cunningham organized with other schools in the UNC system. Later came talks with personnel from professional leagues – including the UFC and the Bundesliga, two of the first leagues to return to action amid the pandemic.

“We got plans from the NBA and the NFL and several teams within each of those leagues and the NFL, and we read all of their plans and we really modeled a lot of our planning after what they were doing,” Field said. “I think the professional sports have been just as great a resource as everyone else since we kind of move about facilities the same way.”

Of course, not everything professional leagues did was applicable. For example, the idea of creating a bubble as tight as the one the NBA formed at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, was initially out of the question considering student-athletes had to attend classes and would inevitably interact with the rest of the student body. However, ever since UNC moved classes online for the fall semester, Ciocca said that’s been easier to simulate.

Despite all the planning Brunner, Ciocca, Field and so many others did, they all understood that their efforts would go to waste if people didn’t comply with the protocols they helped establish. They also knew a scenario could easily arise where someone could test positive for the virus despite following the guidelines. That came to fruition when UNC shut down voluntary football workouts in July after 37 members of the athletic department – players, coaches and staff – tested positive for the virus.

“I think it was something where you can talk all you want, but until you experience it, you’re not going to realize it,”

Ciocca said. “I think it was sort of a good reality in terms of, ‘Look, this can spread pretty quickly. Sometimes you do all the right things and you still get sick.’

“This age group of ours is usually real mild or asymptomatic, but it can be more serious and it can lead to causing other problems. And I think as you start to see some cases, then it starts to sink in for that age group, like, ‘Oh, yeah, this can affect us. We are starting to see some cases and maybe we need to take this a little more seriously.’ I think you start to see more buy-in of masking and doing the things they need to do to take care of themselves.”

That buy-in hasn’t applied to just those within athletics. It’s also extended to other members of the University community, none more important than the local public health officials who helped support the return of sports every step of the way, said Brunner.

“It’s been a really wonderful team,” he said, “and as we’ve had these calls and these visits and Zoom meetings over the last six months, it’s never been, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It’s, ‘We

need to do this right. We are the University of North Carolina. We are the flagship.’ After months of preparation, UNC finally held its first athletic event since March on Sept. 12, when the football team hosted Syracuse at Kenan Stadium. Five days later, the women’s soccer team welcomed Wake Forest to Dorrance Field. In many ways, Field said, both events were surreal. They were also a welcome respite. “I’m so excited for us as a department to get to do the thing we do,” Field said, “that we have plans in place that will allow us to further our mission in making sure everybody continues to be able to represent the University through athletics. And I think having those plans and having the ability to operationalize those plans, that’s an exciting piece. And whether it means we can do it with fans or not, if we can do it safely for as long as we have these situations, then that’s success. I’m excited to see the end of this, but it just means “EVERY EMERGENCY MANAGER HOPES THAT THEY’RE SEMI-BORED AND JUST IN PLANNING PHASE ALL OF THEIR CAREER, BUT IT’S GOOD TO BE PREPARED WHEN YOU NEED IT BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN.” “ patience, that’s all.”

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‘Forever grateful’

II can remember the day my senior season was cancelled like it was yesterday. Our team was on spring break, we were all in the pool, and as the day went on different conferences and leagues were cancelling sports across the board. By dinner time my senior season had been cancelled and my teammates and I, especially my two co-seniors, were absolutely devastated.

We were struggling to wrap our heads around the fact that our college tennis careers were supposed to end in May, so to have it taken from us out of nowhere was one of the most heartbreaking things I had ever experienced. Carolina was my home and the women’s tennis team meant everything to me. We began to have hope shortly after our season was cancelled when the NCAA put out a tweet that stated athletes who lost their season would most likely be getting an extra year of eligibility. Now we had to wonder: will the ACC allow it and will UNC allow it? After a few months of not being sure, I got a call from coach Brian Kalbas saying that the Rams Club has found the money, and I would be able to return for an extra year on scholarship. No one knew at the time, but the Rams Club received an anonymous donation by none other than Roy and Wanda Williams. When I found out, I was extremely grateful, but not surprised. Coach and Mrs. Williams are the epitome of what it means to be a Tar Heel. From my freshman year, Coach Williams has attended every possible match he could after basketball season was completed. I remember when we returned home my sophomore year from winning National Indoors and Coach Kalbas had a voicemail on his phone from Coach Williams congratulating us. Whenever I see Coach Williams on campus he doesn’t hesitate to say hi and wave. Coach and Wanda are a part of what makes the Tar Heel family so special, and I know I am speaking for all returning seniors when I say that we are forever grateful for this opportunity they have given us. Getting to spend another year training and competing alongside my team is a dream come true. We are so excited to get another chance at the season and hopefully finish

what we started. Few things have given me more pride then being a Tar Heel and it’s not because of how great our athletic teams perform, or our highly regarded academics. It’s because being a Tar Heel means being a part of the Carolina Family, and that is one of the greatest feelings in the world. “ “Whenever I see Coach Williams on campus he doesn’t hesitate to say hi and wave. Coach and Wanda are a part of what makes the Tar Heel family so special, and I know I am speaking for all returning seniors when I say that we are forever grateful for this opportunity they have given us.”

ALEXA GRAHAM

Women’s Tennis Illustration by Jason McCorkle