A man forged by FUMA

Shammond Williams supplied Fork Union Military Academy with the best promotional material that the school could ever wish for during his acceptance speech into its Sports Hall of Fame on Thursday night.

FUMA could have hired a Hollywood producer and script writer to come in, paid Cuba Gooding Jr. the big bucks to portray a former athlete and still couldn’t have approached the gift that Williams gave his alma mater. Talk about a convincing commercial for parents to send their kids to Fork Union.

Williams, a 1994 graduate who went on to star for North Carolina and play in the NBA for nine seasons, was part of a stellar class inducted into the FUMA Hall, including former Heisman Trophy winner and NFL star quarterback Vinny Testaverde, former NFL star lineman Roman Oben and former Fork Union football coach and commandant Col. R.L. “Red” Pulliam.

While all had special stories to tell, Williams stole the show with an emotional and uplifting life story straight from his heart.

Coming from nowhere

Fork Union basketball coach Fletcher Arritt still calls Williams’ recruiting story the most unbelievable he’s ever witnessed in more than four decades. An unknown kid from Greenville, S.C., that nobody ever heard of and nobody wanted, was discovered by recruiting coordinator Dan Petersen, who convinced Arritt to take on a scrawny kid for a postgrad season.

Eight months later, Dean Smith and 40 other well-known college coaches were sitting in the Fork Union gym watching Williams play. Smith rushed across court to Arritt to borrow the coach’s office so he could offer Williams a scholarship, just beating then-Kentucky coach Rick Pitino to the punch.

“A lot of you remember me as a 180-pound kid who came here with nothing ... nothing,” Williams said as he choked up and paused to collect his emotions. “All the commandants and coaches, all you guys have changed so many lives and thank you for changing mine. The most important thing you gave me was incentive to go on.

“This place changed my life and gave me an opportunity to change my family’s life,” Williams said.

Taking a chance

He described himself as the class clown back at Southside High in Greenville. On what the school called “hat day,” Williams remembered jumping up on a cafeteria table at lunchtime, dancing and cutting up. He wore two caps, one pointed to the left, one to the right.

After drawing the attention of most of his classmates, he noticed they all began to focus on something behind him. It was Petersen, who helped bring a lot of talent to FUMA over a quarter century.

Petersen was there to give Williams a look.

Upon his return to Fork Union, he twisted Arritt’s arm to give the kid a chance, perhaps leaving out the cafeteria routine. Eventually Arritt gave him a chance but still wasn’t convinced that Williams could play.

However as the season progressed, so did Williams’ game and Petersen’s quest to get college coaches to give him a glimpse. All were amazed the night that the legendary Smith and all the other coaches jammed into FUMA’s tiny gym to see what all the fuss was about.

Williams, who has been a spiritual kid since his arrival at Fork Union, left his mark on the Academy both on and off the court. He won the Thomas Post-Grad Athlete Award, the Frank A. Crockett Captain’s Award, and the Best Drilled Cadet competition.

At Carolina, he went on to set records that still stand in the storied program: most 3-point field goals in a season (95); most 3-pointers in a career (233); highest free throw percentage in a season (91.1); highest free throw percentage in a career (84.9).

Williams helped lead the Tar Heels to the Final Four in three of his four seasons there before being drafted by the Chicago Bulls in 1998. He played for eight NBA teams and is currently playing in Europe.

Perhaps the most bizarre and most defining moment of his career came at Virginia’s University Hall his senior year. Without Arritt, the man who had shown the ultimate faith in him during a short stint at Fork Union, Williams wonders to this day what might have happened to his life that night.

Williams was coming off the best game of his career, a 42-point performance against Georgia Tech and the Tar Heels were coming to Charlottesville, the last time he would face the Cavaliers.

“I called up Coach Arritt, and said, ‘Coach, we’re coming to play Virginia on Tuesday ... are you going to come to my game?’” Williams remembered.

Arritt told him he didn’t know, that he didn”t come to many games anymore.

Despite Williams’ pleading, he couldn”t get a confirmation from Arritt about showing up.

“Some uncharacteristic things happened between myself and my (college) coach (Bill Guthridge) that night,” Williams said, clearly still disturbed by his actions that night.

This columnist covered that game and remembered the bizarre meltdown by Williams, truly uncharacteristic of his behavior. It was the year (1997-98) that Guthridge essentially had “six starters,” and oddly determined his lineup by alphabetical order.

Williams was the player most adversely affected by the unusual strategy and the game at Virginia was the boiling-over point. He played only four minutes that night and wasn’t playing well.

“I walked off the court, stormed off it,” Williams said. “I had never been that upset. I was furious.”

He also got into a heated argument with Guthridge — at least, Williams’ part was heated.

“I was at the point that my actions could have cost me my reputation,” Williams recalled, remembering he walked out of the arena and into the locker room.

“As I sat against the wall, crying and hyperventilating, out of nowhere a hand touched my shoulder,” he said. “It was Coach Arritt. Once he put his hand on my shoulder, I knew everything was going to be all right.”

Williams stopped his story and peered over to Arritt as the Fork Union audience sat in silence.

“Coach, if you had not done that, there’s no telling where I would be right now,” Williams said.

Everyone clearly understood at that moment what Fork Union meant to Shammond Williams. Everyone understood what Williams meant when he said that what he accomplished as an athlete wasn’t as important as what he has accomplished as a man.

“All of this is because of Fork Union Military Academy,” he said. “Thank you.”

No one could have said it any better.