Williams puts academics first at SCAN. (Denis Gostev)
Team SCAN had just come off a memorable season, full of tournament titles, scholarship offers and national rankings for its three teams. Yet it took Terrance (Munch) Williams, the rapidly-rising AAU program’s director, 30 minutes before the subject of basketball was even broached.
Williams spoke of all the program does off the court, the demands it places on its players, the responsibilities forced upon them, before even talking about his teams accomplishments, from the 16U and 15U clubs winning the Fab 48 titles in Las Vegas to the 14’s finishing third at AAU Nationals, and so much more.
“The on-the-court stuff is a smokescreen,” Williams said. “It’s about making young boys into young men.”
To Williams, and SCAN NY executive director Lew Zuchman, basketball is secondary at SCAN, and always will be. SCAN, of course, is just a part of SCAN NY, a three-decade-old inner-city youth organization based in The Bronx and Harlem that services 5,000 children from across the city and emphasizes academics and community service.
Frustrated with the current state of the program four years ago, which included a stint as Team Roc of Roc-A-Fella Records, and the basketball-or-bust mindset locals kid had developed, Williams and Zuchman agreed to make changes off the court for SCAN, which stands for Supportive Children’s Advocacy Network.
Players couldn’t fail a single class, had to take SAT prep classes and undergo tutoring sessions in addition to contribute twice a year to SCAN’s community service projects and be involved in the mentor program. All of it does at Team SCAN’s home base, the Mullaly Recreation Center, a stone’s throw from Yankee Stadium.
At the time, many of the older kids left; a group of 12-year-olds, which included Cardinal Hayes guard Shavar Newkirk, Archbishop Stepinac’s Naim Thomas and The Brooks School’s Francisco Zeno, stayed. It was the start of SCAN’s success.
Players have bled into the program over the years and all have adopted the strict guidelines Williams and Zuchman live by. When national prospect Chris McCullough came to SCAN two years ago and was told of his off-the-court responsibilities, he told Williams: “I just want to play basketball.”
Williams, 33, laughed. He then went over their importance. McCullough is glad he stuck it out.
“It made me a better person,” he said.
Williams grew up in the program, attended local PSAL school Taft before leaving the city for The Holderness School in New Hampshire, the kind of elite prep school many of his players attend. The Wesleyan graduate hasn’t had much trouble getting kids to buy in. His explanation is simple. His entire programs is thriving, drawing new kids to the burgeoning Bronx AAU powerhouse, and the ones who don’t follow the rules don’t fit in, rare as that may be.
“We tell our kids basketball is going to use you or you’re going to use basketball,” Zuchman said.
Frances Figueroa, Zeno’s mother, applauded the measures at the time, describing it as “refreshing.” Williams, though, doesn’t stop there — he keeps personal progress reports of all his players, visiting with their teachers during the school year.
“He knows day to day what’s going on with my son, which is something I’ve never encountered in any other program,” Figueroa said.
After all, at a time when many feel New York City basketball is in an endless down cycle, SCAN is an anomaly. Its 16’s finished atop FiveStarBasketball.com’s national rankings and the 15’s and 14’s both ended the year at No. 2.
“It’s definitely going to change what people say about New York City,” McCullough said.
The 16’s and 15’s are built in similar fashion, with a series of Division I talents surrounding a top prospect — for the 16’s it’s McCullough, a 6-foot-9 wing with a boatload of high-major offers with Newkirk and Chester’s Conrad Chambers as his wingmen ; the 15’s it’s Bishop Kearney’s Thomas Bryant supported by Long Island Lutheran’s Chris Atkinson and The Rectory School’s Chance Ellis.
“It’s clear they have a great foundation,” Scout.com national recruiting analyst Evan Daniels said.
Zuchman takes particular pride in how Williams and his players handle themselves on the court. He has never seen Williams curse or berate a player — he prefers to do his coaching before and after games.
The off-the-court demands, Williams feels, translate into on-court success. For one, his teams have full rosters — SCAN’s players don’t need summer school. Chemistry can be an overused work, but SCAN truly believes in it.
Unlike other programs, SCAN doesn’t import new players on the fly. Williams feels it negatively impacts the program’s current players and prides himself on his teams’ chemistry. See, SCAN’s players don’t just get together once the high school season ends and they have been together for years.
During the high school season, they often come back to Mullaly Recreation Center for workouts. When July is over, they work SCAN NY’s summer camp as paid counselors.
“These kids are around each other the equivalent of an NBA team,” Williams said. “It correlates to how we play on the court.”
Schools have noticed, one high-major assistant familiar with SCAN said. Last year, the coach remembered just a few of his competitors attending the team’s games; this July they had a traveling congregation of schools following them.
“The teams I saw this summer,” the coach said, “reminded me of the Gauchos or Riverside [Church] where they had four, five, six Division I guys.”
Williams and Zuchman talk a ton about those programs, of being what they were on the basketball court, but separating itself from them off the court. The founders of both of those programs, Riverside’s Ernie Lorch and Lou d’Almeida of the Gauchos, were dogged by sexual abuse allegations.
“We don’t want the scandals,” Williams said.
Riverside and the Gauchos were also sponsored by sneaker companies; Scan has yet to do so, either, one of the few nationally ranked programs that aren’t sponsored. To fund the various trips, SCAN relies on grants, donations and fundraisers.
Williams would hardly say SCAN has accomplished anything yet. He looks at success as getting his players into college and not by mythical AAU titles or tournament crowns. He envisions his entire 16’s team going to college, some on scholarships, others on the Division II or Division III level. Williams’ mission is for that to become tradition, as much as winning games.
“I want to be the No. 1 non-for-profit agency in the country and the No. 1 AAU program in the country at the same time,” Williams said proudly and without hesitation. “As [Jay-Z] said, we want the best of both worlds.”