Note from Scott: The following story won first place for 2005 in the sports feature writing category of the North Carolina Press Association. Copyright 2005 The Charlotte Observer All Rights Reserved Charlotte Observer (North Carolina) Date first appeared: February 15, 2005 LIFE ON THE REBOUND; MONTREAT STAR EMBRACES 2ND CHANCE AFTER 2 YEARS IN PRISON By Scott Fowler DATELINE: MONTREAT Watch Tim Lewis rebound. He goes up strongly, grabs the ball with both hands and comes down, elbows out, like a man guarding a treasure. Lewis loves to rebound - always has. Lewis attends Montreat College, an NAIA school 115 miles west of Charlotte. The town of Montreat is a small mountain community near Asheville which is home not only to the college, but also to evangelist Billy Graham. Lewis is a 23-year-old sophomore. He's not one of those traditional students who went straight from high school to college. In fact, Lewis' journey from Greenville, N.C., to basketball star at Montreat represents as fine a rebound as anyone in college basketball has made this season. That's because Lewis went to jail at age 17 and served 21/2 years in prison for armed robbery before coming to Montreat. Then he decided to change his life. Then he was discovered in a church basketball league. Only then did he become the player, teammate and friend praised by everyone in Montreat - the 6-foot-5 center with the 3.61 grade-point average. "You'd be amazed," Lewis says, "how many people will help you if they can see that you're trying." Says Montreat coach and athletics director Bill Robinson: "The thing I love about Tim is he knows he's been given a second chance in life, and he's determined not to mess it up. I've never heard anybody say two bad words about him." In October, North Carolina basketball star Rashad McCants made the unfortunate analogy that playing for the Tar Heels was like being in jail. McCants, of course, had no idea what he was talking about. Lewis does. He has lived in both those worlds, and he's here to tell you he prefers this one. Lewis holds no false hope of making a leap to the NBA from Montreat's ancient gym, which seats 400 and has a halftime show that consists of the fans' little kids running on the hardwood in aimless circles. Lewis just wants to use his college scholarship to obtain his degree and then to work in a sports ministry. Do you doubt Lewis? If so, that's understandable. He realizes he has to earn your trust, just like he had to earn the trust of everyone else. He only asks that you don't dismiss him outright. Hear his story first. Gambling, drinking, stealing Tim Lewis was born Nov. 2, 1981, in Greenville, N.C. His father stayed with his mother, Bonnie Speight, during his birth, then came to visit him again in the hospital two days later. That was the last time Bonnie saw Tim's father. "I got a letter from him a week later," Speight says. "He said he wouldn't be seeing us again." And he hasn't. "We don't know where he is, and he's never given Tim a dime of child support," Speight says. Tim was raised mostly by his mother, his grandmother and his three older sisters in a poor part of town. He was a smart kid. He went to church regularly. But still, by the time he became a teenager, things started to deteriorate. His mother couldn't do anything with him. "Tim came from a very moral family, but I believe he had a detachment that happens so often when there's no father in the home," says George Logan, who has served as Lewis' pastor and mentor since 1999. "He sought affirmation from his peers instead - peers that were doing the wrong thing. There was nobody in his life to stick a finger straight into his chest and say, 'You are not going to do that!' " In middle school, Lewis smoked his first cigarette. "After awhile, that wasn't enough, so I started drinking beer," Lewis says. "Then I went to hard liquor. Then to marijuana. Nothing was ever enough." Lewis started to gamble, mostly on cards. He would steal money from his mother's purse and gamble it away in an illegal card game in Greenville. School didn't matter. Sports didn't matter. Lewis tried two high schools, but by the time he was in 10th grade, he dropped out. "I got around some guys and we would all look at TV and see the so-called dream life in videos," Lewis says. "We wanted the girls, and the cars, and the money, and the attention." Lewis worked at a couple of fast-food restaurants, but it was too long between paychecks. Plus, once he got paid, he'd often gamble it away. He wanted more money. Fast. He tried to deal drugs for awhile, but even that didn't seem fast enough. Why not just take what he wanted? Why not armed robbery? Lewis and his friends would break into people's houses, looking for cash. They weren't very good at it. Quickly, Lewis was caught and put on probation. Then he did it again. This time, the police caught one of his friends, who implicated Lewis in the robbery. Although only 17 when he was arrested, Lewis was close enough to being an adult that he was told he could serve 14 years in prison. In October 1999, Lewis went to court and took a plea bargain instead - 21/2 years in prison. His mother was in the courtroom. "His head dropped when the judge told him he was going to jail," Bonnie Speight says. "He just cried and cried. They don't usually let parents hug their children in court, they told me, but I went up there and put my arms around him and hugged him. That's the day I lost my baby. I lost him for nearly three years." She had lost more than that. The month before Lewis went to jail, Hurricane Floyd ravaged eastern North Carolina, destroying 6,000 homes, displacing tens of thousands of people and killing at least 51. The Lewis' house trailer was destroyed in the accompanying floods. "My mom had no place to stay, and here I go getting locked up," Lewis says. Finding freedom Since he was only 17, Lewis was driven five hours west to the Western Youth Institution in Morganton - a prison that houses male prisoners ages 13-22. His mother had no idea where Morganton was, and Lewis didn't know much more than she did. But he adapted quickly to prison life. There was structure - something that had been missing for him and that he turned out to like. He began studying for his General Educational Development (GED) test. He stayed away from the prison gangs and the fighting. He went regularly to Bible study, where he met Logan. Most importantly, he says, he renewed his faith in God. "In a place of bondage," Lewis says, "I really found my freedom." Lewis had always loved basketball, although he didn't get a chance to play in high school because he had dropped out. He started thinking of God as his coach and life as a basketball court. That helped him make sense of things. "When I was on the court the first time, I was trying all these flashy crossover dribbles, playing just for myself, and the coach benched me," Lewis says. "God took me out of the game for a three-year timeout. So I had a chance to look at the game, check out the other players who were playing and figure out what I was doing wrong." Logan, the pastor at New Day Christian Church in Morganton, became the father figure in Lewis' life. Over two years of Bible study, they forged a relationship. Once it was allowed, Logan would check Lewis out of jail on a day pass on some Sundays. He would take Lewis first to church, then to the pastor's home. They would eat with Logan's wife and children, and then Logan would take Lewis back to jail. "He took the time to really get involved in my life," Lewis says of his pastor, "and to sow seeds that are now bearing fruit." Lewis earned his GED in jail. To the delight of his mother, he sang a solo at the end of the ceremony, at the prison auditorium. On March 25, 2002, Lewis was released. "It was Christmas in March," he says. For two weeks, Lewis went back home to his family to Greenville. He hadn't seen his two younger brothers for two years. But he worried that he would fall into some of the same habits, and so he returned to Morganton. Logan, who had a passion for prison ministry, had set up a halfway house there for Lewis and one other former prisoner as they tried to make the transition back into the real world. "No one was telling me what to do," Lewis says. "I was free. That was great, but it was also hard to adjust to." Too hard for the other ex-con in the house. Lewis' housemate got arrested again and is back in jail. 'Hard not to like him' Lewis got a job as a custodian and enrolled at a local community college. With a chance to smoke, drink and gamble again, he decided against all three. He started playing church basketball on Logan's team. "Our rebounding problems were immediately solved," Logan smiles. One of the members at Logan's church was also the soccer coach at Montreat, about 45 minutes away. He told Robinson there was this 6-foot-5, 220-pound kid in a local church league he should check out. "I've heard that one a few times before," Robinson says. Robinson took a look, anyway, and realized right away that Lewis could fit in athletically at Montreat. But what about letting a convicted felon on his team? "There was some concern before I met him," Robinson says, "but not after I did. Once you get to know Tim, it's hard not to like him." So Lewis enrolled at Montreat. On a team that is 14-5 in the Appalachian Athletic Conference and has a strong chance to make the NAIA national tournament, Lewis starts at center, averaging 17 points and nine rebounds per game. In Montreat's 12-team conference, Lewis ranks in the overall top 10 in points, free-throw percentage and, of course, rebounds. He also went to South Africa last summer for two weeks to play basketball and spread God's word as part of the Athletes in Action sports ministry group. Says Ben Griffin, a Charlottean who went to North Mecklenburg High and is now Montreat's starting point guard and co-captain: "As a person, Tim is awesome. He's a great Christian leader. He's always trying to strengthen your faith, on and off the court. He's talked to us about second chances and what a great gift it is for him to be at Montreat." In basketball, and in life, Lewis has rebounded. With his elbows out, he holds his freedom in his hands, determined not to lose it again.