Six winters ago, Brandon Roy was ineligible and insecure, cleaning out containers in a shipyard.
Last night Brandon Roy became the second player in the 107-season history of basketball at Washington to have his jersey retired.
"I really can't put this into words," Roy said.
The kids were waiting for prime courtside seats to see Roy's UW jersey No. 3 hung in the arena's rafters. Roy chose the number at Washington to honor his older brother, who wore it as a high school star before troubles derailed his chance at college.
"One of two players in 100 years of basketball? That's amazing," Roy said.
Roy failed to get qualifying college entrance scores out of Seattle's Garfield High School in 2002. His scores improved so dramatically when he took the SAT a second time the disbelieving NCAA's clearinghouse rejected them as invalid. So he took it again -- and his scores were lost. Then they were found.
The NCAA cleared him for eligibility. UW did not, initially.
Months of what should have been his freshman year passed, darkly. The Huskies' season began and Roy was a confused teen, shut out of college and the arena in which he is now immortalized. He needed a purpose, a job.
So Roy scrubbed industrial spills out of the insides of shipping containers in the rugged, cold shipyards in downtown Seattle.
"The doubt definitely crept in my freshman year," Roy said, chuckling. "I thought, 'Man, I'll never have that chance to prove myself."
His family kept encouraging him, saying everyone's story is different "and this one is yours." Each day, his co-workers at the shipyard made sure Roy didn't see the docks as a dead end.
"That taught me a lot, sitting with those guys. They would say, 'When you get a chance to go to college, make the most of it,'" Roy said.
Romar remembers as if it was yesterday the January day in 2003 when he told Roy that Washington had declared him eligible. They hugged and held on for what Roy said had to be five minutes.
"That was probably the most special day of my life," Roy said.
He refused to redshirt because he was so eager to play. But for the next couple seasons, he quietly sat back and let teammate Nate Robinson, now with the New York Knicks, get the accolades as Washington soared into the nation's elite.
Washington needed Roy to rebound, so he led the Huskies in that.
Then Roy missed much of his junior season with a knee injury. He returned mainly as a sixth man, content to ease his way back in, to not disrupt the chemistry of a team that was on its way to another NCAA tournament.
He took over in his senior season, averaging 20.2 points and scoring the fourth-most points in a UW season. He passed. He rebounded. He shut down opponents' best scorers. The Huskies went 26-7 and reached another regional semifinal of the NCAA tournament.
"Brandon Roy separates himself from any era. You can't match what he did. Brandon's in a class by himself," he said.
