UNC basketball hired a director of community engagement last summer.

UNC basketball hired a director of community engagement last summer.

When 7-year-old Ayden Woodford first told his mom he was tight with the UNC basketball team, she didn’t believe him. It sounds, after all, like a figment of a child’s imagination. Just like the made-up games Ayden runs around playing with his fellow classmates at Chapel Hill’s Hargraves Community Center. Except the Tar Heels, who will begin their NCAA Tournament campaign on Thursday night against VCU in Greenville, S.C., do know Ayden. One piece of evidence, in Ayden’s defense: at a meet-and-greet earlier this year at a local Verizon store, UNC guard Seth Trimble spotted him in the crowd, called out to him by name and asked how he was doing.

“He’s like, ‘Mom, don’t you know I’m famous? You know these are my friends,’” his mother, Yushekia Woodford, told the N&O. “And I’m like, sure they are.’”

But Ayden’s right. He knows Trimble and plenty of the other Tar Heels, too, from the time the team has spent in the community this season — specifically at Hargraves and the Chapel Hill Boys & Girls Club. “He looks up to them like mentors,” Yushekia Woodford said. That’s all Hubert Davis and his wife, Leslie, could have hoped for when they created the men’s basketball program’s first-ever director of community engagement role this past offseason. The position, filled by former student manager Ragan Copeland, was designed to bring more structure and intentionality to the team’s community service, ensuring players could give back in meaningful ways rather than one-off appearances or only through NIL engagements.

“It’s very important to us,” Hubert Davis said during a February radio show. “One of the things that I tell the guys all the time is that you’ve been put on this platform not just for you.” “You’re not just here just to play basketball,” he later added. “You’re here to serve and help other people.” Life outside the comfort zone Elijah Davis grew up hearing stories about his dad’s visits to Central Prison. Dean Smith’s UNC teams regularly stepped outside the basketball bubble to engage with the community. During Hubert Davis’ days as a Tar Heel, that included annual visits to Raleigh’s maximum-security institution — trips that helped shape Davis’ perspective on community service to this day.