The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
King James’ court
It’s been 10 years since the NBA superstar announced he was taking his ‘talents to South Beach’ at Boys & Girls Club
Camryn Ferrara has spent most of his life at the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich.
Ferrara began going to the Club when he was 6 years old and is still there today, working as the athletic coordinator.
In all that time, there is one day that is seared into Ferrara’s memory more than any other.
The night he walked LeBron James into the club.
Ferrara, who was a senior in high school and captain of the Greenwich football team, had just been selected as the 2010 Boys & Girls Club Youth of the Year, the highest honor given to kids in the program, and was asked to be at the club the day of James’ arrival.
“I was sitting on the bleachers and someone came up to me with a yellow Boys & Girls Club shirt and told me to put it on because I was going to be walking LeBron into the gym,” Ferrara recalled. “Two vans pulled up, LeBron got out, we introduced ourselves and then we walked him in. It was crazy.”
Ferrara walked James in at about 8:15 p.m., along with 19-year-old Sophia Lewis, who was dressed in a red Boys & Girls Club shirt, before taking seats in the front row of the bleachers, where about 50 members of the club waited.
“I had a group of kids this morning that were hyperventilating,” Bob DeAngelo, the club’s exec
utive director said to the Greenwich Time in 2010. DeAngelo was asked if he would be interested in hosting four days prior to the event.
Ten years ago Greenwich became the King’s court, if only for a night.
On July 8, 2010, LeBron “King” James drew a massive crowd to the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich while also enticing millions of people around the world to watch on television with “The Decision.”
The eyes of the sports world were all on Greenwich that evening in July.
“The Decision” was a 75-minute, made-for-TV special. James, then in his first stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers, used the special to announce the team he would be going to via free agency.
Fans lined the streets hours prior to James’ arrival. The parking lot filled with TV news crews from around the tri-state area.
It might seem crazy now but where he would go in free agency in 2010 truly captivated a sports nation. There has been nothing like it since. James is now on his third team since “The Decision” including a return to Cleveland, where he won a title after taking home two crowns in Miami,
There would be no TV specials for his next two free-agent signings as James indicated in later interviews he regretted how “The Decision” came across.
James arrived in Greenwich that day with an entourage that included a pre-Kardashian Kanye West.
“After LeBron went into a room before the show started, I turned around and Kanye was standing there,” Ferrara said. “Kanye was so great, he stayed around after and signed autographs for all the kids at the club.”
James also arrived in Greenwich with a brandnew Twitter account which had 300,000 followers two days after he started it.
Ten years later, James has 46.6 million followers on Twitter.
Fans lining the street outside the Boys & Girls Club held up signs urging James to sign with various teams, with New York Knicks fans being the most vocal.
There were also fans of the Cavs, Nets and Heat, trying to sway James’ decision with homemade signs and random shouts at his passing caravan.
Thirty minutes into the broadcast, which started at 9 p.m., James uttered the famous words “In this fall ... this is very tough ... in this fall I’m going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat. I feel like it’s going to give me the best opportunity to win and to win for multiple years, and not only just to win in the regular season or just to win five games in a row or three games in a row, I want to be able to win championships. And I feel like I can compete down there.”
The event was made possible by Mark Dowley, a top marketing adviser to James who lived in Greenwich and was a major supporter of the club. DeAngelo told the Greenwich Time in 2010 Dowley steered the highly sought-after superstar to the youth center.
The show raised $2.5 million for the Boys & Girls Club of America.
It was an iconic moment in sports television history, and Ferrara considers himself lucky to have had a front-row seat.
“At the time, I was a senior in high school and thought it was cool, but it all happened so fast,” Ferrara said. “It is fun to think about it now and know, yeah I walked him in. Whenever someone mentions that day, I can say I was there and there are pictures that were in (the) Greenwich Time to prove it. I just wish that since we never really got to talk to LeBron that day, it would be cool to get that photo signed by him, someday.”