LITTLE ROCK — Bill Ingram and Mike Conley Sr. started the Arkansas Hawks organization in 1998 to help young athletes on and off the court.
Many of those former athletes are doing the same and by giving back to organization that helped them. Six former Hawks, including four current and former Razorbacks, recently spoke to the team.
On Saturday, Arkansas junior guard Daryl Macon and Mississippi State senior guard I.J. Ready attended the 16-under Hawks practice in Little Rock and offered up advice to the team they played on a few years ago.
“Three weeks ago, Carl Baker was here working the camp with the kids all day,” said Ingram, who's the executive director of the Real Deal in the Rock basketball tournament. “Last week, Ronnie Brewer Jr. got a chance to talk to them and work out with them for about an hour.”
“Now you have Daryl around them. It was Daryl and Trey [Thompson] last week and now Daryl and I.J.. That tells me about our organization.”
Another former Hawk, Ole Miss point guard Jason Harrison, was at Saturday’s morning practice.
Conley left the Hawks in 2001 and eventually became a sports agent in 2007. He recently helped his son, Mike Conley Jr. of the Memphis Grizzlies, secure the richest contract in NBA history with a 5 year and $153 million deal.
The Hawks have one of their better teams in recent years led by two Arkansas targets, junior forward Ethan Henderson, 6-8, 190 of Little Rock Parkview, and junior forward Reggie Perry, 6-9, 225 of Thomasville, Ga.
When Thompson spoke to the Hawks, he stayed away from life on the hardwood.
“It had nothing to do with basketball,” Ingram said. “It was all about academics and the things they needed to be doing to prepare themselves academically. He was telling them he’s probably going to be graduating next year. Going to graduate in three and half years, then going into last semester and he’ll start working on his master's.”
Ingram is proud to see former players come back.
“That tells me something abut our program when your former players come back,” Ingram said. “I don’t tell them. They just show up. I’ve alway given them an open-invitation, open-door policy for them to come, and they just show up.”
“We have guys that want to come back and talk to the kids and talk about their life experiences and basketball; it’s always fun to see them because it takes you back to when they were with you.”
Ingram is known to be hard-nosed and demanding of his players but admits to being a softy when he sees players come back.
“It kind of makes you get a little emotional, but I love every minute of it,” Ingram said.