Lonnie Porter and Chauncey Billups sure do love to win a basketball game.
Yet what the dean of Colorado’s collegiate basketball coaches and the NBA All-Star Detroit Piston consider their greatest victory isn’t a game at all. It’s something that happens off the court, the Porter- Billups Leadership Academy conducted each summer at Regis University.
On Sept. 13, Porter and Billups scored a $225,000 win for the academy by staging a gala auction, dinner and concert by three-time Grammy nominee Gerald Albright at the Marriott City Center.
Gov. Bill Ritter and Mayor John Hickenlooper were the honorary chairmen and conveyed their personal appreciation for the extraordinary commitment Porter and Billups have for helping at-risk children in Denver Public Schools.
Ritter hailed their partnership as a great “symbol of inter-generational leadership” and said the skills taught in the PBLA, including critical thinking, teamwork, conflict resolution and money management, “will ultimately benefit all of Colorado as these young people mature and take their rightful places as leaders in our great state.”
Porter, in his 32nd season as head coach of Regis University’s men’s basketball team, started the academy in 1996. Ten years later, Billups, a Denver native who played for George Washington High School and the University of Colorado before turning pro, came onboard.
Billups has been “awesome” in his support, Porter said. “He’s in it heart and soul. His brother, Rodney, too.”
Porter’s daughter, Staci Porter-Bentley, a first-grade teacher at Florida Pitts Waller Elementary School, is the academy’s director. The 130 participants, she says, are typically “kids in the middle,” ones with the ability to succeed but whose potential has not yet been tapped or recognized. One hundred percent of the PBLA alumni have graduated from high school. Forty- one alums are enrolled in college, and two, Jarell Fleming and Taejah Young, have earned degrees from Regis.
Billups is married to the former Piper Riley of Denver, and her father, Skip, is a past chair of the Owl Club Debutante Ball.
The 540 guests at the gala included such PBLA advisory board members as Faye and Ray Billups; Charlie Monfort; Bill Fortune; Moses Brewer and his wife, Gwen; Bob Willis; Sandra Roberts; Glenn Carrington; and Dr. Herb Parris.
Other familiar faces in the crowd: Cleo Parker Robinson; one of Billups’ former coaches, Rick Callahan, and his wife, Sue; Christy Calvin; Aquilla McKnight; Jim and Kathryn Kaiser; Jan Rice-Johnson; Lisa Williams; Celeste Fleming, with daughter Anne; and Roy Alexander, executive director of the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, who announced the PBLA will be its nonprofit of the year for 2009.
Society editor Joanne Davidson: 303-809-1314 or jdavidson@ ; also,
