How a former Florida basketball standout inspired the late Jimy Williams
Former Boston Red Sox manager and baseball lifer Jimy Williams died this week at 80.
Williams also managed the Toronto Blue Jays and Houston Astros. But it was during Williams' time as a skipper with the Red Sox in the late 1990s when a high school basketball star from the Fort Myers area caught his attention.
Teddy Dupay was in the process of setting a state high school scoring record at Mariner High in Cape Coral before becoming a part of Billy Donovan's first big-time Florida basketball recruiting class in 1998. The Red Sox have held their spring training home in Fort Myers since 1993. Williams often attended Dupay's games and gained an affinity for the 5-foot-10 point guard who would go on to help lead the Florida Gators to their second Final Four in school history in 2000.
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“He would come to almost all the games he would stay after and talk and say hi, sit with my dad," Dupay said.
Williams was so enamored with Dupay that he invited him, and another former Mariner High turned Gator football standout, Earnest Graham, to throw out the first pitch at a Red Sox spring training game and speak to the team.
In the clubhouse, Dupay met then Red Sox ace and future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez. Star Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and catcher Jason Varitek, both former Georgia Tech baseball players, tried to convince Dupay to de-commit from Florida and sign with the Yellow Jackets.
"I was postured up in a way where they really wanted to hear what I had to say," Dupay said. "Pedro Martinez and Nomar Garciaparra and Jimy Williams, they really were interested in the way I approached sports and the way I went about my business preparation. They thought they could learn something from me."
Teddy Dupay still Florida's all-time leading high school scorer
Dupay's state high school scoring record of 3,744 points still stands (he averaged 41.5 points per game as a senior). After a three-year career at UF and stints playing basketball in the minor leagues and overseas Dupay returned to the Tampa area in 2013, where started the Teddy Dupay Basketball Academy, a grassroots organization focused on developing youth basketball players. In its 10th year, the academy has helped send players to prep schools and colleges throughout the country.
"In the back of my mind this is always what I wanted to do," Dupay said. "Even when I think of when you were a kid, and you visualize what you want, especially out of sports I imagined an amazing last year, winning a national championship, getting drafted high, having a great career, being marketable, making all this money ... just had my priorities out of whack but I knew what I wanted and I got here eventually and it’s just exactly the way it’s supposed to be.”
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Florida Gators basketball standout Teddy Dupay connected with Jimy Williams
