Ammons took charge of life early Center has had to work hard for chance to play

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Carvell Ammons still looks back at the day his life changed for good through the wistful eyes of a 12-year-old. He’s got the tape to thank for that, at least.

It wasn’t the day the University of Maine basketball standout decided to transfer from Northwestern during his freshman year of college. It wasn’t a year and a half later, when he bolted from the University of Illinois for UMaine.

No, Ammons’ independent streak began long before that. And he doesn’t try to forget the memory.

“It was the first Monday in April, when I was in seventh grade,” Ammons says. “I know because I watched Duke-Michigan, the national championship game.”

Life had been so simple for Ammons and his four brothers before then. Before his mom’s stomach started to hurt.

“My mom was my world. She was everything. We didn’t have a whole bunch, but she worked real hard to get what we had,” he says.

But then things changed.

“She just thought she was sick,” Ammons says, referring to the garden-variety kind of sick that doesn’t end up being diagnosed as colon cancer, and doesn’t take a single mother away from her growing boys.

“At the time, I was like, my mom’s sick and stuff, but I was just caring about basketball and after-school cartoons,” Ammons says. “I caught on pretty quick when all my aunts and uncles who I hadn’t seen for awhile started flying in.

“And within a month or so, it was pretty much over.”

That was the first Monday in April of his 12th year. Duke-Michigan. The day Irene Ammons died. The day he became a man.

“I’ve got that game on tape, and I just watch it all the time,” Ammons says now, eyes moist.

“And I think of her.”

Hoop dreams

Carvell Ammons grew up in Champaign, Ill., home of Fightin’ Illini hoops. He always wanted to play for the hometown U., and took his skills to Northwestern after Illinois’ Lou Henson didn’t recruit him very heavily.

Things sounded great, Ammons says. Northwestern was a team on the rise. They had good players returning, top recruits coming in, and the squad looked to be heading in the right direction.

Midway through a freshman campaign during which he finished second in voting for the Big Ten’s top rookie, Ammons found out otherwise.

Some of the players had left. Others were leaving. And coach Ricky Birdsong had essentially been fired. Later, after meeting with the new coach, Ammons packed his bags.

“They brought in Kevin O’Neil and I wasn’t really into his style of coaching,” Ammons says.

Then it was on to Illinois, where Lon Kruger had taken over. But things didn’t go too smoothly there, either.

First, Ammons blew out his right knee during his mandatory redshirt year and underwent surgery three times to repair it.

“It didn’t change my game, but as far as my jumping and my explosiveness, it’s a big difference from what I used to be able to do,” Ammons says.

And he says it affected his playing time when he regained his eligibility. That, along with the fact that he wasn’t on scholarship because the Big Ten has a rule against teams offering aid to transfers from other league schools, made him second-guess … again.

“I [thought], ‘I’m not gonna pay my way and not play, when I know I can get a scholarship somewhere and play and do everything I want to do,'” Ammons remembers.

So he left in December of 1998, after appearing in only two games for the Illini.

He had a friendly relationship with then-Maine assistant Mike Mennenga from summer camps and tournaments in Illinois. Next stop: Orono.

But even after arriving at UMaine, Ammons had a hard time breaking into the lineup. When he became eligible – after sitting for another year – Nate Fox was already tearing up opposing defenses as the Bears’ power forward.

Again, Ammons had to sit and make the most of his chances. He did, scoring 7.0 points per game and connecting on 63.1 percent of his shots while playing 15 minutes per game.

“It was tough sitting out. I didn’t like that at all,” Ammons said.

This year, Ammons has finally gotten the chance coach John Giannini says he deserves.

“The thing I’m most happy about for Carvell is that this year was his only chance to play a full year and be a good player on a good team,” Giannini said. “I really was hoping he would take advantage of that.”

As far as Ammons can figure, he never really had a choice.

“[My mom] just made me promise that I was gonna go to college, and that’s why I’m here today,” Ammons says. “I’ve been to three schools, but that’s why I won’t quit.”

Entering the last weekend of the regular season, Ammons had averaged 15.7 points and a team-leading 8.0 rebounds a game. He will almost certainly be selected to one of the America East all-star teams.

And he’s still the headstrong, opinionated, outspoken man his coach met when Ammons arrived on campus in the spring of 1999.

Sometimes Giannini himself is on the receiving end of Ammons’ trademark no-nonsense bluntness. Like after a late-season loss to Northeastern, when the player answered a media question by pointing out that his 18 first-half points could have been duplicated if teammates had gotten him the ball in the second half instead of shooting from the perimeter. Giannini tried to give Ammons a less controversial way out of the situation. Ammons was having no part of it.

“We could have been more patient, but that’s not why we lost the game,” Giannini said.

“I’m not saying that’s why we lost the game,” a frustrated Ammons snapped. “He asked what happened, and I’m saying what happened. We didn’t shoot good from outside.”

Giannini respects Ammons in part for his willingness to say exactly what he thinks … even when it may not be the path his coach would have chosen.

“I think Carvell may be the most significant leader on our team because he affects people,” Giannini says. “He can get people to laugh. He can get people upset. He can inspire people. I know he affects me.

“And when he is focused and determined, he’s one of those players who can really have it spread to his teammates.”

Childhood lost

Soon after Irene Ammons died, Carvell and his brothers were living with his aunt, Sarah Bond, a wonderful woman who’d gone from having no children of her own to raising five boys in less than a month.

Four years later, Carvell moved out so his aunt could spend more of her time – and money – on three younger brothers who needed it more than an admittedly headstrong kid who was earning his own cash at two part-time jobs. He wasn’t yet 17.

That decision, Giannini thinks, helped form the man Ammons has become.

“He has had to be very independent,” Giannini said. “Carvell has known from an early age on that he’s going to have to support himself and probably support his brothers at an early age.”

Ammons just figured he was doing the right thing. But it wasn’t easy. He learned early on about paying bills and fending for himself.

“I worked two fast food jobs during basketball season. I was working at this Long John Silver’s restaurant and at Burger King, until like 2, 3 in the morning, on school nights,” Ammons says. “I just had to make it happen, trying to take a little bit of the load off.”

During some of his summers off from college, while friends work at basketball camps, he has worked construction jobs, earning as much as $20,000 a summer by toiling in the heat for as long as 100 hours a week. Last summer he traded manual labor for a white-collar job and took an internship with an accounting firm.

Ammons says his varied experiences – along with a larger-than-normal dose of hardship – have prepared him for anything that life may dole out.

“I’ve seen it all,” Ammons says. “To this point, I’ve seen most everything that life can be like, outside of being wealthy. That will come sooner or later.”

The shot

Ammons has piled up points despite his relatively “short” 6-foot-6 stature for a few reasons, Giannini says.

First, he’s pretty quick. Second, he has pretty long arms. And third … he has “The Shot.”

“I think his success is a matter of having a really good go-to move and knowing what to do when people take that move away,” Giannini says.

That go-to move has a number of names.

Giannini calls it a jump hook. That’s simple enough.

Teammate Huggy Dye calls it “The Left Hook,” which makes it sound more like a prizefighter’s best punch.

But Ammons likes what his longtime girlfriend, Angela Avery, has called it ever since he used it against unwitting opponents in high school.

“My girlfriend just calls it ‘The Booty Move,’ Ammons says with a laugh. “Ever since high school, she’d say, ‘Put your booty on, baby.’ And I’d rock back into it.”

What he’d rock back into is this: a virtually unreachable, if aesthetically challenged, brand of jump hook that he fires with a left arm held at a 45-degree angle from as far away from his body as he can reach. He learned it as a kid, back when getting a shot off without someone throwing it back in your face was a matter of playground pride for an undersized post player.

And Ammons has something else he’d like to say about it. (He’s the outspoken one, remember).

“It really ain’t too much you can guard,” he says with a grin.

Opponents would probably agree: He has connected on 52.3 percent of his shots over his college career, including more than a few off his “Booty Move.”

For the next weekend – or more – Ammons will be torturing would-be shot-blockers with that unorthodox flip that lands on the rim like a soft bag of wet flour … and goes in “more often than not,” as he likes to point out.

And after that?

Ammons is eager to find out what’s next.

“I’m not worried about my future,” says the guy who became a man much too soon.

“I know all the best things in my life are yet to come. Starting in June.”