It became very clear, as soon as University of Miami coaches began recruiting Lonnie Walker IV, that his connection to his hometown of Reading, Pa., was unusually deep.
Reading, best known for its pretzels and for its railroad being a space on the Monopoly board, is a city of 87,500 residents about an hour outside of Philadelphia. It is one of the poorest cities per capita in the nation, the kind of place where high school athletes give people hope.
Nobody embodies that more than Walker, which is why UM coaches promised that if he chose Miami over other finalists Villanova, Syracuse, Arizona and Kentucky, the Hurricanes would schedule a road game in Reading so that friends and family – especially his grandmother Eleanor “Mama El” Carter — could see him play.