The physical distance between George Reese and a few dozen high school boys was only a matter of feet.

It just took quite a few years to cross them. Tuesday morning at Independence, the former Ohio State men’s basketball player was back at his alma mater and seated at one of four chairs on the floor inside the auditorium. Staring back at him were members of the school’s freshmen class, clustered into about a dozen rows with hand-written letters denoting the seat locations.

They were seats Reese once sat in. The journey from those yellow fold-out chairs in the audience to the navy blue ones on the floor stretched back nearly 30 years, but after a basketball career that took him to a Final Four with Ohio State while playing for the Buckeyes from 1998-2000 and around the world as a professional, it had brought him back to a time and place where he recognized a need from his own experiences.

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'Everything about this event today is about relationships'

Microphone in hand, Reese looked up at the boys gathered to hear his message.

“I walked these walls here at Independence a long time ago,” Reese, a 1995 graduate, said. “We understand everything you’re going through. We understand the transition from middle school to high school, and we want to be here for you. We want to work on building relationships.

“Everything about this event today is about relationships.”

The occasion was spelled out in black and white across Reese’s chest: a black sweatshirt with “ACE PROGRAM” written in bold, white letters. A part of Reese’s “Always With Us” charity that was founded nearly a decade ago, this new initiative named for his daughter, Aila, will provide life skills training and mentoring for high school freshmen.

In partnership with Columbus City Schools and My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative launched by president Barack Obama in 2014 to “address persistent opportunity gaps faced by boys and young men of color and ensure that all young people can reach their full potential,” according to its webpage, the plan is for ACE to match freshmen with mentors for weekly meetings.

“The goal is to be able to provide someone who can help them work on their soft skills,” Reese said. “They talk about hard skills, where if you go to work at an Amazon or these other big places, they can teach you how to do a good job but I think the soft skills is what keeps that job. Learning how to deal with other people, learning how to de-escalate emotionally. That’s why social-emotional learning is going to be key. Building relationships.”

George Reese joined by current, former Ohio State basketball players

To get things underway, Reese enlisted the help of some familiar faces. Fellow Independence alumnus and WXMG-FM (95.5) radio host Sean Anthony hosted the event as DJ IQ, also an Independence alumnus and a radio host on WZCB-FM (106.7), played tunes throughout. Joining Reese to speak with the crowd were former Ohio State player and Columbus City product Seth Towns alongside current Buckeyes Zed Key and Isaac “Ice” Likekele.

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To a man, all four speakers to have seen action for the Buckeyes emphasized the need for teens to build strong relationships to help prepare them for what lies ahead in life.

“I always love trying to offer knowledge or wisdom or anything I can to kids who came up in a similar position as me,” Towns, who has a degree from Harvard and a master’s degree from Ohio State, said. “The one thing about all these kids is they’re so capable. They just need a little more guidance than some others. I’m glad Zed and Ice were able to come, too, because it takes a village.”

The freshmen were attentive even as they were occasionally talkative throughout the presentation. Towns, a Northland graduate, said he saw kids on their phones who reminded him of himself at their age. At the end, Reese asked the freshmen what needs they had that needed met.

Answers included tutoring services, funding, more people to talk to and motivational books in the school. Before passing out free Chick-Fil-A box lunches to the kids, Reese directed them to a scannable QR code displayed on a screen that would provide a link where potential mentors could sign up to participate.

Both current Buckeyes were barely 12 hours removed from an exhibition win against Chaminade on Monday night. Key cited his family for having provided him the necessary guidance through his formidable years, while Likekele mentioned life coaches from when he was younger to the crowd before later naming a laundry list of key men who supported him while his father worked three jobs to support their family.

The duo plans to continue their participation in the program as much as their in-season schedule will allow, something Reese said will be particularly impactful.

“These guys are celebrities playing for that institution,” Reese said. “Seeing them and being able to talk to them and reach them, they can tell them they’re dealing with some of the same things they dealt with in high school and how they were able to push through and be successful, that’s huge. I didn’t have access to that when I was in high school.”

Speaking to the kids, Towns told them that “you never stop learning” and that there are two things we have: character, and the relationships that we build.

It was the type of message the 22-year-old Likekele said didn’t land with him until after he had moved on from high school. Now, through Reese’s program, it’s his turn to try and make those words land in the minds of a younger generation.

“I truly want things greater for our world in the future,” he said. “If the youth is our future, what better way to affect the future than to give to the youth? On top of that, I feel like the knowledge I learned, I learned it so late. Why not pass it down to them while they’re in high school?

“Knowledge is power, so this knowledge that I have, I’m going to feed it all to them.”

ajardy@dispatch.com

@AdamJardy

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State's George Reese unveils freshman mentorship program