Alumni
Athletics
Portland Magazine
February 14, 2020
by Joe Freeman '99
WHEN THE TAP on the shoulder came, when the sit-down with the University of Portland president was requested, Donald Wilson ’06 was not the least bit surprised. He knew something would be coming. He had been keeping his secret for nearly a month, after all, slithering around The Bluff under the facade he was a student athlete, when, in reality, he was only fulfilling half of those obligations.
Wilson had arrived at UP with the world in front of him, a superb 6-foot-4, 200-pound basketball player from the Crenshaw neighborhood of West Los Angeles, whose easygoing smile, goofy sense of humor, and hardworking ethos were almost as impressive as his tenacious defense and versatile scoring ability.
But shortly after stepping foot on campus, Wilson lost his way. The relentless rain and gloomy Northwest skies had softened his smile, and the demands of college courses on top of basketball practices quickly became more overwhelming than a Gonzaga full-court press. At Dorsey High School, Wilson could grind through homework with ease, usually before school ended, allowing him to shift all of his focus to basketball, his passion. But college life proved to be different, and Wilson was unprepared for the academic rigors. He fell behind in one class. Then another. And another. Eventually, he didn’t see the point, so he stopped attending classes altogether. A month breezed by.
Then the tap on the shoulder came, and Rev. E. William Beauchamp, CSC, and men’s basketball coach Michael Holton requested the sit-down. “I had a plan,” Wilson says. “I knew they were going to kick me out of school, so I figured I’d go back home and come up with my next move. My mom said, ‘You’ll have three months to either get a job or join the Army.’ ” But a wholly unexpected thing happened when Wilson sat down with UP leaders. They didn’t force him to leave The Bluff. They didn’t admonish him. They figuratively—and literally—put their arms around him. Beauchamp told him he was not going to let him fail. Holton told him he was going to help him graduate. “They could have kicked me out,” Wilson says. “But the community and the school were invested into me. They said, ‘You’re going to make it.’ ”
Suddenly, Wilson had a group of supporters—Rev. Art Wheeler, CSC; Melanie Gangle; Dan McGinty; among others—working to help him succeed. And quickly, they determined that Wilson’s problem wasn’t that he couldn’t handle the work; it was that he didn’t know how to manage his time to nurture success. So they taught him time management skills and crafted a daily routine, and he vowed to get back on track. Wilson returned to class, then attended summer school to maintain eligibility, and he didn’t just rebound, he flourished. By the time Wilson left The Bluff, he not only started 111 games over four years and finished 12th in school history in scoring, but he also graduated. He went on to play seven years professionally in Europe, where he and his wife, Alysha Wilson, started a family that now includes three children.
Now Wilson’s life has brought him back to UP. This winter, he joined the University’s broadcast team to provide color commentary for men’s and women’s basketball games on radio and television, one of many roles he’s embraced since moving to nearby Vancouver, WA, where Alysha is from. Since returning to the Northwest, Wilson has become a walking billboard for UP’s mission of teaching, faith, and service. He helps run a nonprofit youth basketball club (Oregon Basketball Club), serves as the athletic director at St. Joseph Catholic School in Vancouver, coaches girls’ basketball at Seton Catholic Prep in Vancouver, and partners with Sidewalk PDX, a nonprofit that facilitates the donation of shoes to underprivileged children. On top of it all, in perhaps Wilson’s most selfless act of kindness—what he calls a “pay-it-forward” endeavor—he and Alysha welcomed a homeless teenager into their home three years ago, setting him up with a loving home, a chance to play for Oregon Basketball Club, and an opportunity to attend school at Seton Catholic. He’s on pace to graduate high school and attend college, a success story even more inspiring than Wilson’s.
An ominous tap on the shoulder, it seems, has spawned a life’s work. “The foundation at UP helped mold who I am today,” Wilson says. “My roots are here. This is where I grew up, where I went out on my own for the first time, where I matured. I could have gone in a different direction. But they believed in me, supported me, and I’ll never forget it.”
—JOE FREEMAN ’99 covers the Portland Trail Blazers and NBA for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
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