Building an Ecosystem of Becoming

One of the greatest myths in our culture is the myth of the self-made person.

We celebrate individuals.

The star athlete. The CEO. The gifted teacher. The visionary pastor.

But look closely at every meaningful success story and you’ll find something else.

People.

Parents. Mentors. Friends. Teachers. Coaches. Communities.

No one becomes alone.

We are formed in relationships. But we flourish in ecosystems.

And I need to tell you about the young man who taught me that — because he also taught me what happens when the ecosystem is broken.

Boo Not too much time goes by without me thinking of him.

I first saw Ricardo “Boo” Banks at the Vonnie Grimes gym when he was in seventh or eighth grade. I was coaching a middle school team for Crispus Attucks, and he had his crew from Parkway — a YMCA team, I believe. I don’t even know why they had a coach, because Boo was the coach on the floor. He ran his team, dominated every aspect of the game, and talked to me the entire time.

At that point in my life, I hadn’t seen anything like it.

He killed us. And I walked out of that gym and said, “That joker is a general.”

Instead of being salty, I was asking myself: Who is he? Where does he live? Because I was never going to play another game in that city without him on my team.

He was next.

I worked hard to build his trust, because even then he had his own guys. If you got Boo, everyone else would follow. There was nothing flashy about his game — he didn’t outrun you or outjump you — but he almost never lost. His handles, his court vision, his basketball IQ, his leadership, his toughness. All elite. I’m not exaggerating, and coaches are prone to hyperbole.

I would pick him up first in the old blue Crispus Attucks van — the one with more dents and miles on it than you could imagine. We went everywhere. Philly. Anywhere we needed to go to get him ready. Back then, almost no one left the city. Everything was played in your park, near your house.

And there was one more thing about Boo that I loved.

Whenever I told him what we needed to get done, where we needed to be, what I expected from him, he would look at me and simply say:

“I got you, Coach.”

That was it.

No long conversation. No excuses. No speeches.

And once he said it, you never had to think about it again. His word was his word. I could put it in the bank.

Just like his name.

But you can’t tell Boo’s story without telling a little of York’s.

York, Pennsylvania is probably the most racially divided city you’ll find north of the Mason-Dixon Line — and I say that as someone who came from West Philadelphia and thought I had seen it all.

The neighborhoods didn’t just happen to be separated. They were designed that way. Redlined. Engineered for poverty to stay put and opportunity to stay out.

Good jobs were scarce. Transportation was scarce. Every now and then someone landed a position at Caterpillar or Harley-Davidson and people saw it as a way out. But too often the gravity of those neighborhoods pulled them right back. The establishment had it figured out: give just enough opportunity to a few people to quiet the noise, but never enough to create meaningful change.

I watched that dynamic play out for more than twenty years. When resources are scarce, hope is thin, and young people see few paths forward, violence fills the space. Young men end up fighting over what little is available.

It isn’t random.

It is the predictable outcome of generations of neglect, disinvestment, and failed leadership.

That was the water Boo grew up in. That was what was already working against him before he ever made a single decision of his own.

In all my years going into every neighborhood in that city, outside of one man — Mr. Brown — I never saw a father. Not one. I barely saw moms either. Mostly aunts, cousins, and grandmothers doing the heavy lifting.

I was an outsider. Lived there over twenty years, but always the outsider. In York, it means something if you were born there — and depending on who you ask, you’re not a Yorker even if you were, unless your grandparents were born there too. For most of my time there, I was proving I wasn’t a carpetbagger — that I wasn’t there to take from the community and leave it worse than I found it. Respected by the kids because I was Coach, and because I kept my word in every neighborhood. Tolerated by the adults — and that never really changed. I was controversial because I was calling things out.

But here’s what I finally settled on, and I wrote it publicly back in 2011: I was born in Philadelphia. I became a man in York. My children were born there. My family history started there — with me. Belonging isn’t always granted. Sometimes you claim it with your roots.

Where is he taking them? Who does he think he is? He’s recruiting.

Yeah, you’re right. But not like you think.

I was recruiting hearts and minds.

Before I tell you the rest, I have to tell you about Boo Banks the player. Just one story.

It was one of the great seasons in York High history. We were peaking at the right time. After losing in the second round of the district playoffs, we fought our way into the state tournament — only to be rewarded with a first-round matchup against the number one ranked team in Pennsylvania.

Chester High School.

In Chester.

With Jameer Nelson sitting in the front row.

Boo had earned minutes on varsity, but as a sophomore he wasn’t a full-time varsity player yet. In practice, though, he was showing he was ready. I knew we needed to do something different. We were not going in there to run with Chester — they had at least three high-major recruits and they would have run us out of the building. I needed someone fearless. Someone with a warrior’s spirit. The guy I could trust to stick to the game plan.

I needed the guy who said, “I got you, Coach.”

And just as I had hoped, Boo set the tone. He was our heart and soul that night as we shocked the world of big-school Pennsylvania basketball. We carried that momentum all the way to a Final Four appearance.

He was the only kid I ever let run an entire practice.

No one has been able to do that to this day.

I believe with all my heart that Ricardo “Boo” Banks was thrown to the wolves.

He was cycled through the juvenile justice system and came out hardened. Like so many young people after that experience, in that community, you come back different. Boo was still Boo — he was that talented — but I could see his light had dimmed.

I always told my guys that if anyone got in trouble, I wouldn’t write them.

But I wrote Boo every chance I got.

And when he came back to the community, I embraced him with open arms. No judgment. Just love. It never left. We stayed connected.

York has a way of suffocating the youth who are on the fence, leaving no room to breathe or find your way.

And Boo knew it.

The last thing he ever said to me was this:

“Coach, get me off these streets. I’m ready to get out of York.”

He saw it coming. He asked for the door.

Just a few years after Chester, at nineteen years old, Boo was gone from us altogether.

Murdered.

His case remains unsolved — one of two dozen unsolved murders in York County in recent years. That is tragic all by itself. And in communities like York, no one seems to care.

What about closure for his family? His brothers? His sisters? His mother? His aunts and uncles?

What message does that send to his nieces and nephews? To his coaches, teachers, and teammates?

We still want justice for Boo.

The Forest, Not Just the Tree For years after losing Boo, I wrestled with a question.

The relationship was real. The trust was real. The love was real. He even asked for the way out.

Here is the hardest truth in this book:

One healthy relationship can change a life. But one relationship cannot always outrun an unhealthy ecosystem.

A healthy tree planted in unhealthy soil will struggle. A struggling tree planted in healthy soil often begins to recover.

The same is true of people.

Boo had a coach who believed in him. He did not have a city built for him to become. The redlined neighborhoods, the absent opportunity, the justice system that hardened instead of healed, the violence that filled the space where hope should have been — that was the soil.

I used to spend all my time trying to help individual people grow. That work still matters. It always will. But Boo taught me to ask a bigger question:

The answer often isn’t the individual.

It’s the environment.

That’s why changing one life is beautiful — and why it can never be where we stop. Changing an ecosystem multiplies impact for generations. Failing to change one buries potential for generations.

I’ve seen both.

Whether we intend it or not, every environment teaches something.

Some teach fear. Competition. Perfectionism. Survival.

Others teach belonging. Courage. Integrity. Service. Hope.

Culture isn’t what we write in a handbook. Culture is what people experience every day. The conversations in the hallway. The way mistakes are handled. The way conflict is resolved. The way leaders respond under pressure.

A city can have a culture too. York taught its young people something every day — about who mattered, about what was possible, about whether anyone was coming.

People rarely remember mission statements.

They remember environments.

Now imagine the opposite. A school where every adult shares the same mission. A program where every coach teaches the same values, older athletes mentor younger ones, and winning matters — but becoming matters more.

That’s no longer just a healthy relationship. That’s an ecosystem.

When Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God, He rarely focused on individuals alone. He described vineyards. Fields. Flocks. Families. A body with many parts.

The Apostle Paul expands the picture in 1 Corinthians. The eye needs the hand. The hand needs the foot. No one thrives in isolation.

God never intended His people to compete for significance. He designed us to complement one another.

And here is what that means for the trenches: no single coach, teacher, parent, or pastor was ever meant to carry a young person’s becoming alone. I could not be Boo’s coach, father, neighborhood, school system, and justice system all at once. No one can.

That’s not an excuse to do less.

It’s a summons to build more — together.

One of the greatest obstacles to healthy ecosystems is competition.

Schools competing instead of learning from one another. Churches competing instead of serving together. Programs protecting territory instead of sharing resources. Leaders guarding influence instead of developing other leaders.

Competition asks, “How can I get ahead?”

Collaboration asks, “How can we accomplish more together than we ever could alone?”

I’m not preaching hindsight here. I was writing this publicly back in 2011 — asking why sixteen school districts each needed their own pool, proposing that neighbors share what they’d built, asking, “How can I work with my neighbors to achieve better results than I’m getting alone?” The cave didn’t give me this idea.

The cave taught me why it matters. It moved the idea from my head to my scars.

While the adults in a community compete, the kids in that community pay. I watched it happen. The Kingdom has never advanced because one person did everything. It advances because many people faithfully do their part.

Healthy ecosystems don’t create dependency. They create multiplication.

Healthy teachers develop future teachers. Healthy coaches develop future coaches. Healthy parents raise adults who know how to parent. Healthy leaders create other healthy leaders.

The goal is never to make ourselves indispensable. The goal is to make ourselves reproducible. That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t simply gather followers. He developed disciple-makers.

And I’ve seen the fruit of that even in York. The young men I recruited — hearts and minds, one van ride at a time — are grown now. Many of them are stabilizing that region today. Coaching. Teaching. Fathering. Building.

The ecosystem failed Boo.

The men who loved him are still building a better one.

Wherever God has placed you, ask yourself:

Who are the people already doing good work? Who shares the same values? Who could I encourage instead of compete with? What organizations should be partners instead of rivals? What gifts are missing from my own team?

Healthy ecosystems are built with humility.

No one has everything.

Everyone has something.