Published Feb. 26, 2018
It’s 2018 – the age of the helicopter parent.
Parents often have children under their thumb, constantly watching over their child, no matter their age, to keep them safe and making the right decisions.
Nieyeme Smyer-Williams, a senior guard on the Pueblo West High School boys basketball team, didn’t really know what that was like growing up.
When he was growing up in the housing projects in the Montebello neighborhood of Denver, parental supervision wasn’t really there.
Instead, his caretaker was basketball.
“I just remember going to the park and playing basketball with older guys and older cousins,” Smyer-Williams said. “When you’d go out there, the neighborhood was really bad. You heard gunshots every night, it was bad. It really makes me feel blessed about where I am today.”
Most times, when Smyer-Williams was little, his parents were nowhere to be found.
“They weren’t really taking care of me and my (six) sisters,” Smyer-Williams said. “It was forever ago. I guess there’s still a lot I don’t know about that.”
These days, though, Smyer-Williams is the big man on campus at Pueblo West High School.
All-state basketball player. State champion. Leading receiver for the football team.
When his name is announced during basketball games, public address announcer Dan Sanchez calls him “Nieyeme the Dream.” Everybody knows “Nemo,” his nickname as he walks the halls at Pueblo West.
“When he’s not on the court,” Pueblo West head boys basketball coach Bobby Tyler said, “he’s walking the halls, and there’s not a student in this entire school that dislikes him. He has a great a relationship with the teachers, the counselors, the girls. People love him.”
It’s a universe away from his upbringing, where he and his sisters had to deal with intervention by social services because their parents were declared unfit. His mother is currently in prison serving a sentence for robbery while his father has been a gang member for years.
Family members had to take each of them in, all to give them a chance to have a successful life. Along the way, he was in and out of seven foster homes, he said, even living with current teammate Hunter Louther for three years.
Today, he’s living with his aunt and current guardian, Ratosha Jones, and her husband, Ike. It’s been a long road, Jones said, and she points to basketball as the way he deals with everything that has happened to him.
“His therapy is his basketball,” Jones said. “Whatever he’s dealing with, he does it through the game. And he does it very well.”
A solace
Basketball was more than just something to do to pass the time when Smyer-Williams was little.
The game itself served as something to comfort him while dealing with neglect.
“I didn’t go to school for a whole year (in elementary school),” Smyer-Williams said. “My dad didn’t take me to school, and I fell behind. But when I wasn’t in school, I’d just go shoot.”
Even from a young age, basketball has always been there to help him deal with his situation.
“(Basketball) is how he’s always gotten through it,” Jones said. “He played YMCA basketball, not worrying about the other stuff and focusing on the game since he was four or five years old. He had no supervision, and that was just the life he had.”
The basketball court, Smyer-Williams said, is about all he remembers from his time as a young kid on the dangerous streets of northeast Denver.
Even some things with basketball, though, he doesn’t really remember.
“I’ve heard a lot of different stories,” Smyer-Williams said. “A lot of people ask who taught me to play ball. My dad said he did, but I just remember all these older guys at the park. Sometimes they let me play, sometimes they didn’t. But I just learned from that.”
Before he began living with Jones and in other foster homes, Smyer-Williams had zero opportunities to better himself through education and athletics. Once he finally escaped his toxic situation, positive experiences with basketball began to take place.
In Denver, he began play with the Chauncey Billups Elite Basketball Academy. Since moving to Pueblo West, he has played ball with the Southern Colorado Elite basketball club and the P-Dub Hoop Club in addition to being on the school teams at Skyview Middle School and Pueblo West High School.
So much of his harsh upbringing, Smyer-Williams said, is forgotten when he steps onto the basketball court.
“If I wasn’t a basketball player, I don’t know what I would do, honestly,” Smyer-Williams said. “Since I play basketball, people try to get me to make friends, and I’ve got to thank basketball for that, too.”
He has developed a bond with his teammates, even living with teammate Hunter Louther for three years. Coaches, like Southern Colorado Elite basketball coach and Pueblo West High School volunteer assistant, Carlos Lopez, as well as Tyler, have given Smyer-Williams the support system he lacked.
“Now, I have a lot of support,” Smyer-Williams said. “Everybody around, the players on the team, are just a big family to me. Having sisters, it was weird coming out here and having a bunch of brothers. But now, I know what a brotherhood is like.”
He said his teammates have always come through, eager to offer him anything – a concept that was foreign to him.
“People would say, ‘if you ever need anything, let me know,’” Smyer-Williams said. “I’d never had anybody in the past say that. They even said to let them know if I needed a place to stay. I had always slept on a hard floor or a couch or something.”
Finding himself
Conventional wisdom might suggest that exploring one’s past provides a better insight into their current self.
Smyer-Williams says, at times, he’s still trying to search himself for the seeds that have made him the person he is today.
However, part of him doesn’t want to remember.
“Sometimes people say that you should think about your past,” Smyer-Williams said, “like that it motivates you to keep moving. But I’m not that type of person. I hate thinking about it. I’m just blessed to be where I’m at today.”
Sometimes, though, on the relative safety of the basketball court, his demons have a way of getting out.
Smyer-Williams is no stranger to technical fouls and anger outbursts during games, which usually leads to a roller coaster of emotions.
Sometimes, during those kinds of particularly competitive games, Smyer-Williams tears up trying to deal with his emotions, relying on the comfort of coaches and teammates to get him through.
He’s trying to navigate those feelings, and he’s getting better at handling everything that’s thrown at him, Tyler said.
“He’s so competitive and emotional,” Tyler said, “that it takes a toll on him. He’ll still have his hiccups, though, but he’s really matured. In games against Pueblo South, in front of 4,000 people, South kids are talking smack, and there’s so much coming in. All he did was take a deep breath and fight through it.”
That’s the biggest thing Smyer-Williams searches himself for – wondering why he sometimes acts the way he does.
He has a picture of his dad that he looks at every so often. Smyer-Williams doesn’t quite look at it wistfully, but more to figure out if he sees himself.
“I always look at that picture,” Smyer-Williams said, “when I do something dumb or idiotic, wondering where I get that frustration from. It it my mom, or my dad? I always ask myself that.”
Jones said his lack of memory about practically anything aside from basketball, even when it comes to wondering who he is deep down, is a coping mechanism that he developed over time.
“It’s really like he lost two parents,” Jones said. “That’s what happened to him. And some people form their own type of amnesia to protect their own well-being, especially when they’ve gone through a lot.”
The past is always tense, the future perfect
Smyer-Williams can now confidently say he is college-bound.
This week, he gave his verbal commitment to play basketball at Trinidad State Junior College.
For two more years, at least, basketball will remain a central part of his life.
“Since he got interest from Trinidad,” Tyler said, “he’s been smiling a lot more. He went through a funk midway through the season, but now, he’s happy and relaxed.”
More and more, his future is materializing in front of him.
Jones, though, said she always wonders about his life after basketball.
“You need to have a backup plan for everything,” Jones said. “In the long run, you have to deal with what happened. He’s going to grow into a young man, and still have these emotions and feelings, and they have a way of creeping up.”
Smyer-Williams, though, is confident that he will persevere through anything that comes his way and that he will not be a victim of his past.
“Me and (Jones) will talk,” Smyer-Williams said, “and she asks how I feel about Trinidad and being on my own. She always says ‘think before you do,’ and I think because of that, I’ll be fine.”
He already has a plan, as he’ll focus on working in construction in some facet once he graduates college.
“I want to own my own construction business,” Smyer-Williams said, “or maybe be a general contractor.”
No matter what obstacles come his way, Tyler said, he’s confident that “Nemo” has already done quite a lot to find himself. If anything, he said, what Smyer-Williams has gone through makes him stronger.
“He has good enough social skills,” Tyler said, “that when athletics are over, he’ll find a niche in this world and be fine. Getting over that anger will be tough, but he’s street smart and he has that experience.”
Smyer-Williams said that no matter what’s been through, he now has the basis he needs to be successful, a big part of which he owes to Jones, giving him the most normalcy he’s never had in his life.
“I’m so blessed that she brought me in,” Smyer-Williams said. “She raised me to the man I am today. She was there when I was born, and she was the first one to hold me, so that really means a lot to me. I don’t know where I’d be without her or the people that have supported me.”
Anthony Sandstrom: Web Content Specialist 
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