As an advocate for the local community, especially Savannah’s young people, Lawrence Bryan III wants to celebrate the achievements of the St. Andrew’s School boys basketball team.
But as an old ballplayer, Bryan admits to being a bit envious of the Lions winning two consecutive state titles.
“The St. Andrew’s basketball program has been amazing for the last two years,” Bryan said Friday. “Quite frankly, I’m jealous because I won a state championship, and I was one game away from winning back-to-back state championships.”
He finished the comment with his laugh, as Bryan knows he had a great run as a star player on Savannah High School’s powerhouse teams which won the GHSA Class 3A state crown in 1976 and lost in the finals in 1977.
Now he is president of the LB3 Foundation, a nonprofit organization for community programming and advocacy. Among many events are an annual golf camp for underserved youth hosted by Savannah Golf Club, and the Celebration of Life each August, when thousands of bags of school supplies and personal-care products are distributed to those in need.
The organization has given away more than 850 new bicycles to children and countless meals to local citizens, as well as provided useful information. “Not only do we feed their stomachs, we feed their brains,” Bryan said.
“Our mission is to create opportunities and provide tools for measurable growth, educational and economic growth to lead to a higher quality of life for young people,” said Bryan, who formed the LB4 & After Foundation with his wife Linda Wilder-Bryan, after their 23-year-old son, Lawrence Bryan IV, was murdered in an attempted armed robbery on Aug. 7, 2015.
The foundation, whose reorganization included a name change in May 2022, also highlights youth achievement. In February 2022, Justin Thomas, then a senior at Benedictine, was honored as its student-athlete of the year. There’s enough attention already on young people’s negative behavior and it becomes contagious, Bryan said, so the reverse is also true.
“When young people do something extremely positive, we need to celebrate them because I’m a firm believer that it’s easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken men,” he said.
For the first time, the foundation has selected a basketball team, coach and player of the year. A ceremony is scheduled for 2 p.m. April 17 to honor St. Andrew’s, coach Mel Abrams and senior Zyere Edwards.
The Lions (28-1) won the Georgia Independent Athletic Association Class 3A state title for the second consecutive season in 2022-23 after a 25-4 campaign in 2021-22. Abrams and Edwards swept the 3A coach and player of the year awards both seasons.
“I know what it takes to be a winner,” Bryan said. “It takes a lot. It takes a lot of moving parts.”
He praised the coach and players as well as the support from the parents, school, faculty and student body.
Bryan noted that a tiny percentage of high school basketball players will play in college at the Division I level, so academics must come first.
“These student-athletes, a lot of them are good but they think they’re better than they are,” Bryan said. “So the hard fact is you must get a good education. (Abrams) fits that. He’s hard on that. I like that about him. He says his players have got to maintain a ‘B’ average in order to play.”
Abrams has coached at SAS for eight seasons, with Final Four appearances in four of the last five. In a March interview with Prep Sports Report, Abrams said St. Andrews -- a small, private, college preparatory school -- embraces a lot of different backgrounds and cultures.
“This environment,” he said, “will help better prepare you as you enter the real world.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of LB3 Foundation, St. Andrew's social media pages
