By Gene Galin
Pittsboro, NC — On Thursday at Paige Vernon Park, the “3 Guys from Pittsboro having lunch” – Greg Stafford, Eric Andrews and Gene Galin – opened takeout containers of Indian food, joked about mango slushies, and quickly drifted into something heavier than lunch: what it takes for a kid to thrive in sports without being crushed by sports. Our guest, former UNC guard Jeff Denny, used stories about his father’s quiet encouragement, a childhood spent playing every game imaginable, and a life shaped by a deaf older brother to draw a throughline from 1980s pickup basketball to today’s travel-ball economy — and to a local example many Pittsboro fans know well, NBA rookie Drake Powell. Our lunchtime conversation became a snapshot of a community asking an old question in a new era: how do you raise competitive kids without turning childhood into a full-time job?
A Park Bench, a Stormy Week, and a Conversation Bigger Than Lunch
This episode of “3 Guys from Pittsboro having lunch with Jeff Denny” opens with a discussion about storm delays, in a casual setting, and a spread of gas-station takeout.
We got the discussion rolling by steering Jeff toward origins: his childhood in Rural Hall, the “garden capital” line delivered with a grin, and a memory that doubles as a metaphor for how far time travels in small towns. Denny talks about reconnecting with Freddie Kiger — a childhood swimming instructor who decades later appears again in his Chapel Hill circle.
Then our discussion shifts: from nostalgia to parenting, from memory to modern pressure.
“No Coaching in the Car”: A Father’s Method That Didn’t Add Stress
Jeff’s most striking claim is also the simplest: after games, his dad didn’t critique. No play-by-play breakdown on the ride home. No “you should have done this.” Instead, Jeff recalls a “steady diet” of affirmation: you did great; I’m proud of you.
In a sports culture where postgame analysis now arrives instantly — from parents, from social media, from highlight reels — that approach sounds almost radical. Jeff doesn’t present it as perfect parenting or the only path. He presents it as a pressure release valve that, in hindsight, freed him to compete harder.
He explains the effect in emotional terms. Because his father didn’t tie pride to points or minutes, Jeff says he learned to value effort over outcomes: giving “everything I had” rather than chasing a stat line. The hosts ask what put the biggest smile on his face. Denny’s answer isn’t a championship or a signature shot. It’s something quieter: presence.
He describes looking into the stands during warmups, seeing his parents, and needing only one glance. They’re here. Now I can do my thing.
That idea — presence without interference — becomes a theme our conversation returns to again and again.
Parenting Then, Parenting Now: From Silent Support to Texting Coaches
At one point, Jeff tells a story that functions like a cultural before-and-after photo.
In his era, he says, parents didn’t negotiate with coaches. They didn’t lobby for minutes. They didn’t act as auxiliary staff. Jeff remembers being dropped off for his freshman year at UNC and not returning home until the end — and he’s not even sure his parents spoke to Dean Smith in four years.
Then he contrasts that with what he says is common now: parents texting coaches minutes after a game to ask why a son didn’t get enough shots.
Whether that’s an exaggeration for effect or a precise accounting doesn’t matter as much as the feeling behind it: Jeff sees a youth sports culture where adults are more present than ever — and yet, in the wrong ways. Not the “I’m in the stands” presence. The “I’m managing your career” presence.
The modern system, Jeff argues, changes childhood itself. It turns play into performance.
The Disappearing Pickup Game and the Economics of Youth Sports
Jeff’s nostalgia is specific, and that’s what makes it persuasive. He remembers days when kids played basketball, then football, then baseball — all in the same afternoon — and worked out disputes themselves because no adults were there to referee the argument.
Greg, Eric and I took this opportunity pile on with our own memories: water from a spigot, not a cooler; the rule that you don’t come home until the streetlights come on; bike rides without helmets because “I never knew a helmet was a thing.” It is, admittedly, the sound of “old guys” talking about being older men.
But beneath the humor is a serious point: those unstructured hours built creativity, conflict resolution, physical toughness, and joy — qualities that are harder to manufacture inside a tightly scheduled travel program.
Jeff says families now spend staggering sums on youth sports, even though “the statistics bear out that they’re not going to play whatever they’re playing.”
From Granville Towers to “Getting Noticed”: The Social Side of Sports
Our conversation stays grounded in lived experience, and Jeff offers a perfect example: pickup games at Granville Towers.
Asked what was fun about them, he pauses, then delivers the punchline: it wasn’t the game. It was that the girls were at the pool nearby — and the guys were hoping to be seen. It’s a joke, but it’s also a reminder that sports, especially in adolescence, is social currency. It’s identity. It’s a place to belong.
Modern youth sports can still provide that — but the vibe changes when every tournament is filmed, every mistake is archived, and every decision feels like it affects a résumé.
Jeff Denny the Player: A Tar Heel Role Player in a Dean Smith System
To understand why Jeff’s perspective matters in North Carolina, it helps to remember who he is in basketball terms. Jeff played guard at UNC in the late 1980s, part of a program defined by Dean Smith’s structure and standards.
In our lunch conversation, Jeff references learning competitive “little things” from Smith — the tiny edges that separate teams when talent is equal. He tells two youth-coaching stories that underline that influence, both delivered with the kind of laughter that suggests the statute of limitations has expired.
In one, he argues with a referee for several minutes while an opposing player stands at the free throw line, waiting. At the end of the debate, Jeff calls timeout. The shooter sits down, resets, and (in their telling) bricks the shot. The lesson isn’t that arguing is noble. It’s that games can be won through rhythm, disruption, and psychology — the little levers coaches pull.
In the second story, Jeff is coaching a game where the referees are deaf. The opposing coach tries to call timeout; Jeff, fluent in sign language, signs to the refs — and the opponents’ timeout isn’t recognized. The clock runs out. His team wins.
It’s the kind of story that makes people laugh and groan at the same time. It also reveals something else: Jeff’s sign language ability is not a gimmick. It’s part of his life.
A Brother’s Deafness, a Family’s Responsibility, and the Empathy That Lingers
One of the most affecting parts of our conversation for me is when Jeff speaks about growing up with a deaf older brother.
He describes trying, as an adult, to understand what that experience might be like by using earplugs or headphones — a small, imperfect attempt to grasp a lifelong reality. He says his brother lived 58 years with that disability and “didn’t let it define who he was.”
Jeff also explains how the experience shaped him: his parents told him, as the younger brother, that he had responsibilities — to watch out for his older brother and “hear for him” in a world built for hearing people. Over time, Jeff believes that taught him to move through life with his “head on a swivel,” aware of who might need help, aware of what others miss.
The payoff arrives in a small scene Jeff describes: in a grocery store or public place, when he sees someone signing, he approaches and communicates. The reaction, he says, is immediate — eyes wide — because so few strangers can talk to them.
Jeff isn’t preaching. He simply describes a moment that feels human: the power of being understood.
The Drake Powell Thread: Talent, Coachability, and a Local Star’s Fast Rise
Late in our discussion, we pivot to a name that has become shorthand in Chatham County sports circles: Drake Powell, the Northwood High product who rose from local phenom to national recruit.
Jeff says he saw Powell’s talent early — as a freshman — and expected he could reach the NBA. What surprised him was the speed: Denny says he didn’t expect it to happen after just one year in college.
On that point, the timeline is verifiable. Powell committed to UNC as a highly rated recruit from Pittsboro’s Northwood High School, attracting statewide attention for his athleticism and two-way potential.
Powell did, in fact, leave after a single season. Powell was selected with the 22nd pick in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft by the Atlanta Hawks and then traded to the Brooklyn Nets. The NBA’s draft profile described him as a potential first-round selection with “top-shelf athleticism” and a two-way projection. The Nets later announced signing him to a multi-year deal.
Jeff’s core point holds: Powell’s rise was fast, even by modern standards.
Jeff’s more interesting argument, though, is not about rankings or vertical leaps. It’s about character. He says Powell is “still the same person” and that the NBA hasn’t changed who he is. Then he highlights a trait he considers rare: coachability.
In a youth sports era where athletes can be treated as brands before they can drive, “coachability” can sound like an old-school cliché. But Jeff ties it to something concrete: parents who allow coaches to coach, rather than fighting every decision.
That loops our conversation back to where it began — presence without interference.
A Community Mirror: What This Conversation Reveals About Pittsboro Right Now
It’s easy to dismiss our casual “3 Guys from Pittsboro” YouTube lunch chat as background noise — entertainment for Chatham County locals, a low-stakes hour that disappears into the feed.
But this episode functions like a mirror for Chatham County and the broader Triangle region at a particular time. The community is growing. Costs are rising. Youth sports has become both a pathway and an industry. Families feel pressure — to make high school teams, to get scholarship looks, to keep up with the families who seem to be doing everything “right.”
Jeff’s stories don’t resolve those pressures. What they do is offer a counter-idea that feels almost subversive in 2026: let the kid play.
Not “play” as in a performance. Play as in experimentation, joy, variety, failure without fear, success without entitlement.
Jeff’s lived experience gives that advice a hometown voice.
What We Look Past: The Cost of Turning Children Into Projects
Perhaps the most revealing parts of our conversation are not the jokes or even the coaching stories. It is the quiet insistence on a basic human need: to feel supported without being managed.
Jeff’s father didn’t lower standards. He didn’t demand less effort. He demanded, in a way, more — because the child had to motivate himself rather than chasing parental approval.
We all kind of agree on the same point: the freedom to roam, to invent games, to settle disputes, to come home when the streetlights flicker — those experiences were not luxuries. They were formative.
Today’s parents are not worse parents. Many are responding rationally to a system that feels more competitive and less forgiving. But systems shape behavior. And when the system tells families that childhood must be optimized, families optimize childhood.
Jeff is arguing for something else: the value of leaving space.
A Simple Blueprint — Be There, Back Off, and Let Them Grow
Jeff Denny’s lunch conversation with the “3 Guys from Pittsboro” at Paige Vernon Park on a Thursday afternoon doesn’t offer a policy proposal or a one-size-fits-all solution for youth sports. It offers something more practical and, for many families, harder: a philosophy.
Be present. Let coaches coach. Measure success by effort and growth, not only by points or playing time. Encourage kids to play multiple sports — or at least to keep play in the experience.
And beyond sports, the thing that resonated with me the most was that Jeff’s reflections about his brother point toward a broader civic ethic: the smallest skills — like a few signs in ASL — can make public life feel less lonely for someone else.
Watch on YouTube – 3 Guys from Pittsboro having lunch with Jeff Denny (part 2) -2.19.26
Three Guys for Pittsboro enjoy an Indian lunch with Special Guest Jeff Denny at Paige Vernon Park in Pittsboro.
00:06 Three guys from Pittsboro enjoy lunch with Jeff Denny and share their food experiences.
- They discuss their Indian food choices, highlighting butter chicken and garlic naan.
- Jeff Denny connects with a childhood swimming teacher, adding a personal story to the conversation.
02:48 Reflection on impactful mentorship and supportive parenting in sports.
- Freddie Kieger’s swimming lessons enabled a lifelong connection and success at UNC.
- Parental support focused on encouragement rather than criticism fostered a positive sporting experience.
05:31 The speaker reflects on the importance of parental presence in sports.
- The speaker appreciates their parents’ unwavering support, attending all games from middle school to college.
- A contrast is drawn between past parental involvement and today’s parental pressure on coaches regarding playing time.
08:03 Youth sports dynamics have changed significantly over the years.
- Current youth athletes specialize early in sports, unlike past generations who played multiple sports seasonally.
- There is concern about the loss of creativity and informal play among today’s youth compared to previous generations.
10:27 Nostalgic stories about biking, pickup games, and meeting spouses.
- Discussion about biking distances and the casual approach to safety gear like helmets in the past.
- Recollection of pickup games at Granville Tower, highlighting the desire to impress girls rather than focus on the game.
12:54 Drake’s growth in basketball reflects his character and commitment.
- Drake’s transition to the NBA has not altered his personality, showcasing his consistency as both a player and a person.
- His remarkable improvement in shooting and coachability is attributed to his hard work and supportive influences from parents and coaches.
15:40 A heartfelt discussion about personal growth and competitive memories in sports.
- The conversation recalls a competitive basketball game that went into overtime, emphasizing the unique rules and the importance of free throws.
- Jeff shares his experiences growing up with a deaf brother, highlighting the challenges faced and the pride in overcoming adversity together.
18:38 Jeff Denny shares his experiences connecting with sign language users.
- He emphasizes the joy of using sign language to communicate, expressing empathy and compassion learned from family.
- Jeff recounts childhood memories of interacting with his older brother, highlighting how this shaped his awareness and connection with others.