Salem CC’s Jyheim Spencer making most of his second chance at life, college basketball, putting a dark past in his rear view mirror

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

CARNEYS POINT – Rebounding is a part of basketball that by its very nature is built on heart and hard work. Nobody just becomes a good rebounder; it’s something you have to want to do.

It’s the kind of skill, really, that rewards a player who doesn’t mind getting in the middle of it and mixing it up.

On the defensive end, it clears away any challenge an opponent throws at you. On the offensive end, it sets up you or your teammates for a second chance to succeed.

It’s the perfect metaphor for the saga of Jyheim Spencer and the second chance he has been given in the Salem Community College basketball program.

Spencer’s story goes beyond the basketball court and way beyond the cliché of a player making the most of a second chance. His is a story of redemption, not just in the game, but in the game of life.

His life has always had its challenges, but over the past six years he’s endured a succession of personal tragedies that goes beyond the unreasonable. He’s lived through the deaths of a child, a brother and a parent, the impact of COVID that derailed his college career and the prospect of doing some serious jail time, circumstances that all put together would have broken another man. 

But he has come out on the other side of all that with a new perspective and appreciation of life on the outside. 

Since becoming eligible to play, which was an ordeal in itself, and making his debut Jan. 7, Spencer has embraced that role as a rebounder. If he had enough games to qualify for the national statistics, his 14.5 per game average would be second nationally in the JUCO division the Mighty Oaks play. Just last week, in one of the team’s biggest games of the year, he cleared a whopping 20 boards at CC of Philadelphia.

And he couldn’t be more appreciative for it. After every rebound, blocked shot, fall to the floor that might make another player angry, Spencer lifts his 6-foot-8 frame off the deck and sprints to the other end with a big grin on his face that seems to say he’s truly glad for the shot he’s been given.

After all, he’s been knocked down a hell of a lot harder than that in his life.

“I feel like that’s why I’m so happy because I got a second chance to do it,” he said after a recent practice. “The first chance, I didn’t really see the potential I had until I got incarcerated and had a whole year to sit and think about what I wanted to do. Once I realized I had another chance, it was like excited, very excited.

“It basically feels like I was born again. Like I got another chance. And the way it’s going, it’s going like I expected to go. That’s why I’m so happy.”

Darkest of times

Jyheim Spencer was always a good basketball player, but he never played organized ball until he got to high school. And when he finally did, he didn’t last long. He got kicked off the team each of his first two years. And then he got kicked out of school.

“Now I’ve got no school, no nothing; I was really doing nothing,” he said.

Then he moved to Dover and met the coach who took an interest in him as a person as much as a player. Spencer recalls those first conversations with Stephen Wilson as being more about his quality of home life than about points and rebounds and basketball stuff, the kind of conversations he had with Salem CC coach Mike Green when he started on his road back.

“I don’t even think we spoke about basketball until a month after I was there,” he said. “At first he just talked about how he wanted me to get in school, how my family was, me and my dad’s relationship, me and my mom’s. We were kind of building a bond so once I actually played for him it felt like he was a father figure. He helped me through everything, like a dad, a big brother.”

And he was about to need one as the period from 1999 to 2022 when he should have been at the height of his athletic development turned into the darkest time anyone could imagine.

His two seasons at Dover were state contending ones, but it wasn’t without tragedy. During his junior year his two-month old daughter died of sudden infant death syndrome. (The day he spoke to Riverview Sports News was two days after what would have been his daughter’s sixth birthday).

The basketball season helped get him through it and that year his team played for a state championship. They were headed that way the next year, his senior year, too, but COVID gripped the world and shut it all down.

Through it all his game had come back around enough to land him a spot at North Jersey’s Caldwell University, but neither the classes nor the basketball worked out for him. He played three minutes with no stats in a six-point loss at Concordia (N.Y.) on Feb. 21, 2021, but that was his last game until last month.

The COVID pandemic was in full force. Classes were all online and basketball was over for him. Back home, his father, with whom he was just started to rebuild a relationship, was killed. The combination of both events sent him into a downward spiral that left him questioning everything.

“That kind of messed me up a little bit,” he said. “Forget basketball, forget college, just forget all of it.”

He thought a change of scenery would change the outlook and he moved to Jacksonville, Fla., but trouble followed. His brother was killed while he was there and he began being investigated by various state and federal authorities in connection with an illegal firearms trafficking scheme that would eventually land him in prison.

He moved back to Delaware and in January 2022 was indicted with eight others on a total of 76 felony charges. His mind was racing.

“I don’t know what to do, I don’t want to go to jail, so I’m not turning myself in,” he said. “I was thinking about going on a run and I thought about it. I might as well get it over and done with because the longer I wait, the older I’m going to get, and you never know if I’m going to be able to play basketball again. I’m gonna go ahead and turn myself in.”

He wound serving time at SCI – the Sussex Correctional Institution – a 1,200-bed facility in Georgetown, Del., that houses minimum, medium and maximum security inmates as well as youthful offenders. While on the inside he tried to keep a low profile. 

“Jail was like a big day care,” he said. “You’ve just got grown men watching you, CO’s watching you, telling you what do, what not to do, when to eat, when to sleep, how to sleep. I felt like they had control of us.

“While I was down there I was kind of walking on eggshells. I’m not going to be in their way.”

Through it all, he had basketball and a desire to play to keep him going, even though from the inside the chances of that happening seemed like a half-court shot at the buzzer. He tried to stay in playing shape in the event the chance ever came again by working out in the prison recreational facilities that are said to be better than some high school facilities.

“While I was in there I was thinking about what’s next, what I want to do,” he said. “When I’m in there I’m playing basketball. I need to go do something because the way I’m playing I’m really nice.

“When I came out here I had in the mind whenever I get the chance to play basketball again I’m going to go all out.”

While he was on the inside, authorities continued to work the case. He was later identified as one of the three leaders of the straw weapons purchasing operation and they faced a maximum cumulative sentence of 245 years in prison. That really threw him for a loop.

“I’m like what am I going to do,” he said. “In my mindset I’m going in there to do like 25 years or something. I’m like, forget it, I’m just going to go ahead and do my time, whatever I got to do, I’m going to go ahead and do it.

“Then I get in there and they’re talking like 100 and something years. Now I’m just going with the flow. They’re gonna give me whatever they give me, I’m going to go with the flow.”

As the case moved into discovery, Spencer’s team contended it didn’t look like authorities had any evidence physically tying him to anything that would put him away that long. He had high hopes.

He went to court again and this time was released from prison with time served, but he still had to serve six more months of house arrest and wear an ankle monitor the rest of his sentence.

The monitor was removed in November right before the basketball season started. That took a little to get used to. 

“The first day I got off the ankle monitor I stayed in New Jersey, but when I woke up I panicked because I’m like, dang, I’m way out here in New Jersey and I didn’t tell my PO,” he said.

He doesn’t have to worry about that now. 

New lease on life

Basketball was back on his radar. But where? And would his game hold up.

He came to Salem at the urging of Mighty Oaks players Tyrone Tolson and cousin Tyrese Fortune, who knew the kind of basketball player Spencer was convinced Green to give him a look.

“I’ve been going against him my whole life, so when we heard he could come, I said oh yeah you’ve got to come here with me, you’ve got to,” Fortune said. “It’s our last year here, so we just have to take advantage it and get a championship. We definitely want to get a championship with him.

“I used to talk to him a lot. I just said you’ve still got it in you, you’ve just got to keep going – for her (his daughter), your pop. I’ve got the same situation, my pops died, so we basically have the same type story. We’ve got to keep going to make them proud.”

They brought him for a tryout and Green liked enough of what he saw to know he could help the team he was building. And he was understanding enough of Spencer’s story to give him the shot at redemption here.

“It’s a tough situation,” Green said. “It never happened to me, but I come from that, that background, so I can relate. I’ve never done anything to that sort, but I know tons of guys, I’d seen it daily where I grew up (in North Philly).

“He made a mistake, man; people make mistakes all the time. I would never be the type of guy who’d like shun somebody who made a mistake. So, we wanted to be a helping hand to him and an extension of good. That’s how we looked at it.”

Spencer showed he was good enough to play on the college level. The question was could he get in to the program.

The Mighty Oaks didn’t necessarily have to jump through a lot of administrative hoops to get Spencer on campus but there were, Green said, “a lot of tough conversations” about his case to be had.

But once Green and then-Salem athletics director Bob Bunnell did their due diligence, school administrators “went to war” for the freshman. They went as far to request a hardship waiver for his eligibility, which the NJCAA denied reportedly due to his time enrolled at Caldwell and the elapsed time for his withdrawal.

Compliance director (and baseball coach) John Holt has a manila folder dedicated to Spencer’s case that he recently moved from the holder on top of his desk to a bottom desk drawer as a symbolic closing of the case.

“We stuck our neck out for him and thus far he’s given us a great compliment of doing what he’s supposed to have to do,” Green said.

And he doesn’t mean by delivering those double-doubles that seem to come every night. That, of course, is the bonus. What’s pleased them even more is Spencer pulled down a 3.0 GPA his first semester in the classroom.

He wasn’t eligible the first semester, but he was in school. He couldn’t participate in team activities until he got eligible so he stayed basketball ready playing in the open gym with his future teammates. It was there he hurt his ankle that set him back even more, but he was ready when it came to play his first game.

Back in the game

Finally, his opening night arrived, at home against Camden CC, a team the Mighty Oaks let get away earlier in the season. The night carried all the emotions you would have thought. The lights seemed just a little brighter. The sounds a little louder. Spencer was nervous, but excited to be back in the game.

He didn’t start and was the last uniformed player on the bench when the game began. He went in about five minutes into the first half with the Mighty Oaks down 15-4 and it didn’t take long for him to make an impact.

The first time he touched the ball he put back a missed shot for his first college bucket. Moments later he went hard to the basket, scored and hit the and one to get Salem’s comeback going.

He went for 22 points and 14 rebounds that night and along with Akeem Taylor, Tamir Powell and Tajee Jordan — all of whom also were playing their first games of the season — provided the boost to take the Mighty Oaks to the next level. Green talked throughout the early part of the season how the team would be better when those players got on the floor, and they didn’t didn’t disappoint.

“Three, four years of not playing, it was one of those great coming out parties,” Green said.

And it wasn’t just an opening night anomaly fueled by the adrenaline rush of being back on the floor. Since that night Spencer has averaged a double-double. He’s had 15 or more rebounds seven times in 10 games. He even hit his first 3-pointer since high school in last Saturday’s blowout of Luzerne.

“He’s playing w-a-a-a-y better,” Fortune said. “He’s way better than he was in high school.”

“Everything he does is like energy, effort, things that when I was playing were a prerequisite; now it’s a skill.” Green said. “It ain’t required for everybody, it’s just a skill. He’s cut from that cloth that I’m going to play hard through everything, through it all.

“He’s a lost art. He plays hard. That’s a skill now. Even the (Cal State) Bakersfield coach told him over the phone we don’t have guys who play like you.”

Bakersfield was the first Division I program to offer. Other four-year programs are said to be “very intrigued” with Spencer as a talent, just as they are with several players in the Mighty Oaks lineup. Not many are probably aware of his whole story; it’s not the type of thing you volunteer. 

The Division III schools that come around reportedly really love him, but his skill level may put him out of their reach. Still, his future lies in his transcript being qualified to match whatever offers come his way.

“I feel like if a coach would sit down and listen to my story and see how I am now, I think they’ll be like, OK, he’s different, he’s not the same,” Spencer said. “That’s not him (anymore).”

And wherever he does land, it’ll be light years away from where he’s been.

Photos by John Holt