‘It’s your turn now’: Hoops wasn’t Michael Walz’s first love, but Philly made it a passion for the Conestoga star

It was on the screened-in porch at the Walz family home in Atlanta that Michael Walz found his first athletic passion. There, a preschool-aged Walz spent hours putting with his plastic golf club set.

Walz gravitated to golf, enjoying that he could play it with his dad on the weekends. There was also plenty of competition on the junior tournament scene in Georgia, and Walz began to travel across the state playing tournament after tournament.

When he wasn’t golfing, Walz was pursuing his other passion: baseball. Walz was starring on the mound. His coaches began to tell him that he would have a chance to be a special player, the kind that becomes a celebrity within the confines of a southern town.

But just when it looked like everything was about to come together, the budding baseball star began to experience elbow pains. The rigors of Georgia baseball, which sometimes included throwing 70 pitches twice in one day, had caught up to Walz. After Walz and his family moved to Philadelphia, he got Tommy John surgery just as he was beginning eighth grade.

Walz needed to make a tough decision about his athletic future.

“It was really a matter of do I want to risk putting every other sport in jeopardy, or do I shut it down, as much as it might kill me,” Walz said. “So, I ended up shutting it down.”

Leaving baseball behind allowed Walz — who had grown into a 6-foot-3 freshman at Conestoga High — to shift his focus to basketball.

“He played middle school ball, but no club ball or AAU,” Walz’s father, Tim, said. “It wasn’t until after he had played his freshman season at that some of the local folks took interest, said, ‘I think you can be a really good basketball player,’ and introduced him to the AAU programs. From there, things really took off.”

In Walz’s second year at Conestoga, he made varsity and became a valuable rotation player. At the same time, he attracted the attention of coaches from Philly Pride AAU of the Under Armour circuit. After one of the last games of Walz’s sophomore year, a coach from Philly Pride invited him to come to one of the team’s workouts.

Growing up in Georgia, Walz was unfamiliar with the culture and competitiveness of AAU basketball. While most of his peers in the Philly basketball scene had spent years working to prepare for AAU ball, Walz wasn’t sure about it at first. The morning of his first workout, Walz was so nervous that he had to be dragged out of bed by his parents.

Whatever hesitation Walz had about AAU ball before the workout were gone afterward, as the 6-foot-11 center began to realize just how competitive Philly basketball was and how powerful it could be for his future.

“Going into this first Philly Pride workout, I was like, wow, I can compete,” Walz said. “This was something that I could pursue beyond just something to do for fun … going up against a lot of the guys in Southeastern Pa., especially the Philly area, they’re tough.

“We just didn’t understand Philly basketball … Moving up here, [basketball] is so quintessential to culture. It’s everything for a lot of these kids, and I just kind of got absorbed in it. It’s addictive, really, playing against this high-level competition and testing yourself on a daily basis.”

For the AAU coaches working with Walz, the feeling was mutual, and they began to see just how gifted he was. Brandon Williams, a Philly Pride coach who has worked with big men including Hofstra’s Christian Tomasco and Penn State signee Demetrius Lilley, ran some of those early workouts and noticed that despite Walz’s late start, the game seemed to come naturally to him.

“What jumps out is his skill level,” Williams said. “You can just see that, for as big of a guy as he was, he was very fleet-footed, had good footwork and hand-eye coordination. Even watching him shoot the basketball, he had a really natural release to him; his forearm was really compact, no wasted movement. You could just see he was more than a big guy.”

Before Walz suited up for his first AAU game, coach Kenny Jackson asked him the same question he asks every single one of the players: What are your goals? Many times, Jackson hears similar answers that all revolve around playing college basketball for a Division I blue blood program like Duke or North Carolina. Walz, however, told the coach that he just wanted to earn a Division I scholarship.

It was at that point that Jackson knew that one of his biggest priorities in working with Walz would be to teach the big man to play with confidence. The other goal, getting Walz to play a little more selfishly.

“He’s just not the typical Philly guy or Philly-area kid,” Jackson said. “He sees the good in everybody, and I guess that’s a gift and a curse on the basketball court. So, my goal with Mike was to get him a little meaner … I felt like I was trying to push him, like, ‘Mike, it’s your turn now.’”

While the on-court skills came naturally to Walz, playing aggressively wasn’t always second nature. As a result, Jackson decided to find a way to let Walz learn how to play with confidence that wouldn’t require any thinking. During the pandemic, when formal games were suspended, Jackson hosted five-on-five runs with some of the area’s best players, including Westtown teammates Dereck Lively II and Jameel Brown, who have signed with Duke and Penn State, respectively. It was in those workouts, in a trial-by-fire situation, that Walz learned how to hold his own on the court.

“It opened my eyes to I could compete with these guys,” Walz said. “You know, [Lively] is heading to Duke, and I should be scared of this guy, but going into it, I was like ‘I feel like I can really compete,’ and I’m succeeding … I think [those runs] were one of the biggest things for my development as a player and building up that confidence piece.”

Immersing himself in the competitive AAU scene also helped Walz make the jump from a sophomore rotation player at Conestoga to someone who never came off the floor as an upperclassman.

“As he grew through high school, you could see him becoming more and more aggressive,” Conestoga coach Mike Troy said. “As he got stronger, as his confidence grew, the more dominant he wanted to become while not forgetting being a complete team player.”

Even amid his development into a more aggressive, confident big man, Walz maintained the root of who he is. This past season, he not only led the Pioneers in scoring, but also in rebounds and assists. And when his recruitment rolled around and high-profile schools like Michigan State and Penn State began to call, Walz turned his focus toward finding a school that fit his values. When the University of Richmond began pursuing Walz, he started to feel that perfect fit.

“They brought the entire staff out to where I was playing and made it known that they want me and that they know how important I will be in their system,” Walz said. “The system they play is perfect for me …I know I can be the best player I can be in their system.”

Last summer, Spiders coach Chris Mooney extended an offer to Walz. A month later, Walz committed to Richmond. For the Philadelphia native Mooney, whose offense requires big men to shoot and make plays, landing Walz meant landing a player who could come in and compete for minutes from day one.

“He’s going to have a chance to compete for a spot for sure,” Mooney said. “We lost four seniors — three who started — so there’s opportunity.”

After spending much of his basketball career trying to prove to himself that he had what it took to compete with the best, Walz is ready to show others the same at Richmond.

“They said, ‘You’re going to have to work hard, but I think you can really succeed at Richmond,’ and I was like, ‘You know, I think you’re right.’”