When Jareem Gunter was a junior at Lincoln University of Missouri in 2006, his liver failed. Doctors told him he had two months to live. He was 20 years old, far from his home in Antioch, California, and suddenly facing a question most college students never have to ask.

He survived. And everything that followed, the setbacks, the detours, the unlikely pivots, would eventually lead him to build something extraordinary.

Today, Gunter is the founder of Dream Team, the only free AAU basketball program in California. Based in Antioch, he runs an organization that serves roughly 30 young men ages 10 to 14, operates an after-school program, hosts weekly Manhood Mondays workshops and has earned national recognition as a coach. About 95% of the boys in the program do not have fathers in the home.

He does it all without collecting a paycheck. "I do about 45 to 50 hours a week with this program," he said. "Straight volunteer."

Members of the Dream Team youth basketball program pose together during a team event.

Roots at Lincoln
Gunter came to Lincoln from Northern California to play baseball, a culture shock he still laughs about. He called his parents his first year, begging to come home. Missouri was cold, unfamiliar and a long way from everything he knew.

But something shifted. Away from home for the first time, he began figuring out who he was. He started cutting hair in the dorms, and what began as a side hustle became something more. Students trusted him with more than a haircut. They talked. He listened. He built relationships, one chair at a time, sometimes cutting 20 or 30 heads on a single Friday while others went out for the night.

"I learned who I was," he said. "That's when I felt like I became a man."

Looking back, it's easy to see the throughline. The young man who built trust in a dorm room in Jefferson City grew into a coach and mentor that entire families rely on today.

His time at Lincoln was cut short when a supplement he was taking, one that contained a steroid he was unaware of, caused his liver to fail. After surviving the medical crisis, he went on to speak before Congress as part of a broader conversation about NCAA drug testing and supplement regulation, becoming, as he described it, "the poster person" for the issue.

Building Dream Team
Years later, Gunter was working as a principal when he started attending his son's AAU basketball practices. What he saw concerned him: programs focused almost exclusively on the game, with little attention to the young men playing it.

He went home and started drafting something different.

His original vision was a youth center for Antioch, a city he described as underserved and struggling with violence. When the city told him it didn't have the budget for a full center, the mayor offered $25,000 to launch a program of his choosing. Gunter chose basketball and quickly discovered that $25,000 disappears fast when you're trying to do things right.

"That $25,000 was gone in about a week and a half," he said.

He and his wife made up the difference out of pocket. They kept going. A community member contributed $50,000 the second year. The program grew.

Dream Team now runs year-round and extends well beyond basketball. Central to the program are Manhood Mondays, weekly workshops where Gunter works through a curriculum rooted in "The Man Book," a guide he wrote in 2016 that sold nearly 30,000 copies in its first three months.* The sessions cover accountability, respect, how to speak to parents and even how to conduct yourself at a restaurant. The program also runs educational learning events, rock climbing, hiking, adventure courses, designed to give kids experiences and conversations they wouldn't otherwise have.

Gunter's work with young men caught the attention of the Obama Foundation, which selected him as one of 24 educators across the country identified as leaders in working with Black boys. He was also recently featured on "The Jennifer Hudson Show," where Hudson surprised him with an emotional video tribute from his players.

The Work Behind the Numbers
One of Dream Team's most telling statistics is deceptively simple: when Gunter started the program, the group's collective GPA hovered around 1.4. Today, it's around 3.5, a threshold that opens doors to college eligibility, scholarships and opportunities that were once out of reach.

He attributes that to proximity and accountability. When a kid gets in trouble at school, the principal doesn't always call the parents. Sometimes they call Gunter. When parents are unsure whether to let their son go out with friends after a mistake, they call Gunter. He is, as he put it plainly, "just a dad that cares."

That care has been tested in real terms. He recalled a moment when he picked up one of his players, a young man named Devonte whose mother, father and grandmother had all been incarcerated at various points, from practice. Two minutes after they drove away, the house next door was riddled with gunfire.

"If he would have been outside playing basketball," Gunter said, "he would have been getting shot up."

Devonte came to the program at age 9 with a GPA below 1.0. Gunter and his wife drove him to school every day for an entire year, made sure he ate, and kept him close. He is now 12 and approaching a 4.0.

"We took him under our wing," Gunter said.

Jareem Gunter with a Dream Team player.

National Recognition
In 2025, Gunter was named national coach of the yearby TeamSnap, selected from a pool of roughly 5 million coaches nominated by their players. A film crew followed his team around Antioch for more than a week. The Golden State Warriors and San Francisco Giants took notice, inviting the program to games and, in the Giants' case, putting Gunter and his father on opposite sides of the field as honorary ball crew, a moment he calls one of the best of his life.

Warriors star Stephen Curry called one of Gunter's players out of the crowd before a game for a catch. The moment went viral.

But when asked what has meant the most, Gunter returned to the coach of the year honor.

"My boys were there," he said. "I was crying the whole time trying to keep it together. That was the one."

The lessons that began in a dorm room in Jefferson City now echo on national stages.

What's Next
Dream Team's first class of players who entered the program in fifth or sixth grade are now heading to high school, a transition Gunter has been preparing them for with a custom workbook and visits to prospective schools. A girls' program is also in development.

He is doing all of this while running his own consulting company that trains school principals across the East Bay city of Brentwood, California, the work he describes as his actual paying job.

Gunter said he still wants to bring his family back to Jefferson City someday, to show them the place that shaped him more than he ever expected.

"Lincoln probably changed my life more than anything else I've ever been to," he said.

The work continues, and the next chapter is being written now.

To learn more about Dream Team or to support the program, visit the Dream Team website.

* Anyone interested in the material can contact Jareem for more information.