At the basketball banquet commemorating the conclusion of our men’s season, Big Roy rose to the microphone, confidently commandeering our attention for one final moment. He had come to the podium to receive an award – but also to say goodbye. After four years of unyielding commitment to the Hoyas, he had earned this moment atop the summit of our Hilltop.

But after acknowledging his parents and thanking his teammates, he turned a stern gaze upon his captive audience.

“And this is it,” he warned us, “I don’t want to hear anymore of this `Roy, Roy, Roy,’ business. Not that. No more. It’s `We Are Georgetown’ that we should hear because that’s what we are. So let’s do it, one more time.”

As Roy led the crowd in one final chant, I felt more united with him as a classmate than ever before. (Yes, even more so than when he hit that three against Connecticut – though admittedly that was pretty awesome, too).

I sat there thinking that I was lucky to have had the privilege of watching someone who really gets it. The biggest man on our campus – literally and figuratively – spent his time at Georgetown etching his name into national consciousness and positioning himself to make some serious money playing basketball professionally. But what’s touching is that he did it for the name on the front of his jersey just as much as he did it for the name on the back.

It seems that practically every sportswriter with a word count to fill has been quick to question Roy’s decision to remain at Georgetown for his senior season. He’s a big guy and an easy target, and maybe from a distance it looks like he could have cost himself in the long run by staying in college.

But we Hoyas know better. Particularly we seniors about to graduate – we really understand.

Take basketball, for example. After battling through another season in the brutal Big East, there’s no way Roy is worse than he was this time a year ago.

Let’s go cura personalis for a moment, too. Look at the big picture. Scholastically, he’s walking out the door with a diploma from a world-class institution. Personally, he’s had another year to grow, mature and live among close friends.

Here’s what I think Roy realized: Even if he had been drafted first overall, no amount of money could buy him his senior year at Georgetown.

That’s nine more months of sunsets on the Village A rooftops, Saturdays at the Verizon Center and sunrises when you’ve stayed out at the party on Prospect Street a little longer than planned. It’s two semesters worth of classes on the Map of the Modern World, the Sociology of Terrorism and the History of Rock – all the while tiptoeing around the seal outside Healy. It’s 99 days of the Tombs to cap it off, with the occasional Chicken Madness sprinkled in, just because.

As this is the final column I’ll write at Georgetown, I’d better thank some people before I run out of words. I’m blessed to have parents (this is you, Christine and Jeff) who from my earliest days encouraged me to aim high. I’m grateful to my editors for keeping me honest, to our athletes for providing me with inspiration and to any open-minded reader who has grabbed a copy of THE HOYA along the way. Four years and some 50 Slow Motion Tuesdays later, I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to share my thoughts.

But here’s where Roy’s reminder rings true: It isn’t all about me. Graduation Day is a tremendous achievement filled with 1,700 some-odd individual success stories, yet it’s that collective “we” that’s most important.

I love the “We Are Georgetown” cheer, and I’ve probably written about it a couple dozen times over my columnist career. I wish I could bottle the chant up and take it with me wherever I wind up in the future. I’d buy it at our bookstore, even if it were selling for something exorbitant like $35 a syllable. It’s more alluring than a Jack the Bulldog-scented cologne. It sounds sweeter to my ears than the lasting tones of Healy’s Clock Tower.

But alas, the good feelings of our cheer are not a tangible item. It cannot be bought, sold or saved.

In the years to come, then, we’ll all just have to be extra loud about it. After all, those lucky enough to remain in D.C. can’t have a monopoly on its good feelings.

We’ll be loud enough that our classmates moving to California can join in. We’ll shake Wall Street and Bourbon Street and inspire every Hoya heading to graduate school to get out of the library and put on some blue and gray. If we really shout, our voices will carry all the way to Qatar.

And here’s what I want you to promise me. When whatever team that is lucky enough to draft Roy this June comes traveling through your town, I’m telling you to get off your ass and to get to one of his games. Sit in the rafters if you have to, but sneak down to the floor as soon as you can.

When you see Roy on the court, you know what to yell at him.

Do us all a favor.

Remind him who we are.

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