TAMPA, Fla. — A former basketball star who got his start at the Boys & Girls Club has gone full circle.

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Ricky Gallon returned to the club to pay it forward and help young kids, the same way the club helped him all those years ago.

At the Wilbert Davis Branch Boys & Girls Club in Tampa, Spectrum News met Gallon, who is working as a community liaison for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Tampa Bay.

He has been working with the Boys & Girls Clubs since 1995. But he says it really all began when he was a little boy and his first visit to the West Tampa Boys Club.

It was love at first sight.

“So I get to the club, I’m walking in and it was just like, ‘I’m coming home,’” Gallon said. “I had never been in the building before. I walked through the door and it was just something special.”

Gallon remembers seeing kids playing ping pong and foosball and just having fun. That, he said, was when his “club-kid” days began.

He liked sports, especially basketball, and some years later played at Jefferson High School, leading his team to the 1974 state basketball championship.

He earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Louisville and in 1978, he made local history as the first basketball player from Tampa to be drafted into the NBA — by the then Buffalo Braves.

He played for three years in the NBA and another 17 in Europe before returning home to Tampa — married with two kids and looking for a job. He thought, "Maybe the Boys & Girls Clubs?"

“I was looking for something, you know, I wanted to be a coach or a teacher because I felt like I had something to give back,” Gallon said. “My mom always taught us about sharing.”

He was hired, and just like that, his days with the Boys & Girls Clubs continued from his “club-kid” days.

Gallon said the club is not just about kids, though.

“It’s not just with the kids,” he said. “They work with the whole family in the community, and that makes a difference and parents rely on that.”

His work has included spreading the Boys & Girls Clubs of Tampa Bay word with many hundreds of people.

“It really makes you see what’s important,” Gallon said. “The youth keep you humble. They let you know what’s important.

“For me, it’s one of the reasons why I’m here," he said. "I would love to stay as long as I’m able to be a value to the organization.”