CHARLOTTE — Starting Tuesday, local high school students can team up with Charlotte Hornets guard Sion James and his foundation to create a project that positively impacts the community.
It’s called Sync Up 4 Good. Sion sat down with Channel 9’s DaShawn Brown to explain how it works and why it matters.
DaShawn Brown: I mean, we’re so close to the actual season getting underway and already, you’re hard at work also in the community. Sync Up 4 Good. What inspired this?
Sion James: Yeah, when I was at Duke, I had a professor ... she was one of my favorite professors and one of my favorite classes I took at Duke. One of the things we did in one of the first weeks was sit and talk about what social impact ideas we had, what issues were important to us, and what kind of things we would like to do about them.
It was the perfect opportunity to do it here in Charlotte and give high school students the opportunity to run their own social impact program and learn what that looks like.
DaShawn Brown: When you were at that stage in high school, how much of that was on your mind, or even having the resources to execute an idea that you had?
Sion James: I had some stuff swirling in my head, but the reality is that I had nobody to connect the dots for me. Even if I had, I didn’t have any amount of money to put it together into some sort of program. That’s really where a lot of this comes from.
I know there are students all over the city who have all kinds of different ideas but may need somebody to connect the dots for them. We want to have the resources and the mentorship.
We have experts in every field who will be able to connect with them and help them fully put together a project.
DaShawn Brown: For the students who are watching who have interests and whose curiosity this has really piqued, what’s an example of the kind of project that this will include or can include?
Sion James: It can include all kinds of different things. For students who care about health and wellness, maybe you want to create some sort of after-school activity for your friends to participate in.
Maybe if bullying is an issue at your school, you can start some sort of anti-bullying campaign.
It can truly be whatever is important to you, and we’ll be able to help students put everything together.
DaShawn Brown: I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t go back to your class at Duke with Danny the professor. What was the project at the time that really sparked all of this for you?
Sion James: This was around the first time that our foundation did our first toy drive. The class really banded around that. Danny really banded around that to help me put some ideas together. All my classmates were huge in giving ideas, coming to support, and taking that to the next level.
DaShawn Brown: That has been one of the really cool things. As you came in last season, your rookie year, almost immediately you jumped headfirst into the community as well. Why has that been a priority for you and for all those involved through the Sion James Foundation?
Sion James: Truly, it’s just what our foundation is based on. It’s based on Christ and biblical principles, and we believe that when you’re giving, it’s supposed to match proportionally to the life that you’re living and what you’ve been given. I’ve been given so much in my life, more than I ever could have asked for.
And the more I’ve been given, the more we’re going to do around here.
DaShawn Brown: What else should students know about the Sync Up for Good Fellowship?
Sion James: There’s also one other piece of this that we didn’t mention. There are two tracks to the Sync Up for Good Fellowship. The first one is the Community Fellowship, which we just mentioned, where you’ll get up to $2,000 in a grant, plus the resources and mentorship and whatever else you need to host your project.
The other side of it is the Media Fellowship, where we’ll select three to five students around the city to follow the students, document everything they’re doing, take pictures, videos, write articles and write-ups, write social media posts, and cover the students so we can track their coverage and involve more students in this as well.
And there’s also one other piece of this that we didn’t mention. So there’s two tracks to the Sync Up for Good Fellowship. The first one is the Community Fellowship, which we just mentioned. Where you’ll get up to $2,000 in a grant - plus the resources and mentorship and whatever else you need to host your project. The other side of it is the Media Fellowship.
Where we’ll select three to five students around the city to follow the students, document everything they’re doing, take pictures, videos, write articles and write-ups, write social media posts and everything about the students so we can track their coverage and just involve more students in this as well.
DaShawn Brown: Gotta get one basketball question in here. We’re so close to the season, and throughout the offseason, we’ve seen moments where guys have taken that opportunity to gel and bond. For you, what has been the most impactful part of the offseason in really getting acquainted with this version of the 2026 Hornets?
Sion James: We were down in Miami a few weeks ago with the guys. We were playing pickup, and we were working out. That was just a really cool thing, just to get everybody together.
We went to team dinners and hung out. It’s always the away-from-basketball stuff that really gets us gelling, and then as we bring it back to the court, you start to see the impacts there.