CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Meet Alexander Green III, or Al, as he's known around Lesley.

A Baton Rouge, La., native and former Lesley University basketball player, Al did something he never really pictured himself doing in a place he never envisioned.

"It's still like a dream," he said. "To grow up in a city I grew up in and in the neighborhood I grew up in. Most of my friends didn't finish college or even high school."

Green completed both, as his long, winding track to matriculation ended when he received his degree from Lesley in May. Furthermore, he wasn't just honored by the National Consortium for Academics in Sports, the NCAS created an award for him.

Green and Lesley University director of student-athlete academic support Christy Belisle were honored as the first recipients of the NCAS Founder's Award. The new award created on behalf of Green and Belisle will be handed out annually to a student-athlete and his or her mentor. To Green, given his road to graduation, the thought of an award is surreal.

"All I knew is that I wanted to play ball," Green said on enrolling in Lesley in 2007. However, contrary to his former institutions, basketball came with a caveat: the classroom comes first.

That's where Belisle entered the picture.

"He was going to learn how to put school first and then play ball," Belisle said. Given his track record of having attended three different institutions in three years prior to Lesley, the extent to which Belisle insisted Green focus on academics came as somewhat of a shock to him.

"They told me I had to sit out my first year," he said, "so that was very hard for me."

Without basketball for the first time but with the company of those who wanted to see him succeed as a student, Green, who was now volunteering as the basketball team's manager, soon came to another stunning realization.

"It was November. We had a basketball game. We were playing a school called Regis," he recollected. "That afternoon, I failed my anatomy exam. It was the first time I felt academics were more important to me."

Knowing he had Belisle at his side, this triggered a reaction that would turn around Al's studies - and get him back on the court.

"He came in and asked if he could close my door," Belisle said, recalling what turned out to be the pivotal time in Green's tenure."He said this is the first time anyone has ever cared about my school. Lesley is a place that really values those things."

"From that point on, he was there every morning when I showed up," Belisle said. "To him, it wasn't about just passing anymore. He was willing to do things the average college student wan't ready to do."

"Her office opened at 9 a.m.," Green said, "and I used to get there at 9 or before she got there."

Specifically, Al credits Belisle for teaching how the hardwood relates to the classroom.

"She definitely helped me realize at the end of the day, you need your education to fall back on," Green said. "Just as hard as I worked on the court, I worked in the classroom," a sentiment with which his mentor agreed.

"I think helping him understand a skill that he had on the court like work ethic," Belisle said, "to take those same principles and apply them to the classroom, that he could take those personally and apply them academically."

For the business management major with a specialization in sports management, the rest was history.

"My parents really wanted to see me graduate because my brother and sister didn't," he said, citing a different philosophy on academics in his native Louisiana.

"I grew up in the South. It's a lot different down there."

Back in Boston, South is where Green and Lesley men's head basketball coach Donald Morris would fly to accept Green's NCAS Founder's Award, with Morris appearing on Belisle's behalf. Green and Morris accepted the inaugural Founder's Award at the annual NCAS Giant Steps Banquet, where Green found himself rubbing elbows with Olympic legends.

He met 1968 American medalists and civil rights activists Tommy Smith and John Carlos, a touching event that topped off an honorable experience for the Lesley grad.

"I was in awe," Green said of meeting Smith and Carlos. "That's what really touched me, meeting these guys. John Carlos told me, his exact words were, 'Young man, God has something more for you.'"

That something more, at least in the short term, was an award created in his and his mentor's honor.

"I think awards like this showcase what we work for, what we strive towards," Belisle said.

Said Green, "To see that you're putting in an effort in academics and for someone to see that you're doing that well, that means a lot to me."

After a journey that took Green from Baton Rouge to colleges in Mississippi, Nebraska, and Arkansas before Lesley, thanks to his tireless work with his mentor, it was the NCAS that took notice of him, congratulating him and Belisle in a way the organization never rewarded anyone before.

Green calls himself blessed. But like John Carlos said, for Green, his blessing is only the beginning.