The open gym borrows its name from Maurice “Mo” Tomlin, a beloved Brien McMahon basketball player and coach and Carver Center athletic director who died suddenly at age 42 in 2015. Tremain Gilmore, a friend and colleague of Tomlin’s sought to immortalize his friend at Carver and changed the name of the program after Tomlin’s passing.

…After drills on Mondays and Wednesdays, until 10 p.m., high school players own the court. But on Fridays, those same stars of high school squads from Norwalk and nearby cities like Stamford and Bridgeport must prove their worth.

“I tell the high school guys they can play, but it all depends on your level,” said Gilmore, or Gil, as he is known at Carver.

“It’s the older guys’ night to get more out of their run. The younger guys have to work their way up,” said Evan Kelley, 25, a Carver alum who played four years of college ball at Sacred Heart University and has played professionally overseas.

The style of play at Carver on Friday is scrappy. In the absence of a referee, players call their own fouls and dispute among themselves out-of-bounds calls and travels. Younger players thrown into the mix too soon could have their weaknesses easily exposed by the older, stronger, more savvy veterans.

Most players who have worked their way into the Friday night circuit recall coming as kids and battling against bigger, better guys. It’s something of a rite of passage at Carver.

“I used to come every day when I was younger. All the older Carver kids were better,” said Saikwon Williams, a senior forward at Brien McMahon and one of only a handful of high school players on the court that night. “But then I got better and stronger.”

Williams, now 6 feet 5 inches tall, looks not at all out of place in the pickup games. The 17-year-old has become a force on the Carver court, but he remembers well looking up to players like Gardener and Kelley.

“I think it made me want to be better,” Williams said from the baseline, where, waiting for his next turn to play, he dribbled a ball and, when the action moved to the far side of the court, snuck back on to get in a shot or two.

Because the open gyms attract players from various high schools from across much of Fairfield County, there is sometimes competitive tension. Current and former rivals often face off in the sweaty gymnasium.

“Some people take certain games more personal than others,” said Gardener, who, with Kelley, was conserving energy for a Saturday tournament in Stamford and remained on the sideline for the duration of the run.

But, Gilmore is quick to point out that in nine years, the open gym has gone off without incident and the competition remains friendly. For many, such as Singleton-Bates, the open gyms are like a reunion, where she sees people with whom she grew up with and went to high school. For others, the Carver’s atmosphere has a healing effect.

“Some people see it as therapy,” said Gilmore, works as Caver’s teen center manager and a security guard at Norwalk High School.

Ocean Woods, 20, said he comes primarily for fun, but also to play against the city’s top players.

“This is the best competition in Norwalk,” said Woods, a former Norwalk High School basketball player. “Everybody knows that the ballers come to the Carver to ball.”