Utah Prep got the top basketball recruit in the country — and then fell behind on its bills

Hurricane • At the end of a long dirt road, a few flickering outdoor lights struggle to illuminate the biggest star in high school basketball today.

AJ Dybantsa will be on any college campus he chooses a year from now.

A year after that, almost certainly the NBA.

On this October night, he’s talking with his father and leaning against a white minivan parked on the edge of Utah Prep Academy’s 55-acre campus, where the gym is unfinished and wires still dangle from the weight room’s exposed ceiling.

AJ came here to be the first face of an international academy with designs on producing top-tier college recruits in basketball, golf, tennis and other sports. “A lot of schools offered him money,” his father Ace Dybantsa said when AJ first visited Utah in June. “It’s better here.”

And AJ is still here, even though that oasis in the southern Utah desert hasn’t yet materialized:

• Utah Prep co-founder Brent Woodson was forced out, the school’s headmaster said, after the school fell behind on construction and bills.

• Every athletic program except basketball has been cut, Headmaster Adam Cheney added.

• The $70,000 tuition Woodson said he hoped to charge has been slashed in half because Cheney said it was so unrealistic.

• Buildings, including the gym that was supposed to be ready by January, remain unfinished.

This isn’t what Woodson envisioned or was promising during a tour in June, two months before the first classes started in Hurricane.

The campus, the former home of Diamond Ranch Academy, had been closed since the state shut it down in August 2023 following the death of a student at the residential treatment center.

Months later, Diamond Ranch was acquired by Utah property investor Justin Mabey, a Brigham Young University grad who co-founded hotel development company East Avenue. The land was transferred to Mabey’s Sand Red Rock LLC in December 2023, Washington County property records show, and in January he applied for a license to open a new teen treatment center there, listing himself as its owner.

But two months later, Mabey had withdrawn the application following media reports about the number of former Diamond Ranch employees involved in the proposed center — including Cheney, its would-be executive director. The father of the student who collapsed and died at Diamond Ranch from an infection told Fox 13 Seattle that Cheney had been in charge of his daughter’s care, but Cheney, who is a licensed social worker, was never disciplined by state licensers or charged with any crime. He is not being sued by the family, who has filed a civil suit against Diamond Ranch and other workers.

Woodson arranged to rent the site from Mabey, he said, and Utah Prep became a blend of former Diamond Ranch staff and Woodson’s partners from the shuttered Real Salt Lake Basketball Academy.

As Woodson opened the doors to the former high school in June, a pair of lizards scurried across the floor. The school building was empty aside from a few critters and unopened Amazon packages.

Woodson, a Utah businessman and BYU alum who says he built his wealth in New York, saw in the shuttered campus a blank canvas. At Utah Prep Academy, Woodson said, he would create a high school athletic program that would rival the famed IMG Academy in Florida, a pipeline to professional sports that claims tennis star Andre Agassi, five-time MLB all-star Joey Votto and Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George among its alumni.

“I think we can do better, frankly,” Woodson said.

He envisioned an elite school where the steep annual tuition would fund a grandiose athletic mission. Woodson said he planned on signing 40 of the best basketball recruits in the world and building four nationally ranked teams — one full of the best international prospects, named Team FIBA for the sport’s international governing body, and three full of the best U.S. prospects.

Utah Prep would also have golf, volleyball, baseball, tennis and rugby programs led by high-profile coaches, he said. On the southern Utah campus, the school would build a basketball arena and a Marriott hotel where college recruiters would stay.

Woodson sold that vision to Ace when they first met at a Las Vegas basketball tournament in March.

The seven-figure high schooler

After AJ grew nine inches in middle school and it became clear he had a future in basketball, Ace knew he had to learn the game himself on a different level.

He had moved from France to Boston in 1989 to learn English and study architecture at a community college, but took a break from school to earn money and never went back. He worked as a police officer at Boston University for 19 years and a county sheriff’s deputy for seven.

He married his wife Chelsea and they had two daughters, with AJ born in between. Ace stepped away from law enforcement when his son started traveling for basketball with a competitive Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) team around seventh grade.

“I didn’t quite understand the game,” Ace admitted. But he soon figured it out.

People came to him with six-figure offers to change AAU programs when AJ was an eighth grader. By the time he went to high school, those deals went up to seven figures, Ace said.

Dozens of agents offered to broker the deals. Ace said no. “We made decisions for our son. My son trusts me,” said Ace. The father said he was told that “most 14- and 15-year-old kids don’t listen to their parents. … My wife is Jamaican. We don’t run the house like that.”

By the summer before his son’s sophomore year, Ace felt comfortable in the recruiting game. Famous agents like Rich Paul, the Klutch Sports CEO who represents LeBron James, were calling and texting, he said. Ace said he flew his son out to Los Angeles to work out with NBA stars such as James, Kevin Durant, Tyrese Maxey and more.

That year the Dybantsas took an offer and moved from Massachusetts to California. The family enrolled AJ at Prolific Prep, a top-ranked basketball academy in Napa for his sophomore year. But Ace was already open to other possibilities.

“You have to have leverage,” he said. “When Prolific Prep wanted to sign a two-year deal I said, ‘Let’s sign a one-year deal and see what happens.’”

There were schools, Ace said, that offered the Dybantsas over $1 million to play one year. One of the most famous high school basketball coaches in the country, Kevin Boyle, called from the locker room right after his private Florida school Montverde won a national title, Ace said.

But Woodson offered a partnership beyond a single season in something much larger than basketball.

‘AJ will keep buying us students’

When Woodson first introduced himself to Ace, he had just started pitching the next phase of Utah Prep. He already had commitments to attend from a few high-profile recruits, he said, such as top 50 AAU guard JJ Mandaquit, who had played for the now-shuttered RSL Basketball Academy.

And by then, Woodson had a new plan for the site — with former Real Salt Lake Basketball Academy leaders who had lost their jobs when it closed in 2022. David Blitzer and Ryan Smith’s Smith Entertainment Group had acquired the Herriman academy when they bought Real Salt Lake, and NBA rules prohibited them from owning a youth basketball academy.

Former RSL Academy coach Shane Hayden had created Utah Prep Sports Academy in June 2023, according to Utah Department of Commerce records, and the program had played a first year while partnered with the private Mount Vernon Academy in Murray.

But Utah Prep was exploring how to expand, Hayden told the Utah HS Hoops Podcast this spring, and in January, connections in St. George suggested exploring the empty Diamond Ranch. “We went over, checked it out,” said Hayden, listed as founder on Utah Prep’s website, “ … found the new owner of the place and, and, you know, built a relationship really fast.”

But Woodson wanted somebody to give his dream instant credibility, he said. Snagging AJ would mean Utah Prep would be invited to the top showcases in the sport, bringing more national attention to the startup academy.

The businessman said he gave Ace an ownership stake in the school. The men also planned a $600,000 deal to use AJ’s name, image and likeness. In exchange, AJ agreed he would start his senior year in August at Utah Prep to become the headliner of a new national powerhouse.

“I like what they are building. That’s why I am here,” Ace told The Salt Lake Tribune during their June tour of the campus. “I believe in Brent. I know he talks a lot, but he delivers.”

Woodson narrated his vision. He passed by the old gymnasium — still lined with logos from Diamond Ranch — and explained how he’d add a state-of-the-art locker room and training center fit for the top athletes in the world. He went outside, to an unfinished building, and said it would be an arena by January. The building next to it, mostly used for storage then, would eventually be a world-class hotel. He had plans to build another 3,500-seat arena closer to Salt Lake that would host major tournaments the team played in.

He said he was in talks with Goran Ivanišević, Novak Djokovic’s tennis coach, to come on as the head of the tennis academy. He said famous pitcher Pedro Martinez was going to help establish a baseball program. Leonard Armato, Shaquille O’Neal’s former agent, was interested in helping with volleyball.

Between lulls in the conversation, he’d weave in the plans that weren’t visible: student trips to the Vatican and the United Nations. Days at the World Bank and programs on “human flourishing.” His vision was to have academic-track students who were the world’s future leaders shoulder to shoulder with the world’s next top athletes.

There would be a satellite campus on the south shore of Haiti, Woodson said. Heads of state would send their kids there, he predicted, and the two campuses would exchange students.

Basketball would jump-start the entire project and shine a light on Utah Prep’s mission, Woodson said. And what better spotlight than bringing in the best high school player in the world?

“AJ will keep buying us students,” Woodson said in June. “That is our business plan. … I told Ace, we want to partner with you long-term. Your kid is in college or the NBA, and he calls up a kid for us and says, ‘Hey, come to my dad’s school,’ it is going to drive traffic.”

AJ had no problem putting his faith in his father. “When I knew I was transferring, I just let him handle everything,” he said.

Ace knew it was a risk. When he toured the campus, he saw the uncompleted projects, too. But he was convinced his son could be the difference for a school looking to be put on the map.

“AJ is a known [entity],” he said. “Utah will be a known [entity] soon too. … We are going to shock the world. Only me and Brent know.”

‘We’re business people’

With his lifetime of business experience and impressive credentials, Woodson said, he was the right man to build this new high school recruiting empire.

“A lot of people [in the prep school business] are basketball people doing business,” Woodson said as he walked the Dybantsas and other Utah Prep players around the campus. “We’re business people doing basketball.

In a separate interview that week, Woodson said he moved to New York to become a banker and work in marketing after he graduated from BYU. He did business in 52 different countries, he said, and one connection led to him working for Saudi Arabian Prince Abdulaziz bin Saud Al Saud. He held the prince’s power of attorney, Woodson said, and controlled $120 million of his assets on the Red Sea.

The prince is “the blood brother of the king of Saudi Arabia,” he said. “I would go to London twice a month to do deals” for him.

Woodson also said he worked with retired baseball star Pedro Martinez to bring Major League Baseball to the Dominican Republic around 2009. They were building a beachfront, residential stadium there, he said, but it fell apart and he was cut out of a $50 million deal. Martinez’s agent did not respond to a request for comment.

In February, The Daily Beast reported a more recent failed deal. Claiming connections to the Saudi royal family, Woodson had partnered with a former operative with Utah nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad to plan a controversial resort on the remote Haitian island of Ile-à-Vache, the outlet said.

Construction on the 2019 proposal had since stalled, the news site reported, and the only connection The Daily Beast could find between Woodson and the Persian Gulf came from a Utah Department of Commerce investigator’s affidavit in 2006. That investigator said Woodson had received money back then for what The Daily Beast said was a “Middle Eastern investment from a pair of securities fraudsters.” Woodson pleaded ignorance of the funds’ origin, the news site reported, and was not charged with any wrongdoing.

Cheney, the former Diamond Ranch therapist turned Utah Prep headmaster, said he didn’t see Woodson’s claims of financial expertise translate into benefits for the brand-new academy.

By the time school started, Woodson had not brought in the big name coaches or started work on the arena he said would be built by January. He was also behind on bills, Cheney said.

“I think when we have someone that has these big ideas and shares these big stories, it’s beautiful. That’s great if there’s substance,” the headmaster said. “We need to know that when we make a promise, we will back that promise up. And we will accomplish what we say we will do. Probably one of the most important things to me is honesty.”

In August, Woodson, the Dybantsas and Utah Prep flew to Shanghai to face some of the best young players in the world. They beat up on teams from Canada and Serbia. They finished the tournament hanging 95 points on the Chinese national team where AJ had 32 points and was named the most valuable player.

But while the boys were hooping, turmoil stirred behind the scenes.

Woodson talked late into the night with Ace and the rest of the leadership team, describing more grandiose plans, Cheney said. But they were uncomfortable pressing forward when the original promises had not yet been met.

“We just realized it was different paths that we were going down,” Cheney said.

After returning from China, Cheney and Ace were among those who asked Woodson to step down from the school’s leadership group, Cheney said. Woodson had fallen behind on rent and other payments, Cheney said.

In the fallout, Mabey became the registered principal of Utah Prep in September. Mabey did not respond to a request for an interview.

Under new leadership, the school’s plans have been scaled back. There are only 38 students total, Cheney said, almost all of them athletes. The school has 18 staffers, most of them coaches.

Instead of an array of athletic programs, the school focuses only on basketball. Instead of four teams, there are only three right now. Tuition has been cut to $35,000.

“If somebody wants to pay me $75,000 to come, you send them my direction,” Cheney said. “Realistically, it just wasn’t possible.”

A new dream for Utah Prep

When you visit Utah Prep today, the alley behind the baseball field is filled with hundreds of shelter tents that were supposed to go to Haiti.

Once a pillar of Woodson’s outreach program to the island — an idea worth $2 million, he said — they are now being sold for $60 a pop by students in an Intro to Business course.

The school’s arena won’t be built, Cheney said. Neither will the hotel.

“The vision before was to go with a dream. The vision now is to build a dream,” the school’s headmaster said. “We’ve tried to make everything realistic and attainable. … I don’t have any trees growing money outside.”

What they do have is AJ Dybantsa — the No. 1 recruit in the country is still playing for Utah Prep during his senior season.

At one point, Cheney worried the star athlete would leave southern Utah before the school year began. “That was a worry for a bit,” the headmaster said. “It is not anymore. We are solid.”

Ace is still a partner and a significant part of the future decision-making process, Cheney said. “Ace was involved in the decision to get Brett out.”

Despite the setbacks, Ace said that October night outside Utah Prep, “it’s been good.” Asked about Woodson’s departure, Ace said: “One day he was gone, poof.” Later he added, “If I was unhappy, would AJ still be there?”

The school’s team is playing a national schedule. AJ has been featured on ESPN, beating the Boozer twins — two of the top recruits in the country and the sons of former Utah Jazz great Carlos Boozer — and Utah Prep has several more nationally televised games in the weeks ahead.

Last week, some of the top high school programs in the country played in Pleasant Grove. AJ scored 18 points to help Utah Prep beat the No. 1 ranked Link Academy from Missouri. The next day, he shared the gym with the IMG Academy that Woodson once saw as a model for Utah Prep.

“That’s what you want to do,” AJ said. “I play basketball to play … the best competition.”

His star seems destined to keep rising.

In November, AJ signed a deal with Nike for a reported $4 million. This month, he plans to announce his college decision, and is expected to be paid millions more no matter where he chooses to go.

“In college, [I want to play] in March Madness, Final Four,” he said. “And then in the NBA, NBA Finals.”

What happens to Utah Prep after he leaves remains to be seen.