Shane Young wound up in Memphis because of the mountains.

That is a true story — ask Young himself.

“I was in Teach for America,” he said. “They had you rank the top five cities you’d like to go to. I wanted to be in the mountains. I picked all mountain cities.”

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Like ... Memphis?

“I lived in Florida,” he said. “I was thinking the Smokies. Or Knoxville. It was all Tennessee to me.”

So Young put Memphis on his top five list.

“A few weeks later, I got an email,” Young said. “It said, ‘Congratulations, you have been accepted to Teach for America, and you are joining the Memphis corps.’ ”

Young still laughs when he tells the story. And he has told it about a thousand times. But it seems worth telling again now that Young — the co-founder and longtime executive director of Memphis Inner City Rugby — has decided to leave the city he once came to purely by mistake.

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Young is leaving Memphis to join his extended family in Florida. Monday was his final official day as executive director at MIRC.

But that is not a reason to lament, my fellow Memphians. MIRC has more momentum than ever.

It now serves more than 350 kids at 13 schools across the city. It has eight full-time employees, 35 part-time employees and a throng of talented volunteers. In the coming weeks, MIRC will break ground on its new facility on the grounds of what used to be Vance Middle School.

So Young — that aspiring mountain man — has lifted the program to heights he never could have dreamed. And the story of how he and his colleagues did that should serve as an inspiration to any and all.

The very name captures the unlikeliness of the enterprise.

Memphis ... Inner City Rugby?

Why not Memphis Surfers?

Or Memphis Cricket Club?

Add in the fact that Young: 1) was 22 when he arrived in the city, 2) had a full-time job as a first-year, overwhelmed elementary school teacher, and 3) didn’t know anybody in Memphis with resources or clout.

He just knew he wanted to help. And that rugby had helped him when he was growing up.

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So Young and Devin O’Brien — another first-year teacher at Teach for America — decided to start a rugby team at Kingsbury High School.

The first challenge?

Convincing the leaders at the school.

Young didn’t even teach at Kingsbury. He was teaching English as a second language in Hickory Hill.

“But Kingsbury was having a community cleanup,” Young said. “I went to it with the idea of lobbying people. As we were picking up trash, I told the principal, ‘Hey, I think I can bring rugby to your school.’ ”

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The principal decided it was worth a try. But he was appropriately worried about drawing kids to the first after-school interest meeting.

“He didn’t think kids would show up,” Young said. “He announced, ‘Come down to the cafeteria for a football meeting! We’re going to start a football team!’

“The boys were so excited. I had to break the news to them that it wasn’t football. I said, ‘You’re going to take this sport and make it your own. You’re going to tackle, you’re going to score and you’re going to grow. I’ll see you at practice next week.’”

And that is how it all began.

A program that is now a national model for lifting up kids through sports.

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MIRC has served more than 3,000 students. It has generated more than $5 million in scholarship money.

The program has been celebrated in two national documentaries, including a short Nike film about the astoundingly successful girls’ program at Freedom Prep that urged women and girls to “dream crazier.”

Throughout the decades, this city has been shaped by people with crazy dreams. Self-service grocery stores. Packages delivered overnight. Free cancer treatment for kids. An urban village where a Sears Distribution Center used to be.

In its own way, Memphis Inner City Rugby was as crazy as any of those.

Somehow, it worked.

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But let’s not skip over the hard parts. There were plenty of those.

“I’ve been burned out a dozen times trying to get this started,” Young said. “After my third year of teaching, my dad was trying to start an insurance company with my brother. I moved back to Florida to do that with them. Well, the insurance company failed, I tore my ACL, and I found myself sitting on the couch, nursing my ACL and thinking, ‘I’m going back.’ ”

Slowly, the program began to take root. Young will tell you there were a whole lot of other people involved. O’Brien, the co-founder. Brad Trotter and Andres Lopez, who started the MIRC programs at Soulsville and at Freedom Prep, respectively.

None of those people had any real clout in the city. None were even native Memphians. They arrived, saw a need and decided to do some good.

They didn’t shrug at the futility of it all. They didn’t just lament the State of Things on Nextdoor.

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They worked to improve the State of Things.

And, gradually, they built enough momentum that they started to earn broader community support.

“That’s a beautiful part of the story,” Young said. “Memphis wrapped its arms around us. The Assisi Foundation. The Hyde Foundation. I can’t name them all. The city and county stepped up. And now we’re going to have the new facility.”

Which made this the perfect time for Young to step aside. Plus, the new executive director is already in place. Andrea Wensits is another Teach for America alum who left Memphis to work in academic support for young athletes at the University of California, Berkeley.

“But I always knew I’d come back,” she said. “At Berkeley, a lot of my students were very privileged. I saw the support they were getting and I thought about my students in Memphis. Why aren’t they getting the same support? What if we gave them the same support as Division 1 football and basketball players? I wanted to take what those students were getting and bring it back here.”

Wensits returned in 2018. She has served as co-executive director of MIRC since 2022.

“She’s 10 times smarter than I am,” Young said. “I’m convinced the program isn’t just in good hands — it’s in better hands.”

As for Young, he and his wife, Rafaella, are expecting their first child in October. He will continue to serve on the MIRC board. And he will continue to lead Urban Rugby America, a program that aims to support rugby in under-resourced communities across the country.

But is he wistful?

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Of course he’s wistful.

His voice cracks even talking about it.

“I can’t imagine what I would be without Memphis,” he said. “I can say that without any exaggeration at all. I’m just so thankful and in love with the city. It made me what I am.”