Hard road to success

Little came easy for Williams

Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court by Roy Williams with Tim Crothers; Algonquin; 286 pages; $25.95.

Nothing ever came easy for Roy Williams, so the title of his book comes with authority. His childhood was beset by family problems. Determination carried him onto the freshman basketball squad at the University of North Carolina. Hard work as a student alongside the court and as a young high school coach opened doors to his future. But none of these ever was easy.

Early on, Williams tells how his father abandoned his mother and their two small children, Frances and Roy, and how by hard and demeaning work, the mother kept them together.

Writes the coach: “Family was all that mattered to my mother. Nothing ever got in the way of that. All she cared about was providing, having a roof over our head, clothes for us to wear, and food for us to eat.”

The children took part-time jobs and learned that hard work was the only way to survive. He recounts how he worked for his Aunt Leona, a motel maid, helping her change bed linen for 25 cents a day and how he gathered and bundled kindling for sale. He writes wistfully, “That was it. There was no ball playing. Nothing that kids do. It was just survival.”

He also recalls how he saw his father change from a hard worker into an alcoholic who became abusive. The future coach confesses that he tried to run away from home to escape the fighting. In the end, when Williams was 14, he had to order his visiting and violent father out of the house for all time.

The history of alcoholism on the part of generations Williams men led to Roy never touching a drop of alcohol, even as a college student. “When I was a kid, I saw what alcohol did to my family, and I made a conscious decision that I was never going to drink. ... The idea that drinking too much could be hereditary scared me away.”

It was during his high school days, inspired by his basketball coach, Buddy Baldwin, that Williams reached a decision about his future. He studied hard to please Baldwin, who also taught history. When Baldwin told the class the test on the U.S. Constitution would be the toughest exam the students ever took, that was a challenge to Williams. He scored 100. When Baldwin told Williams he’d never before had a student score 100, Williams replied: “You talked about how tough it was going to be, so then it became a competition, and I wanted to show you I could win it. Coach, I know what I want to do. I want to be a coach.”

Replied Brown: “That doesn’t surprise me.”

During his five years as head coach at Asheville’s Owen High School, Williams spent his summers working at UNC’s youth basketball camp. Coach Dean Smith watched him closely and was so impressed he asked Williams to come to the university to be his part-time assistant. Excited and flattered, Williams went home to tell his wife, Wanda.

“I said, ‘Honey, it only pays $2,700 a year,’” Williams writes. “Wanda thought I was nuts. She said ‘That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. We’ve just built a house, our son is 15 months old, our friends and family all live here. We’re making $30,000 between the two of us, and you’re asking me to go back to North Carolina for $2,700 a year?’ She looked into my eyes, exhaled, and said, ‘When do we leave.’”

Meanwhile, back to the past for chapters on his college experience. After enrolling at UNC, Williams worked hard to prepare physically for the tryouts for the freshman basketball team. He made the team, and while he did play a few minutes in the Big Four freshman tournament, he realized that his goal was coaching not playing. He started staying after his team’s practice to watch Smith’s varsity work out. Williams made notes, and worked out his own practice plan.

There also are chapters in which Williams explains how he made the tough decisions he has faced, such as the soul searching that led to his move to coach the Jayhawks at the University of Kansas, where he stayed for 15 years before his return to Chapel Hill. Williams details the years he spent coaching there, his years at Chapel Hill and his approach to basketball. There also are tales about some of his best known players as well as those who, by hard work, did their share to add to the team’s victories.