Williams brings optimistic outlook, hopes to restore championship vision, in return as Trinity boys hoops coach

“You need glasses!” (clap, clap… clap, clap, clap) 

It’s not uncommon to hear some playful jibes and jeers out of the peanut gallery at high school basketball games questioning the eyesight of officials after a controversial call. 

Trinity head coach Dr. John Williams, in the heat of the competition, has to be careful not to join in, as in his case, the clever ribbing might technically be considered malpractice.

The local opthalmologist, in recent years, has become as well known for his basketball knowledge as his medical expertise over a couple of temporary stints leading the Crusader boys as a side gig to eye doctoring. His first, spanning the full 2023 season, would produce the program’s first state championship. The next year, he’d return briefly during the playoffs of 2024 as interim head coach to oversee another run to the title game, and runner-up finish. 

After fully stepping away for a season, Williams is now back to take over the job on a permanent basis. And, humorously, he’ll have to continue watching those words toward the refs, lest any comments veering onto the subject of their vision be mistaken for a professional opinion. 

His dual focus is an unusual one in an industry where bi-vocational coaches, at smaller and private high schools, aren’t at all out of the ordinary. Medicine just isn’t a profession you typically see on the other side of a career crossover. 

Contributing his best to each of the demanding occupations remains a challenge that he’s learned to embrace since realizing how essential both are to giving life its full value. 

“I love to coach, I love being an eye doctor and I work hard at both of them,” Williams said. “I have a very understanding wife who allows me to bounce back and forth between those two things, and a very understanding family. And then I have a very understanding work family. I have a partner now who believes in what the Lord is calling me to do, and he believes with me that coaching is part of that.

“When you have someone you’re in business with who believes in that and believes in that vision the Lord is giving you, that calling on your life, then you can make things work out.” 

He seemed right back at home pacing the sideline of Clyde Evans Fieldhouse, directing practices in his familiar style, as the Crusaders convened for their first set of summer workouts earlier this month. 

This weeknight session, in particular, was every bit as businesslike as those he’s become known for. It began with some handshakes and a hugs to greet each player they huddled up for some instructions and a word of prayer, then continued with a series of fast-break and press-break drills, which Williams observed rather quietly, though interjecting with some pointers after every few reps. 

His practice and game demeanor, for the most part, stays around this average at even-keel. But at plenty of points when the moment calls for it, he gets plenty fired-up.  

“The best thing about him as a coach was he was always hype before and after a game,” said former player Will George. “There were multiple times where he almost hit his head on the ceiling after a big win, and it was awesome.” 

After parting ways with previous head coach Nolan Gottlieb (who’s landed in a new position at Bleckley County) following his lone season at the helm, Trinity turned quickly to Williams in its search this past March, eyeing some stability that’s been in short supply for the program in the recent past. 

Continual turnover in the coaching ranks over the last decade has seen at least seven different head coaches serve, the unrelated Paul Williams (from 2019-22) still the only one to remain in place for consecutive seasons. 

But until a break this past year, Dr. Williams had also been the steadiest constant, as a member of the staff in some capacity since 2018. 

Try as either side might to go in a different direction, both came back to each other as the only true fit. 

“His dedication to excellence, mentorship, and faith aligns perfectly with our mission at Trinity Christian School,” headmaster Larry Collins said in a statement announcing the hire earlier this year. “We are confident that he will continue to build a program that not only achieves success on the court but also instills lifelong values in our student-athletes.”

Double vision… 

For Williams, perfecting the balancing act that is caring for hundreds of area patients while also leading a high school basketball team has taken years of practice, and some dedicated time management evident from very early on… in an example from only his second season as an assistant coach back in January of 2020. 

While traveling with the Crusaders to St. Simons for a game at Frederica Academy, he could be seen posted up for most of a 3-hour bus ride on one of the first few rows, poring over patients’ radiology scans on an iPad in between intermittent basketball conversations with other members of the staff. 

The fast-paced practice of eye surgery is one that’s tough to break away from. And making sure all bases are covered when he does slip out to tend to basketball responsibilities requires the cooperation and understanding of a lot of people he works with. 

Williams, who specializes in corneal disease and cataract procedures, has practiced with Dublin Eye Associates since 2006. 

Originally from McRae, he studied optometry at UAB in the late ’90s before attaining his M.D. at the Medical College of Georgia and spending several years out in Texas for an internship and residency at Baylor University’s Scott and White Hospital, then in Florida during a fellowship at St. Luke’s Cataract and Laser Institute. 

But he and wife Katharine, along with children Emma Kate (Trinity, class of 2021), Henry (’23) and Lauren (’25) have called Dublin home since returning to their native state.  

The bustling clinic and surgery center has undergone a good bit of recent change with the retirement of a handful of longtime physicians. And the hectic transition period, coming right around the time of Williams’ first head coaching stint, made a long-term commitment unrealistic. 

But a change to those circumstances, with the addition of several new providers to the team in the past year or so, has helped reopen the possibility. So when the opportunity arose for a potential return this spring, he was able to take it with a greater deal of clarity on how the two jobs can go hand-in-hand. 

Whether during the summer or the season itself, Williams puts in a full day at the office before heading across town to run practice at about 6 p.m. 

It’s a slightly unconventional arrangement for players, who have about three hours of downtime between the end of the school day and the start of workouts, and that requires some compromise on the part of all parties. 

“That’s what it has to be for us to make this thing happen,” Williams said. “For them to be able to agree to that and have that understanding, and have the tremendous understanding from my work family and family at home is the way we’re able to pull this thing off. The administration at Trinity, Coach (Bruce) Lane and Dr. Collins, they’re fantastic and so supportive. But they have been so gracious in allowing us to do it this way, too.” 

An eye-opening experience… 

Williams’ roots in basketball run deep, all the way to some playing days during high school, where he was a standout in multiple sports at the now-defunct Ocmulgee Academy, a noted GISA hoops powerhouse in its day. 

But coaching the sport never really crossed his radar before he got a comparatively low-key first taste of it helping local colleague Brian Brown, a high school coach by trade, lead the Upward team of their sons Henry and Tucker as third graders. 

The stakes and pressure gradually ramped up as the two coaches progressed to a true rec league the next year, with competition in the DLCRA offering a “rude awakening of what it was really like to play basketball, and be pressed full-court,” Williams related. 

“When we got to Oconee (gym), that’s when us as coaches learned about traps, the full-court press, how to spread the court,” Brown said. 

Williams would continue to follow Henry as a parent-coach through elementary and middle school at Trinity, originally as an assistant to the veteran Tim Traxler on the sidelines of its “Junior Pro” team, then as head coach himself for two years that both ended with the Crusaders in first place of the league. 

“That’s when I really started getting a bug to, first off, see Henry and the other kids get better, but also to see Trinity do well,” he said. 

That led to a chance to join the varsity staff, at the invitation of former Dublin High School head coach Clinton Thomas when he was picked to fill the school’s head coaching vacancy in 2018, the same year Henry entered eighth grade. 

Dr. Williams would remain as a right-hand man under Paul Williams (who came to Trinity after previous work locally at West Laurens and Dublin) in his three years at the helm to follow, before the opportunity to take over as head coach came along in 2023. 

Learning under both former state champions, he said, “really helped shape and mold who I am as a coach.” 

All the while, he also coached Henry’s AAU team, which traveled in- and out-of-state to compete during the off months. 

“I learned a lot going against a lot of different teams, and then never knowing who you were going to have on a given weekend, and having to prepare that team and get ’em together and figure out real quick like what your strengths and weaknesses were, and put ’em in a tournament and try to do well,” he said. 

Some of the most insightful learning experiences came toting his kids to college basketball camps, notably several run by Buzz Williams at both Virginia Tech and Texas A&M. 

“I’d take a week or two off during the summer, and we’d go to basketball camps and I’d just sit and listen to those coaches and watch all the drills, and then I’d watch them, how they handled their players, I’d come back to the team practices later that evening,” he said. “I did a lot of observing over the years of college coaches, and got to know some of them.”  

It all helped satisfy a relentless curiosity for how to do the job just a little bit better that has reshaped the way he watches the game. 

During March Madness on a given year, he’ll use his phone to record a hundred or more video clips of games, capturing sets, inbound plays and other concepts that catch his eye as thought-provoking, or something Trinity could potentially reinvent as its own. 

Bringing his knowledge of the game up to a level needed to navigate the high school basketball landscape was important, though from the beginning, the proverbial bedside manner proved to be as critical to success as a coach as it was in medicine. 

Communication, relationships and authenticity – all things completely unrelated to Xs and Os – were what made Williams such a natural leader of young athletes. 

“His character, his work ethic, his love for the kids and his Christian witness, tying it all back to doing the right thing and working hard, made him a very successful doctor today and even more as a coach,” Brown said. “I just saw, more than anything, his passion for basketball, and he was able to take that energy and relay it to the kids.” 

All along the way, what’s the clearest lesson those experiences have taught about what it takes to be successful in coaching? 

“I think always humbling yourself and knowing that you’ve always got a lot to learn, and never stop learning,” Williams said. “Always continue to learn more and more about the game.” 

Hindsight is 20/23… 

Stepping in to fill Trinity’s head coaching vacancy ahead of that fateful season was not Williams’ original plan. 

But little progress, by early summer, in the school’s search for a permanent option after a coaching change, prompted him to take the job. That, along with a deeply held desire to help the incoming team – on which Henry was a rising senior  – achieve some elite potential that he firmly believed in. 

“We just felt like the Lord had a special season for those guys,” Williams said. “Those guys had a high level of character and integrity, and we knew the Lord was going to do something great with those guys through that, because they were bought in, they were trying to do things the right way and they were believing in what we were telling them and trying to encourage them to do.” 

The Crusaders had scratched the surface of a few memorable seasons the four years leading up, but were beset by untimely injuries and postseason misfortunes that left them on the verge of the breakthrough they would finally reach, en route to a 25-6 final record. 

Coming into this campaign, their overwhelming lack of experience was offset by excitement around a gifted wave of young players who were poised to come into their own. 

Getting a feel for that team, and the job, was a task Williams treated like solving a puzzle. 

“You’re always learning, and you’re always evaluating the talent, and you’re always trying to put them in a position to succeed,” he said. “It may not be a system you want to run, but you have to run what best fits who you have.”

This young squad was a perfect exercise in just that. 

Its rotation was powered by the shooting of a handful of prolific guards, but would have to build its brand of basketball around the rebounding and post play of towering forwards Hayden Clay and Athony Frank-Woji down front. 

“I wanted to press a whole lot more, but we didn’t necessarily have the guys that could press up and down the court for 32 minutes,” Williams said. “We had bigs, and we didn’t have enough bodies to go around to do that, so we had to slow the game down and get into a half-court set and use our strengths and avoid our weaknesses.” 

When he looks back on the project, Williams is grateful to have had the counsel of a valued assistant who wasn’t riding his first rodeo. 

The experience of Robby Foskey, a predecessor in the Trinity head job who’s worked with Dublin Construction since stepping down from the post in 2017 (and will also be back alongside as part of the new staff this coming year), turned out to be instrumental in helping the team discover its identity, and buckle down on the defensive end in a late-season emphasis that paid off in the end. 

The season, famously, climaxed with a “Mercer Miracle” in the state finals, as the Crusaders improbably took down a once-beaten Central Fellowship team it had lost to handily in three previous meetings. 

“Nobody except their mamas and the coaches thought they could win,” Williams said. 

While much of the effort boiled down to belief and heart, he also points back to a defensive tweak that proved pivotal in the outcome. 

After trying everything in the defensive playbook against the Lancers in three losses, by no less than 18, between the regular season and region tourney, the Crusaders opted to play them straight up, man-to-man, in the title game. 

A key detail, which he recalls being received as a borderline laughable suggestion when he floated it to the staff before practice that Friday, had Frank-Woji assigned to pick up leading scorer Jaylen Goodrum. 

The sophomore, while not the most ideal matchup, was likely the purest raw athlete the Crusaders had, with a long wingspan that helped make up for his lack of quickness in guarding the region player of the year. 

While AFW didn’t shut him down entirely, he was able to keep Goodrum contained to a series-low 11 points, and frustrated to the point that a critical double-whammy of common and technical foul assessed back-to-back in the third quarter bounced him from the game 10 minutes early, and opened the door to the amazing comeback. 

“Sometimes, you just have to ask the Lord for wisdom,” Williams said. “That’s what I did going into that championship game. I know everything they’re going to do, they know everything we’re going to do, and I need some wisdom. So I feel like the Lord gave me the matchups we needed, and the ways to attack them. It takes wisdom in knowing where to put people, how to use them, and it takes wisdom in knowing how to sub your players.” 

Trinity outscored CFCA 28-9 the rest of the way to the eight-point victory, in a storybook finish that’s still a thrill to relive. 

“It was just magical the way the Lord allowed us to find a way,” he added. “I felt like you really saw the character come out in our boys. When they put their mind to something, felt like the Lord had given them a way to do it, and believed that he was going to allow them to get it, they had such an incredible belief that there was no denying them.” 

Looking ahead… 

His first couple times stepping in as head coach, Williams’ primary focus was winning a state championship. 

Now, his plans will have a much more long-term outlook as he takes steps to put the school and program in a position to contend over multiple years. 

As for the immediate future, there’s a lot to work on right away when it comes to improving the fortunes of Trinity’s varsity club, whose roster dominated by freshmen and first-time starters struggled to develop experience or confidence over just a three-win season this past year. 

His goals of getting the Crusaders’ sub-varsity programs “back going strong again” also promise to help soften the effects of a similar rebuild in the future. 

Though Trinity hasn’t been starved for bodies on the high school court, a need for younger players to fill out its main team has frequently put pressure on lower tiers of the program. 

As more freshmen and sophomores have to play varsity minutes, more younger middle schoolers must be pulled up from their team to play JV, in a spiral effect that costs many players valuable developmental reps, and forces the youngest to play up against older competition they’re not quite ready to face. 

Elevating those numbers – a constant challenge across the athletic scene at small private schools – would do a lot to stabilize and add much-needed depth to that farm system. 

“We certainly have to go down lower than that into the younger grades as well, but right now, we need to get this high school JV program and middle school program back on its feet, then I feel like we’ll have a strong standard we can build upon,” Williams said. “If we can have success at the varsity level, it’ll bring the interest in. Kids will want to be a part of the program. We want to get back to that point, and help these kids succeed.” 

For the time being, the Crusaders will have to fast-track their returning youngsters to a high level of play, and find a way to feature the aim of some senior sharpshooters, in order to get things headed back in a stronger direction. 

This year’s won’t be near as loaded a squad as Williams carried into the season three years ago, but it’s got some pieces and potential that he’s spent the summer steadily evaluating. 

“I was super excited to jump back in,” Williams said of getting back in the gym with the team for the first time in over a year this summer. 

Following the championship run, he had retired back to an assistant role on the staff of Brad Bristol, who was hired as head coach the following school year, but suspended for the 2024 postseason in an unforeseen development pushing Williams back into the head job for the final three games – the last a loss in the finals to Furtah Prep. 

This past season was his first in seven being completely uninvolved, despite continuing to help out in a small sense as P.A. announcer while continuing to follow the senior seasons of both Lauren and Frank-Woji (an overseas transfer student for whom the Williams are a host family). 

All throughout, he knew the sidelines were where he belonged, and barely hesitated when offered the chance to come back. 

“I felt like I would get back in coaching, but I did not feel like I’d be back into coaching this soon,” Williams said. “I felt like I had stepped away for a while. Honestly, I didn’t feel right not being in basketball over the past year. I knew something was missing. I knew how much I loved it and wanted to be a part of it again, and when the opportunity arose, I prayed about it for a while, and felt like it was the right thing to do, and the right time.”

He added that strong relationships with players in the program, which never went away, were what “tugged at my heart” to come back. 

Even spending just a few minutes at a Trinity practice, it’s hard to miss the significance of those deep personal connections, or the emphasis Williams places on investing in them. 

It’s his humble intensity about pursuing excellence athletically, and spiritually, that appeals most to his players. 

“It was always God first, basketball second,” George said. “There wasn’t ever a practice where we didn’t spend at least 10 minutes before or after practice in the word. He’s always positive. There was never a moment when he would say something negative. Even if we were playing below the level that we should be at, he always brought us up and encouraged us.” 

Those same values, and an unquenchable desire to constantly get a little bit better, matter as much in medicine as they do athletics. 

“He puts 100 percent into everything he’s involved with, whether it’s working on eyes, his family, basketball, you’re gonna get everything out of him,” Brown said.