It wasn’t something she had always dreamed of. Not really.
Yeah, sure, basketball was the one thing in the world that truly made her happy. Just ask her. She’ll tell you about being 5 years old and just falling in love with the game. Then, she’ll smile her quiet smile. But her eyes will brighten like arena lights, and she’ll tell you how excited she was riding home in the afternoons, barely able to contain herself as she waited for the school bus door to creak open and let her out into her side yard, where she’d spend hours upon hours shooting and playing.
Back then, basketball was more than a game. It was a place. A safe place for this tomboy to be a tomboy, a place where she could put it all together – her competiveness, her teamwork, her individual skill. And she had all of it, a lot of it.
That’s what caught the eyes of the coaches at the College when they saw this kid from Blackville, S.C., hoop it up in one of their summer camps. Soon after, they offered her a scholarship, and Ericka Williams ’10 brought her game to the Cougars.
She was good in maroon and white. Very good. She could make the impossible shot look routine. And she had those kinds of games where the points just came in waves: 17 against Mercer, 25 against Davidson, 19 against Morehead State and 21 against Bradley. She averaged in double points scoring her senior year, helping the team advance the deepest in post-season tournament play since becoming Division I.
But it was just a game. At least that’s what the business major thought going into her senior year.
Associate Head Coach Temple Elmore ’85 thought something else. A former Cougar great and member of the College’s Hall of Fame, Elmore played professional basketball internationally after she graduated. She knows what it takes. She knows talent when she sees it, too. And she saw something special in Williams: that It Factor that defies easy explanation.
Elmore had watched Williams come into the program as a very raw talent, struggling at times in learning the fundamentals that the program demanded she master. But Williams, at her core, is a fighter. She never gives up. Elmore was impressed with her work ethic, her intensity and her growth as a person and player.
By Williams’ senior year, Elmore knew she had the stuff to become a professional player. And that’s exactly what she told Williams when she pulled her aside that season.
Elmore’s suggestion hit Williams like a game-winning shot at the buzzer. Everything lit up. Everything made sense now. Her future, before something hazy and distant, came into sharp focus. And she was ready to put everything into it.
In the Hollywood version of Williams’ story, we would endure a music montage of her working hard and then cut to her being drafted and making her professional debut either in the WNBA or on a prestigious international team. In the real-life version, things just aren’t that simple or straightforward.
After graduation, Williams stayed around Charleston, working out and finding part-time employment. For most Southern Conference student-athletes, post-collegiate opportunities are infrequent, if not improbable: like snow in Charleston.
But, as Williams knows, it has snowed in the Holy City, and it will snow again, someday.
Hope isn’t a strategy – at least, not for her. So Williams packed her bags and headed west, where she joined the Houston Jaguars, a semi-professional team. There, she played against some WNBA talent, along with many other professional hopefuls, and found that she measured up, both in talent and skill.
But the Houston Jaguars – and the hope of being seen by scouts – didn’t pay the bills. Williams returned to her hometown last summer to continue training and figure out a better route to playing professional ball. During that time, Elmore helped Williams sign with an agent in Germany, which may open doors for her to try out with European squads.
In the meantime, Williams took a part-time job on the flow team for Target in nearby Aiken, S.C., which means she’s at work by four in the morning to help unload the trucks. When she’s off at noon, it’s time to get serious.
Williams goes back to her high school three to four times a week to help out with her former team and get in some of her own training: “I don’t have a workout partner, and it’s a lot harder doing basketball drills – jumpshots, ball handling – by yourself, but I get a lot of work in. I do my free throws, my conditioning running, and I also play a lot of pick-up games against the varsity girls and guys as well as former classmates and friends.”
Of course, this is particularly tough for Williams. This waiting. This not knowing. Patience, Williams admits, has never been her strong suit. But she’s learning. And in her moments of doubt – because they do happen – all she has to do is touch a basketball, and her decades-long passion for the game reaffirms her goal.
“This is only my second year of trying to make it as a professional,” Williams says. “I just need my shot, an opportunity to show people, the right people, what I can do. I’ll never give up on my dream. I know I’m close. I’ve got a tournament in Germany I hope I can make and an open tryout this spring for the Atlanta Dream.”
Because, you never know, perhaps that Hollywood ending is there after all.
– Mark Berry
Photo by Gately Williams
