Florida Atlantic University Athletics
Where Are They Now? - Williams Family
5/24/2020 6:01:00 PM | Men's Basketball, Softball, Women's Volleyball
When Sami Williams stepped to the plate against LSU in 2018, her Florida Atlantic University ties emerged into the spotlight. The Tigers' announcer told the Baton Rouge, Louisiana crowd Sami was FAU's first double-legacy athlete, meaning both her parents played for the Owls beforehand.
Michelle Williams, Sami's mother, was at the game and was recording her daughter's at-bat while hearing the news. The proud FAU alum inadvertently caught the announcement on video, sent it to "all" her family and kept it to this day. Â Â Â Â
"It was really, really cool," Michelle said. "We had no idea."
Thirty years prior to the LSU game, Michelle attended FAU and played for its inaugural volleyball team. And while her daughter studied alongside 30,000 students, Michelle's college experience was much different: FAU enrolled a mere 1,743 students in 1989.
Scott Williams also experienced the university's late 80's growing stages. He played for the Owls' inaugural basketball team in 1988 and helped the team improve to an impressive 21-7 record in '89. Still, though, few non-athletes were there to celebrate with him.
"FAU was so small at the time it seemed like everybody living on campus was an athlete," he said.
As a result, Scott says the athletes often hung out together. And that led him to Michelle. Before Michelle met Scott, she knew she wanted to date an athlete because they'd have "a lot in common."
Michelle's initial reaction, however, was more visceral than algorithmic.
"I thought he was hot," she said with a laugh.
The two eventually married and settled down in the South Florida area, not far from the campus their relationship sprouted from.
Scott returned to FAU and served a variety of roles, from assistant basketball coach to compliance director. He even served as FAU's cross country coach one semester. As Scott describes it, FAU was "so small" at the time and needed him to do "a little bit of everything."
That varied professional experience eventually paid dividends, as Scott is now the athletic director at St. John Pope Paul, a local Catholic prep school.
Michelle, who was part of FAU's first ever exercise science and health promotion graduating class, advanced into the medical sales field. And while her volleyball career is over, she says the "amazing" experience still applies to her professional career.
"Going through those ups and downs and maybe not making it in a game or sitting on the bench or getting hurt," Michelle said, "all those things got me ready for what I do on a day-to-day, helped me get into this industry and helped me be successful.
"I think that most kids, if you're not an athlete, you just don't get it," she added. "It gets you ready for everything in life. Setting goals, achieving those goals, working hard for those goals, just the ups and downs."
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Those traits transferred to Sami. Scott says his daughter's "No. 1 goal" as a pre-teen was earning a Division I scholarship, even though he described her then as an "average athlete" and "smaller." Despite her physical shortcomings, Scott says she remained "goal-oriented" and kept improving her game. Â
"Watching her play, that was just the fun part," Scott said. "But I knew exactly what she put into it, every day, day-in and day-out, and that's what I took the pride in."
Sami's hard work materialized into not one, but multiple college offers. But the self-described "South Florida kind of girl" says FAU "felt like home," making her decision to enroll in 2017 relatively easy.
Long before FAU recruited Sami, she knew its coaches through her father. Scott knew softball associate head coach Chan Walker, who was then a member of the Owls' inaugural softball team, as a student-athlete and later as a coaching colleague. And also, worked alongside head coach Joan Joyce, who coached both women's golf and softball at the time.
Scott knew what Joyce and Walker cultivated at FAU and wanted his daughter to be a part of it. Â
"I knew them," Scott Williams said of Walker and Joyce. "I knew what they stood for. I knew the family atmosphere. I knew it was somewhere they'd help her develop to be a great young lady. Family, it was going to be tight-knit, and I knew she was going to get her degree."
FAU's family atmosphere was evident from Sami's freshman year move-in day. Though she wasn't moving far, Sami still jammed her car with boxes. Scott remembers feeling "terrified" and thinking, "How many trips is this going to take?"
As it turns out, only one. FAU's softball and baseball teams helped unload everything without Scott asking for assistance.
"By the time I parked and went back in, everything was upstairs," he said. "It all happened really fast."
For the Williams family, so did Sami's softball career.
Sami played at FAU from 2017-20 and helped the team win a Conference USA Championship in '18. Every home game over that stretch was a lively reunion for the Williams bunch. Even Sami's grandparents, she says, happily attended them all.
Michelle, who Sami jokingly describes as a "crazy softball mom," says she's "devastated" for Sami's career to end because she was a "true competitor."
But Sami says she "just loved to be on the field, playing and doing my thing" and is on to the next chapter in her life: After graduating from FAU this spring with a health administration degree, Sami hopes to continue her education and become a physician assistant. She chose the career because she's "very intrigued with the human body" and thinks "it's because I am an athlete and love helping people."
Michelle went from competing athletically at FAU to the medical field. Now, her daughter is doing the same. Their paths are aligning in an even deeper way than the one LSU announcer noted at Tiger Park softball stadium two years ago, and Michelle's fully cognizant of it. Â Â
"It's full-circle," Michelle said. "Definitely full-circle."
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