On a gray February morning, the Pine Bluff High School gymnasium was filled with colorful balloons and flooded with music and laughter as family and friends, students and staff gathered to celebrate four college-bound star football players signing their national letters of intent.
Less than six miles away, a mother was mourning the loss of another beloved player, her 16-year-old son, Kendall Burton, who was gunned down just weeks earlier.
Addressing a standing-room-only crowd, the four elated student-athletes all thanked the same person — and the heartbroken mother in her quiet apartment did, too: Coach Micheal Williams.
The two events painfully juxtaposed what Williams has worked hardest to achieve since returning to his hometown — creating a pathway to college for his players — and what he has fought so strenuously to keep at bay. A dozen young people between the ages of 10 and 19 in this town of roughly 40,000 were the victims of homicide between 2020 and 2022, according to the most recent data.
“Kendall Burton was a great kid,” said Williams, who’s built close relationships with all of his players, but especially this affable teen. “I would let him date my daughter, you know, that type of kid. I always tell everybody he was the coach’s son.”
Shaketa Simmons, Burton’s mother, said Kendall felt the same way: “He loved Coach Williams. He would always say, ‘Coach Williams got our back. He would do anything for us.’”
Williams, who understands the grinding poverty that can lead some students astray, has always encouraged his players not to squander the opportunity they’ve earned through sports. But he had struggled in recent weeks to relate that message: Burton was a clean-cut kid who stayed out of trouble and still, his future was taken from him.
