Carl Williams (third from left) and the Booker High boys basketball team after winning the district championship in 2024. Provided photo.

For Carl Williams, coaching basketball was not about just the wins. Nor was it about the losses. It was about the moments in between, those instances where he could impact his players off the court.

“Hopefully the greatest accomplishments for any coach are the bonds that you build and seeing kids mature and prepare for the next phase of life,” says Williams. “I was blessed to be able to do that. That’s my accomplishment—it has nothing to do with wins and losses. It’s all about life.”

In late February Williams, who is the assistant principal of the Sarasota School of Arts and Sciences, resigned from his position as the head coach of the Booker High boys varsity basketball team. Williams, a Sarasota native, spent three seasons as the head coach of Booker High and has coached basketball in the area for the past 16 years. Williams came to Booker High in 2022, charged with turning around a program that had gone just 4-18 the season prior.

And turn around the program he did. In his first season with the Tornadoes, Williams led a resilient squad to a 10-16 record, before bowing out to Desoto County High in the semifinals of the class 4A District 11 in the 2023-23 season. The team blossomed under Williams in the 2023-24 season, posting a 19-10 record en route to being crowned the 4A District 11 champions. This past winter, Booker battled valiantly, posting a 13-15 record without a true point guard after the graduation of standout senior Jovan Palavra in 2024.

Through it all, Williams, who stepped down in large part to spend more time with his family, is proud of the culture he built at Booker and the young men that became a part of his extended basketball family. Last season, Williams coached two separate players that were experiencing homelessness. “How much does school really matter to you when you don’t have a home? One of the players wasn’t academically eligible until his senior year, so seeing him on senior night and then watching both of them graduate gave me a new definition of accomplishment,” says Williams. “I tried to make sure that they knew they were a part of the team, that they were the same as any other player. We fought together, we worked hard together—I learned a lot from them, because they never gave up.”

Carl Williams (third from left) and the Booker High boys basketball team after winning the district championship in 2024. Provided photo.