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Issue: Spring 2017 | Posted: June 1, 2017

Dexter Williams

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Distinguished Achievement in Athletics

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In 2015, Dexter Williams became principal and athletic director at West Carroll Junior Senior High School, the high school from which he graduated 20 years earlier.

“I’ve come home,” Williams says.

Williams began his career in education as a coach. He graduated from Union in 2000 with a degree in sports management and physical education and health and took a position at North East Middle School in Jackson teaching physical education and coaching boys’ basketball.

He says he was only able to attend Union because he received a basketball scholarship. Williams played on Union’s basketball team from 1995 to 1999, and he says his coaches and teammates demonstrated their faith on and off the court.

“People genuinely cared for each other and tried to pour God’s Word into everybody,” Williams says. “That was something I had never seen before and something that had a huge impact on me.”

Williams continued his coaching career in Jackson, leading the Liberty Technology Magnet High School boys’ basketball team to its first state championship in 2006. While at Liberty Tech, Williams served as assistant principal and later became principal at Tigrett Middle School. He worked for the Milan Board of Education before taking his current position. In 2017, he will take over as superintendent of the West Carroll Special School District.

Williams says his time at Union taught him how to treat people and how to have a strong work ethic.

“Through the course work that I had to take and being a basketball player, that work ethic developed and became a strength of mine,” Williams says. “That’s how I’ve come as far as I have.”