Paving the Way : Pierce’s Williams Sleeps in Car, Remaining Sanguine on Future

On a Pierce College parking lot near the football stadium, not far from where roosters at the school’s farm noisily announce the dawning of another day, Rodney Williams tries to catch some shut-eye.

He has been at work all night and wants a little rest before going to class. After that, it will be football practice and then home for a catnap before punching the time clock again.

Sometimes, the pummeling Williams takes on the field is nothing compared to what sleeping in a compact car, even one with a reclining seat, does to his 6-foot-2, 185-pound body.

But Williams, a 21-year-old former Palmdale High standout and one-time minor league baseball player, can live with a few discomforts.

This is paradise compared to where he was headed had he not turned his life around not long ago.

“It’s working out,” said Williams, a freshman receiver who redshirted last year after suffering a season-ending knee injury. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

Maybe not, but how many people would be willing to find out? Williams, though, is not your typical guy. When he speaks, the words are laced with confidence, with the force of someone who knows what he wants and how to get it.

“I want to go into communications,” Williams said. “I’m kind of leaning toward that field. Probably sports broadcasting.”

That road could be treacherous. It could be disappointing. Those possibilities, however, do not discourage him.

For every sleepless hour he spends as a graveyard-shift watchman in a Los Angeles warehouse, sitting in a guard shack instead of lying in bed at his Lomita apartment, Williams knows that someday the sacrifice will pay off. Actually, it already has.

The paychecks he brings home will make this school year more manageable than the last, when he essentially was broke.

Williams, an unwed father, wants to do right by his four-month-old son, Rodney II.

So the young father must remain focused on football and schoolwork. Only a few years ago, Williams had markedly different ambitions.

“My twin brother (Eric) and I started running with a gang in Santa Monica,” Williams said. “My mom could see we were going to get in trouble and took us to live in Palmdale. We were really mad at her at first, but I don’t know where I’d be if it hadn’t been for my mom. I owe everything to her.”

The twins were born in Oakland but moved to Santa Monica with their mother, Gail Barton, when they were about 5. Seven years later, after moving to Palmdale, the brothers had straightened up, and Rodney Williams is quick to credit his mother.

“My mom went without sometimes to provide for me and my brother,” Williams said. “She was the backbone of our family.”

She was determined to rescue her sons from an unhealthy environment even though they both objected.

“I didn’t really know they were in a gang until one day I went to school and they weren’t there,” Barton said. “That did it. I decided right then and there we were moving. My sister was living in Palmdale and I brought them up here that same day.”

Still, the new surroundings at first did little for Rodney’s attitude. The brothers played football on the freshman team at Palmdale High, but Eric didn’t play sports after that and now works in construction.

Rodney kept at it, but was academically ineligible in the 10th grade. The news shook him to the core.

“I was mad at myself because I knew I had messed up,” he said. “I thought it over and figured I had to do something. I cracked the books and got my grades up. I still got into a few fights but I knew not to cross over the line.”

In his junior season with the Falcons, Williams started at cornerback and was the backup quarterback.

Hindered by Grades

He was converted to receiver in 1990, his senior season. But despite his 4.4 speed over 40 yards, college recruiters stayed away, Williams reasons, because his grades had suffered irreparable damage in the 10th grade.

Williams found an alternative, however, when the Kansas City Royals selected him in the 37th round of the 1991 June amateur baseball draft and tempted him with a $40,000 package: $10,000 in cash, the rest for tuition at a four-year school.

Even though he batted .397 and stole 17 bases in his senior season, Williams was surprised by the offer.

“The scouts kept telling me they were going to draft me, but I didn’t take them that seriously,” Williams said. “I thought, ‘If they do that’s OK, and if they don’t, that’s OK also.’ ”

After two seasons in Class A, Williams was released by the Royals during spring training in 1993. Soon after, he called Coach Bill Norton and asked about playing football at Pierce.

“I was just sitting on my (butt) every day,” Williams said. “One of my buddies was down here and I told him I wanted to play.”

But the season ended quickly for Williams. He suffered a twisted knee while running a pass pattern in practice after the second game of the season and never recovered.

This season, however, Norton is looking for Williams to help the Brahmas challenge for the Western State Conference North Division title and improve on a forgettable 5-5 record in 1993.

In Pierce’s season-opener last Saturday, a 58-24 nonconference loss to Palomar, Williams had three receptions for 44 yards and one touchdown.

“He has tremendous ability and quickness,” Norton said. “He is not afraid to make catches in the middle. And he is a team leader who works very hard. He tells guys in practice to yell at him if they see him dogging it.”

Considering his hectic schedule, Williams could be forgiven for going through the motions now and then.

But that’s not his style, on the field or in the classroom. He has a 3.15 grade-point average in core classes, is carrying 18 units this semester and has completed 35 units. The next step is a scholarship to a four-year school.

For Williams, that dream could come true soon, like others that took shape in a compact car on a deserted parking lot.