Williams Is Getting High Marks in Several Sports

Since second grade, Danny Williams has been hopping the gate at South Park Elementary so he could play basketball on the playground hoops.

“I used to play in church shoes,” Williams said.

He still hops the gate to join his two younger brothers and younger sister at the playground, but his focus is turning to more ambitious sporting endeavors.

As a 16-year-old junior at Los Angeles Fremont, Williams is one of the most successful athletes in Southern California. He’s an all-league receiver for the football team and an All-City guard for the basketball team who scored a school-record 55 points in one game last season.

Last month, he cleared a school-record 7 feet 1/4 in the high jump, becoming only the ninth athlete in City Section history to reach 7 feet.

“He’s an exceptional talent with unlimited jumping ability,” Fremont basketball Coach Sam Sullivan said.

Added track Coach Steve Lang: “He’s got that spring in his legs, that pop in his stride.”

There are few sports Williams has tried in which he didn’t excel. He joined the volleyball team last season and became an immediate starter. In junior high, he won trophies for swimming and baseball.

One Fremont coach said the 6-3, 185-pound Williams is the best center fielder on campus even though he no longer plays baseball.

“It started getting boring,” Williams said.

Don’t be surprised if a professional baseball scout tries to persuade Williams to show up for a private workout next year to see whether he’s draft material.

Basketball is his favorite sport because he loves to dunk. Instead of competing in the Arcadia Invitational track and field meet two weeks ago, Williams was in Las Vegas playing in a basketball tournament. He broke his nose but didn’t stop playing.

“They said I had a mild concussion, but I didn’t care,” he said.

Williams won the City Section title in the high jump as a sophomore. Lang, who has coached five 7-foot jumpers in his career, said Williams could be the best because of this athleticism. He came close to clearing 7-2.

“I have to get my head over the bar and my butt too,” Williams said.

Williams comes from a close-knit family. His mother and father are Fremont graduates. They live a couple of blocks from the school. His two younger brothers play football for the Pathfinders. And his 10-year-old sister tries to dunk on him at the elementary school.

“He has competition in the family,” said mother Kathy, who works as an aide at South Park.

Williams is particularly proud of being raised in a two-parent household.

“It’s just good to know you have two parents,” he said. “I know they love me. I can come to them and talk to them about anything. I know they’re going to push me. My mom always has my back.”

Choosing one sport to concentrate on will be Williams’ big decision in the future.

For now, he’s not giving up on any of them.

In football, he likes the contact and the competition.

“Every year, it’s Crenshaw or Dorsey beating us,” he said. “Since I’ve been at Fremont, I’ve never beaten them in football. I want to beat those teams.”

In basketball, he could be a dominant scorer next season, especially if he continues to improve his outside shot.

“He’s so explosive,” Sullivan said. “When the jump shot is consistent, there’s no way he’s not going to average 25 points.”

In track, he figures to soar in the high jump with practice and persistence.

Now, if only he could get a key to the gate of the elementary school so he wouldn’t have to hop the fence.

Don’t worry, though. He’s not trespassing. The playground is the athletic training grounds for the Williams family.

“They all hop the gate, my daughter too,” Kathy said. “The principal knows.”

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.