By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
The notion that Williams has a strong football team has been in place for decades. That hasn’t always panned out.
Despite successes in recent seasons, this year is different.
The Bulldogs are actual champions again.
They’ve claimed a football league championship for the first time since 2005, winning the Central 3-A Conference with a 6-0 record.
“It hasn’t been done in a long time,” senior defensive end Cooper Rice said. “The last time they won, I wasn’t even born.”
Nor were any of the Williams players.
Williams had long been considered a state power on the football field. That was a generation ago.
Patrick Stokes was a Williams player during past glory days, a member of the 1999 state championship team. He’s in his fourth season as coach of the Bulldogs.
Stokes said there’s lots that goes into winning a championship, pointing to a dedicated coaching staff, determination in the weight room, commitment to the junior varsity program and community support.
“It’s a recipe,” Stokes said, “and you have to have all the ingredients there for it to work.”
A conference championship tastes good.
“It is a big deal, first place,” senior receiver Andrews Cruz said. “We’ve done something that hadn’t been done in a long time.”
Williams entered the season with expectations soaring. The Bulldogs followed through.
“It’s a pretty big goal to meet,” senior quarterback Dan Mahan said. “We really haven’t flinched all year, in my opinion, when it mattered.”
Pursuing the top spot in the conference had to be part of the plan.
“That was the goal,” Rice said. “It feels really good that we’ve accomplished that.”
Stokes said focusing on the process can yield the desired results on Friday nights.
“You want to win the county and you want to win the conference,” he said. “Those are the two most attainable goals.”
This season’s conference title came with defeating three Alamance County teams.
“We finally got over that hump of beating all the county guys,” Mahan said. “It’s awesome. We’re leaving our mark, our class.”
Stokes remembers the last time Williams won a league title. He was in his second season as an assistant coach at Eastern Alamance, where the Bulldogs won 17-0 on the final night of the regular season to seal the championship. Eastern finished second in the standings.
Since that 2005 conference title under longtime coach Sam Story, the Bulldogs have had five coaches – Scott Frazier, David Green, Dave Grant, Jim McGill Jr., and Stokes.
The Bulldogs were close to winning the Central 3-A Conference the past two seasons. A missed field goal against Eastern Alamance cost them in 2022, while a loss to Southern Alamance to begin 2023 conference play turned out to be the difference.
Many of this year’s top players were key members of a 2022 junior varsity team that cruised through its games.
The Bulldogs (9-1) will take a nine-game winning streak into the Class 3-A state playoffs this month. They lost their opener to Northwest Guilford and have gone unblemished since then.
“Coming out and losing the first game, we’ve had our head down ever since,” Mahan said. “We’re full steam ahead.”
Rice said Williams has big aspirations for the postseason. In the meantime, team members appreciate recognition they’ve received around Burlington.
After all, the Bulldogs are back on top.
“We showed them what we can do,” Rice said.
