By Tracy Gupton

Forty-six years have passed since Columbia High School speedster Carl Williams broke state records in the 100 and 220-yard dashes at the 1977 high school state track meet in Austin. On October 6, 2023, Carl will be among the members of the newest class of inductees into the Roughnecks Athletics Hall of Honor.

The 1978 graduate of CHS will join other Hinkle’s Ferry products, the late NFL great Charlie Johnson, the Bonner siblings—Marcus and Rhonda—and Carl’s twin sisters, Earlene and Willene Williams, in the Roughnecks hallowed hall of the local high school’s greatest athletes in history.  Charlie Johnson, MVP of the Roughnecks 1969 football team that played for the Class 3A state championship, was among the first class of Hall of Honor inductees in 2007 in recognition of his All-Pro status as an interior defensive lineman for the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings. Carl Williams’ cousin, Wayne Williams, was part of the 2^_nd year class of Hall of Honor inductees. Wayne was a defensive back for the LSU Tigers following his outstanding football and track career in high school in West Columbia.

Rhonda Bonner Tolbert and her brother, Marcus Bonner, were added to the list of former Roughnecks’ outstanding athletes with their induction into the Columbia High Hall of Honor several years ago. Both Rhonda and Marcus had impressive college athletic careers at Texas A&I University which is now referred to as Texas A&M-Kingsville. Marcus Bonner also played professional football for the San Antonio Gunslingers in the old USFL.

Franklin Carl Williams is the second youngest of Isaac and Geneva Williams’ nine children.  Carl is still mourning the passing of his Dad a few months ago. Isaac Williams was 99 years old, his son said. Carl lost his Mom a number of years ago. He said both of his parents were good athletes when they were young and Carl boasts several athletically gifted siblings.

Former Roughnecks great Carl Williams is pictured in his high school days breaking the string in a 100-yard dash competition in the 1970s against a Columbia High teammate and others

Twins Earlene and Willene Williams, both 1975 Columbia High graduates, were among the former CHS outstanding athletes inducted in the early years of the school’s Hall of Honor as members of regional track meet record breaking quartets in both the 440-yard and 880-yard relays in 1973.

Carl’s older brothers Ernest and Larry Williams were no strangers to competing at the state track meet in Austin either. As a junior in 1967 Ernest Williams broke most of the sprint speed records at Columbia High School and came in first in the 100-yard dash in all but one track meet in the second year of racial integration in West Columbia and Brazoria schools.

Ernest Williams’ fastest time in 1967 was 9.5 seconds, according to the 1967 Columbia High School Gusher yearbook.  Ernest placed second in the 100-yard dash at the state track meet in Austin with a time of 9.6 seconds.  He also ran a leg of the sprint relays for the 1967 Roughnecks that placed second in both the district and regional track meets and came in fourth in Austin at the 1967 state track meet.

A decade later it was Ernest’s, Willene’s and Earlene’s younger brothers Larry and Carl Williams who were mounting the winners’ stand at the University of Texas in Austin at the state track meet, representing Columbia High School with honor … and speed!

_{Photo Courtesy of The Brazoria County News}

These five former Columbia High outstanding athletes traveled to Austin in 1976 to represent their school at the state track meet. Bringing the gold medal in the 440-yard relay home to West Columbia were, pictured from left: Emerson Brown, Leandrew Brown, Larry Williams, Carl Williams and alternate Gary “Grip” Phillips.

Two sets of brothers received first place gold medals for running the 440-yard relay in a blistering time of 41.34 seconds in Austin at the 1976 state track meet.  The AAA division 440 relay winners that year were Roughnecks Leandrew and Emerson Brown from Danciger and Larry and Carl Williams from Hinkle’s Ferry. Only a sophomore at the time, Carl Williams still remembers today how he thought he was going to win the 100-yard dash at the state track meet that day 47 years ago.

“I couldn’t see anybody ahead of me” as he approached the finish line, Carl said. “But when I leaned forward to finish strong, Johnny “Lam” Jones broke the string before me. I thought I had won but I had to settle for second.”

Carl earned his first gold medal at the 1976 state track meet for running one leg of the 440 relay with his older brother Larry and the Brown brothers.  In his sophomore year he had to settle for second place in both the 100 and 220-yard dashes in Austin. The late Johnny Jones of Lampasas High School, who went on to star in football and track at the University of Texas and played for the New York Jets in the NFL, edged out Carl in both sprints at the 1976 state track meet, running a 9.4 in the 100 and 21-flat in the 220 for best among Class 3A sprinters.

But Carl Williams would not be denied gold the next year. “I give my brother Larry a lot of credit for my success,” Carl said. “He pushed me real hard” both at track practice at Griggs Field in West Columbia and during the many track meets they competed at together while wearing the maroon-and-white of Columbia High School. The former Roughneck track star got a mention in the June 27, 1977 edition of Sports Illustrated magazine. In the “Faces in The Crowd” section of that SI national magazine, it read: “CARL WILLIAMS, WEST COLUMBIA, TEXAS. At the state Class AAA meet in Austin, Carl, 17, became the top sprinter in Texas high school history by winning the 100 in 9.2 and the 220 in 20.9, breaking marks held by Gregory Edmonds (9.3) and 1976 Olympian Johnny Jones (21.0).”

Edmonds was a Galveston Ball High School sprinter a few years older than Carl. Receiving national recognition and revered statewide by track and field enthusiasts for setting new sprint record times at the 1977 state track meet, Carl Williams said “It felt good” to win those big races, going against the fastest young men the Lone Star State had to offer. His record setting times in the 100 and 220 sprints in 1977 bested the fastest times recorded in those events by the likes of Johnny “Lam” Jones, Curtis Dickey of Bryan High School and Galveston Ball’s Greg Edmonds and future LSU football star Charles Alexander.

Carl Williams was also a gifted receiver and running back for the Roughnecks in 1975 and 1976

Following a collegiate football career at Texas Southern University in Houston, Carl Williams joined Texas A&M running back Curtis Dickey on the Baltimore Colts in the NFL. Williams, voted second team All Southwestern Athletic Conference wide receiver in 1982, was drafted by the Colts in the 12^th round of the 1983 NFL college draft.  Running back Dickey was the fifth overall selection of the 1980 draft taken in the first round by the Colts out of Texas A&M.

Dickey was a world class sprinter for the Aggies in college who won the NCAA championship in the 60-yard dash three times between 1978 and 1980. Dickey’s 10.11 in the 100 meters was the sixth fastest time in the world in 1978.

Twenty-first century records at Columbia High School show Floyd Bess with the fastest 100 meters time of 10.27 in 2012, according to online school records. Carl Williams said he doesn’t know how to compare his school records in the 100 yard dash races of the 1970s with those younger Roughnecks sprinters whose times were for 100 meters instead of 100 yards. Current Columbia High School track records show Rudy Donley ran the fastest 200 meters race in 2006 with a time of 22.06.

Carl’s time spent as a Colts teammate of running back Curtis Dickey was short.  Carl said the same year he was drafted by the Colts (who did not move to Indianapolis until 1984), San Diego State wide receiver Phil Smith was selected by Baltimore in the fourth round. And although Carl thought he played well in 1983 preseason games, the Colts organization released him the week before the team’s first regular season game was played. “It was all politics,” Carl remembers. “I was from a small college and they had drafted Phil Smith from a bigger school higher in the draft than me, so they kept him and let me go.”

Carl said an attempt to catch on with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League failed after he was released by the Colts. He thinks his collegiate track career at TSU suffered because of the extra weight he had to put on to compete in college football.

Highlights of Carl Williams’ SWAC football career included catching a 41-yard touchdown pass for TSU from quarterback Vincent Pleasant in a TSU Tigers 24-17 win over Alcorn in Houston, and being on the receiving end of a 53-yard scoring bomb from Pleasant in a 31-27 heartbreaking loss to Nicholls State at Thibodaux, Louisiana. Both of those games were played in October of 1981.

He also said he will always remember fondly playing against his Hinkle’s Ferry neighbor and former Roughnecks teammate Marcus Bonner when Carl’s TSU Tigers opposed Marcus’s Texas A&I Javelinas. As a TSU Tigers wide receiver and kick returner, Carl Williams had the opportunity “to show off” in front of his family and hometown friends when he played college football games at the Astrodome, Rice Stadium and Robertson Stadium in Houston, just an hour’s drive from Brazoria and West Columbia.

This photo taken from a Columbia High yearbook shows a young Carl Williams at Griggs Field

Many of TSU’s home games were played in the 8^_th Wonder of the World, the Houston Astrodome, during the era the Roughnecks track star was a wide receiver for the Tigers. It was in that same domed stadium Carl Williams scored the winning touchdown on a long pass from senior quarterback Marshall Edwards when the Columbia Roughnecks won a playoff game 10-3 over the Brazosport Exporters at the end of the 1975 football season. And even though Cuero’s Gobblers defeated the Roughnecks on a cold night in Victoria the following weekend to eliminate the Necks from the playoffs, Carl Williams’ sophomore football season will always go down in Roughnecks lore as very successful due to that impressive snag and run to paydirt that gave Columbia High School the 1975 district championship against cross-county rival Brazosport under the giant roof of the Astrodome.

Carl was also briefly a teammate of Sweeny High School graduate Raymond Butler on the Baltimore Colts. They both played a preseason game against the Houston Oilers in the Astrodome in 1983 which gave the two local products yet another opportunity to catch passes while wearing NFL uniforms in a televised game under the bright lights of the Dome. Butler, who was drafted by the Colts in the fourth round of the 1980 NFL college draft out of University of Southern California, caught 239 passes in his nine-year pro career with the Colts and Seattle Seahawks.

“I hit a home run off of Ray (Butler) at Dodgers Park (in Brazoria) when we were teenagers,” Carl Williams bragged in a recent interview. “I loved baseball when I was a kid. I played on a Brazoria team and Ray played on a Sweeny team. Those were fun times.”

Carl Williams, now in his early sixties, complains about his knees hurting him when he sits too long. “Old football injuries,” he apologizes for having to stand and walk around a little during the interview.

He said he lives alone now in Hinkle’s Ferry, in the same house he grew up in and where he lived with his Mom and Dad and many siblings while reaching for the stars as a young athlete thrilling the large adoring crowds in Austin at the three state track meets he competed in as a teenager, at the Houston Astrodome as a Columbia Roughneck, Texas Southern University Tiger and Baltimore Colt, and always thriving to win every race he ran, even at the Roughneck Relays at Griggs Field in West Columbia.

Carl’s Roughnecks Athletics Hall of Honor induction ceremony will occur at halftime of the Columbia High School varsity football game against the Wharton Tigers on October 6^th.  Other inductees will be announced later.  When the day arrives in a little over two months, Carl Williams will return to the track and football field in West Columbia where he competed so well so very many years ago.

He said he can’t wait!

_{Photo by Tracy Gupton/Columbia Historical Museum}

A recent photo of Carl Williams, interviewed for this story by Columbia Historical Museum Board Member Tracy Gupton who graduated from CHS in 1975 with Carl’s twin sisters, Willene and Earlene Williams, when Carl was a freshman.