University of North Carolina Athletics
Tar Heel Monthly: Linebacker Sean Williams Gets Tough
May 10, 2002 | Football
May 10, 2002
By Adam Lucas
Tar Heel Monthly is a new monthly publication devoted to the stories and personalities behind UNC sports. For more information, visit www.tarheelmonthly.com.
The following is excerpted from the most recent issue of the magazine.
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But even that's not tough. You want tough, you go talk to the lady in Fayetteville. Talk to LaSheila McCants. Ask her if she ever has to worry about her son being bull-like to her, and she scoffs.
"I'm not worried about him being any bull with me," she said. "I'll break him down."
You should talk to her, because Sean does. On a regular basis, he calls home just to catch up, to talk to the woman who gave birth to him at age 16, the second of what would eventually be four children. Older brother Jamone is a couple years older, and now he's in the armed services. The military is tough. But not tough like McCants.
A reporter asks Williams for his mother's phone number. Williams hesitates, and the reporter jokingly says, "I promise I won't hurt her."
"I'm not worried about that," Williams says. "But she might hurt you," he says with a smile.
LaSheila McCants never hurt Williams. Other people did, though. His father was never involved in his life. The family moved repeatedly when he was a child, hopping all over the Southeast from Tampa, Florida to Fayetteville. Every time, McCants would provide the boy's father with their new address and phone number. Every time, he failed to call or write. Finally, when the family moved to Fayetteville, Williams, now all of 14 but possessing the wisdom of a man, had had enough.
"If we move again, don't call him," Williams told his mother. "You've done your part. He's never tried to contact me."
As it turned out, the absent father wasn't really needed. Williams had a mother, father, and friend all wrapped up in McCants. He also got an official father figure when LaSheila married Darrell McCants seven years ago. Darrell had always wanted to have a son who played football at Carolina. When the coach at Westover High School told Williams that he was not Division I football material, Darrell McCants was having none of it. "You can go to any college you want to," he told Williams.
Born two months premature and forced to spend four months in the hospital immediately after birth, Williams never had the true linebacker's build. He played safety and quarterback in high school, but almost never got the chance to take the field.
"He really wanted to play when he was about nine years old," LaSheila McCants said. "I didn't want to let him. I took him to the doctor, and that doctor told me I should let him play. He said I had to let Sean be a boy."
While letting him on the football field might have been nerve-wracking, it was also productive. The family had a few simple rules. First among them was that before Williams could play football, all his schoolwork had to be finished. He also had responsibilities around the house, each of which had to be completed before he could strap on the helmet.
"My mom always tried to push me," Williams said. "She told me there was no football until I did my schoolwork."
A decade later, McCants is also willing to admit to some other motives. With a glint in her eye, she remembered being able to get chores done with the snap of her fingers.
"Oh my, I got a lot of things done," she said with a laugh. "All I had to do was tell him that he couldn't go to practice if he didn't clean his room. I could get him to do anything I wanted with that one."
McCants worked 12-hour shifts to provide for her family. She is proud of the fact that she never needed government assistance to raise her children, although she did need an understanding boss. From her first day on the job, the situation was clear: as a single mother with four children, there might be occasions when she had to briefly leave for an hour-maybe to pick up a child at school, or attend a school function or a parent-teacher conference. But when that duty was over, McCants would be back at work. She went back every day until she had a stroke in 1995. Her parents had divorced when she was very young, and she was determined that her own children would have a different childhood experience.
From an early age, Sean was always the quiet one, the child most eager to please. That's how he developed a close relationship with his mother. Even after he left for Chapel Hill, which he chose primarily for the education since he knew he'd have to walk on without a scholarship in football, the two still talked regularly.
It was McCants who he turned to when he considered quitting football before the 2001 season. Her response was simple.
"Football is something you love to do," she told him. "This is something you've started, and just because things aren't going your way doesn't mean you should quit."
He didn't quit, and saw game action in one game in 2001. It was a small rehearsal for 2002, when he'll be expected to lead a linebacking corps that saw all three of the 2001 starters sign professional contracts. He's still not on scholarship, although that might change before the season.
Williams opened spring practice as the starter at middle linebacker and battled back and forth with Justice throughout the spring. One day, he would get most of the repetitions with the first team. The next day, it might be Justice. The two continued to seesaw throughout the spring in one of the best position battles on the two-deep roster.
At 6-foot-2, 238 pounds, Justice looks like the high school All-American that he was. By contrast, Williams came to Carolina as a defensive back and still is a bit undersized at 6-1, 235 pounds. But the slight size differential doesn't matter to the coaching staff, who are just looking for the football player who makes the most plays.
"There's good competition there," Bunting said. "Sean had the best spring he's ever had. He's stayed injury free, and that's important. He has a history of picking up a little nick and that affecting his play."
Like Bunting, who was a high-motor linebacker in the NFL, Williams' intensity has never been in question. In fact, Bunting has worked with the rising senior to try and improve his poise. Instead of getting so excited that he loses some focus, Bunting wants Williams to channel that energy into running and tackling.
"Sean will really step up and hit you," Bunting said. "He will tattoo blockers. But he needs to stay poised and stay on his feet."
Whoever wins the starting middle linebacker job will have the responsibility for calling the defenses in the huddle this fall. The added job requirements create an odd moment of clarity on the field.
"I call the play and get everyone lined up," Williams said. "Then there's a period when it's silence. It's just a split second, and I read what I have to do, and then as soon as the ball is snapped I kick it back in gear."
That extra gear is what intrigues the coaches. Bunting himself had it when he played in Chapel Hill in the early 1970s, and it continued in the NFL. Although the middle linebacker usually calls the defensive plays, Bunting was the signal-caller for the Eagles as an outside linebacker.
The player thinks that he sees a little of himself in the coach.
"By the way his expressions are, I can see how he must have been on the field," Williams said. "He loved the game and he loved to play. He was very aggressive and liked to go get it just like I do."
Williams has been going and getting it in the classroom as well as on the field. When he returns to Chapel Hill this fall, he'll be just a few hours short of his degree in communications. If his post-graduation future doesn't include football, he is interested in pursuing a career in public relations or as an FBI agent.
But it's not his specific career path that most excites his mother. On graduation day, Sean Williams will be the first member of his generation in his large extended family to get a college degree.
That's important to both Williams and McCants. It may even displace a letter Williams wrote when he was in seventh grade. He found himself without any money on Valentine's Day and unable to get his mother a present. Instead, he wrote her a letter, one that she still has. In it, he told her how much he loved her and how much he appreciated all she had done for him.
In a way, he'll be paying her back for that when he gets his degree from Carolina.
"That degree is very important," McCants said. "It's more important than football. If it never happens that he goes to the NFL or plays pro ball, as long as he gets that degree, he'll have what I sent him to Carolina for."
It's no surprise that Sean Williams is bringing back from Chapel Hill what LaSheila McCants sent him for. When you're tough, things have a way of working out exactly like you planned.
