This is the feature story from the 2024-25 Dave Campbell's Texas Football Rising Magazine highlighting two-sport sensation Jonah Williams of Galveston Ball.

GALVESTON - - Galveston borrows its name from the Spanish Colonial governor Bernardo de Galvez, who ordered the first survey of the Texas Gulf Coast in 1786. His surveyor, Jose de Evia, named Galveston Bay in his honor, and that later led to the name of the island. The first known inhabitants of the area were the Karankawa Indians in the 1500s, who temporary enslaved Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca after his 1528 shipwreck.

The city was home to Texas’s first bank and post office. Galveston Ball was the first public high school in Texas when it opened in 1884 with the motto “Best school south of St. Louis and west of the Mississippi.” Galveston became the birthplace of Juneteenth when Union Army Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, announcing the freedom of more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state of Texas.

Galveston was the second richest city per capita in the United States in the years before the historic 1900 storm. The area was dubbed the “Wall Street of the South” due to a flourishing banking industry. At one point, it was second to only Ellis Island as a port of entry for immigrants into the United States.

The city built the Seawall after the storm of 1900 and became known as an entertainment and gambling hub that invited mobsters and their friends like Frank Sinatra to popular joints like the Balinese Room. In modern times, Galveston is best known for family-oriented tourism. Oh, and for producing NFL football players.

The strip of land sandwiched between Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico also produces athletes who are one with the football. No high school in Texas has produced more NFL exports than Ball High School’s 27. South Oak Cliff is second with 25.

Three of Ball’s 27 NFL alums remain active with wide receiver Mike Evans and cornerback Zyon McCollum playing for Tampa Bay. Tristin McCollum, Zyon’s twin, is a defensive back for the Philadelphia Eagles. The list of former players includes Casey Hampton, Eric Hill, and Kimble Anders. 

Next up is the Texas Tornado, Jonah Williams. The 6-2, 205-pound athlete is the No. 3 prospect in the DCTF 2025 prospect rankings and has been named a five-star by Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. Williams is Mr. Do It All at Ball for Sheldon Bennight’s Tornadoes, dominating in all three phases of the game. He became a household name as a junior in 2023 and started the 2024 season by returning the opening kickoff of the season for a touchdown.

Williams and his older brothers agree with NFL quarterback Jameis Winston: There is just something about that water.

“Jameis was right, if you’re born around salt water, you’re different,” Williams said. Ball high school is one mile from the famed Seawall. There is something in that water we’re swimming in that gives us abilities that other people don’t have. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I know it is real.”

Williams is the latest Ball product to attract national attention. He says the stakes became real when Ohio State head coach Ryan Day dropped by the school to talk to him and watch him practice. Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and safeties coach Blake Gideon arrived by helicopter to watch Williams and his Ball teammates early in the 2024 season. He received his first offer as a sophomore. Now, he holds over 30.

Williams’ exploits aren’t limited to the football field. He throws 94 miles per hour as a left-handed pitcher and is one of the top centerfield prospects in high school. Williams family says he is “50-50” on if he’ll forgo a commitment to play football and baseball at the University of Texas if he’s drafted high enough in the 2025 MLB Draft. Williams also stars on the basketball court and ran track as a junior.

“Jonah ranks near the top of the best athletes this city has ever produced,” Ball athletic director Jerald Temple said at Williams’ photoshoot for the Rising magazine cover in October. “I grew up here and played with a lot of guys who made it to the highest levels, but Jonah’s versatility sets him apart. He does everything well. Not to take anything from those guys, but he might be on his own level by the time he’s done.”

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Billy Williams Jr. watched helplessly as his newborn baby failed to breathe. He saw fear in the doctor’s and nurses’ eyes when they looked at him as the seconds ticked by in the delivery room. They kept hitting the baby’s back hoping it would open his lungs to the world. Billy, who had watched his wife give birth to three healthy sons, closed his eyes and prayed.

“I just silently said, ‘God, I thank you for him, but he is yours. Your will be done. I’ve given you all my kids, so you decide if you want to take him or leave him with us.’ He started to choke a bit and then he was breathing.”

But that didn’t mean Jonah Williams was out of the proverbial woods. For months, Billy could hear and feel his youngest son struggling to breathe. He’d have to tap him on his back, hard, to clear enough space for Jonah to inhale without issue. He walked and ran funny for the first two or three years of his life, his dad remembered.

“I thought maybe he had lost air to his brain in that timeframe where he couldn’t breathe at birth,” Bill said. “Eventually, he just grew out of it and started breathing without issue. He can play sports for hours now without a problem.”

Jonah continued to run funny until he was six or seven years old. Maybe a slight hitch in his giddy up wouldn’t have been so pronounced in a different household. All three of his older brothers were athletes. Rudy was the oldest. Nick was picked in the second round by the Texas Rangers in the 2012 MLB Draft and has nearly 300 major league at bats with the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox. Seth, who is only two years older than Jonah, is a sophomore baseball player at Galveston College.

Jonah never sat still at his older brother’s baseball games. He’d be the first on the field after the final pitch, no matter the setting. He’d dash onto the playing surface and start pretending to be Nick. He’d even wear his dirty uniform or put on his game-worn helmet. His parent couldn’t get him to stop. 

The family was in North Carolina for a summer league game for Seth, now in high school, when Jonah was three or four years old. As is normally the case when one of the boys played, Billy was concentrating on the game. It was up to Jonah’s mom, Annie, to keep up with him and Seth.

Jonah slipped through Annie’s defenses and disappeared into the masses at the large sporting complex hosting the baseball tournament and numerous other events on a hot weekend. Billy caught wind of Jonah’s disappearance and sprang into action, sprinting around the entire park looking for him.

“There was a pro team playing lacrosse in the field and I just happen to look over there and see a commotion,” Billy said. “And there was Jonah, wearing the helmet and holding the lacrosse stick. I ran down there and apologized but the head coach and players were loving it. Jonah was ready to tryout.”

The Williams family built a life around sports. Jonah’s uncle, Robert, was a two-time Super Bowl winning defensive back for the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s. Billy himself was a good athlete growing up. Their dad and Jonah’s grandfather, Billy Sr., was the runner-up for best athlete in Texas as a high schooler. Jonah’s maternal uncles were world class hurdlers. Athletics was a family tradition.

“We may not have gotten much growing up, but my dad always managed to get us a football, a basketball, a baseball, and a bat underneath the tree,” Billy Jr. said about Jonah’s grandfather. “He just thought every kid should get a new ball every Christmas. He was a middle school coach and a teacher. He believed in the power of sports.”

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Billy, a fourth-generation Galvestonian who is a local judge, wanted his boys to carry on that faith in athletics. He saw it as a tool. One that could give his sons options – whether that be on the weekends at home or in the future as jobs or avenues to free education. He put Jonah on the same baseball teams as his older brother Seth, expecting the youngest to keep up.

“I took it for granted that he was playing 7-9 years olds when he was five,” Billy chuckled. “I used to holler at him, ‘catch the ball, catch the ball’ and then another parent came up one day and said, ‘Mr. Williams, he’s only five.’”

Billy was used to seeing Jonah as a peer to Seth and his other older brothers because he never treated him any differently. Even when he ran funny.

The Williams family had a regular weekend routine. A typical fall weekend like for a Williams before reaching high school included watching the Galveston Ball game on Friday night, playing a pee-wee football game on Saturday, and then driving to Almeda afterwards just southwest of Houston to use the batting cages because the ones in Galveston didn’t hit a high enough velocity.

Billy would wake up early Saturday to mow the lawn and take care of any duties he had around the house so he and his four boys could hit the fields by 9 a.m. He’d tell Annie they’d be back in 90 minutes or so, but they always figured out a way to stay busy until at least 2 p.m. They’d practice before practice, and maybe even after. When the family was on the road for a baseball tournament, they’d find a local park to fit in some grounders and hitting practice or maybe some routes with Billy throwing the ball.

“My best friend who was the best man in my wedding was over one night and he said, ‘dang, man, you ever let those boys rest?,’” Billy laughed. “I was hoping to get a break after my oldest sons were done, but as soon as they graduated, my younger sons were ready. Seth would meet me at the door when I’d get home from work and they’d tell me let’s go practice.”

Billy doesn’t buy into Jameis’ theory that the talent in Galveston comes from the water. He thinks it comes from hard work. And community. And competition. He would’ve taken his boys to a park in the desert every Saturday morning if they weren’t born near the water. Fun conspiracy theories aside, his sons agree. They know it was Billy, not the water, that helped them grow.

“He’s a judge, so he was really, really, really strict, but not in a bad way,” Nick said. “We loved it. We didn’t want to do anything else. He made us hard-working, good human beings.”

Jonah also gives credit to his brothers. He watched them win. He watched them lose. He learned from those mistakes and successes and even Nick now admits that Jonah will be the family’s best athlete in short order. He says Jonah matured quicker, and Billy says that is because Jonah was always watching. Even when he couldn’t sit still.

It is Jonah that brings the scouts and college coaches to Galveston now. He’s forging his own path while staying connected with his roots. Nick’s name is honored on the left field wall of the Ball baseball field. A mural of the 27 NFL exports are memorialized at the football stadium. Jonah might become the first to be included on both.

“It all started on a field working with my dad and my brothers trying to be as good as them,” Jonah said. “It was always a competition in our house. First two wash our hands. First to brush our teeth in the morning. Fighting. Breaking some glass. I always had that in me and it prepared me for anything to come.”