HowformerUConn football player 'Stack' Williams became mentor for CT's top players: 'Empower them'

Jul. 22—Williams, the CEO and founder of an increasingly influential youth training platform called Supreme Athlete, celebrates those players' present and future because he's been such an integral part of their past and progress.

"All that's going on right now with the younger guys getting multiple scholarship offers, he saw this happening 12-plus years ago," said Dexter Lawson Jr., a defensive back from Bloomfield and a longtime client of Supreme Athlete who played at Central Connecticut and Appalachian State. "A lot of people have it confused in thinking he's just a trainer. Stack is a mentor. I consider him part of my family. He would always push us to the limit, remind us that we're not competing with the guys in the gym or even the guys in the state. We're competing with guys our age throughout the nation. He made us think bigger than we're used to."

Connecticut youth football has long been an 80-yard Hail Mary from, say, that of Florida or Texas. It is not known for elite high school or prep competition or regarded as a hotbed for volumes of high-level talent.

That is changing, though. The state is becoming more fertile recruiting ground for top college programs. Supreme Athlete, a highly specialized program with many of the state's best prospects under its umbrella, has played a major role in a shake-up of the recruiting snow globe, largely on the strength of Williams' ambition and connections.

"I'm going to give [young players] all the information so they can advocate for themselves," Williams said recently in a meeting room adjacent to Supreme's South End gym. "I empower them. I can't give them the relationships, obviously. Those took years to acquire. But I call Coach Mora or whoever, 'I've got a kid, here's the deal, X, Y, Z.' Then I'll get the mom on the phone. They take over from there. I facilitate the process."

Rosa, of Bristol, plays at UConn. Robinson, who is from New Haven and has committed to Georgia, was recently named the top 2024 recruit in the nation by ESPN. He attends IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. Craig, of Hartford, is a sophomore-to-be at Avon Old Farms who began picking up Power Five scholarship offers while still in eighth grade. After graduating from Appalachian State in 2021, Lawson joined the Hamilton Tiger Cats of the Canadian Football League.

All of these players have worked and continue to work with Supreme, originally rooted in Bloomfield. The list of Division I athletes — primarily, but not exclusively, football players — trained and/or consulted by Supreme Athlete is long and growing.

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Tyler Coyle of Windsor went to UConn, then Purdue and is now in the NFL with the Cowboys. Joenel Aguero of Lynn, Mass., is at Georgia. Travis Jones of New Haven, now with the Baltimore Ravens, went to UConn. There are dozens of examples of players from Connecticut and the Northeast in recent years who have earned full and partial Division I scholarships after, in some capacity, making Williams and his staff central parts of their athletic lives.

Supreme Athlete, which offers very specific training and mentoring programs, is the most visible arm of Williams' Supreme Being Inc., a 501c3 non-profit founded in 2012. The program now sits at the heart of a rather new development: major college coaches keeping an eye on, frequently visiting and pulling players from an area of the country they could previously afford to ignore.

So there's Stack posing with Kirby Smart of Georgia. There's Stack getting texts from Nick Saban of Alabama. There's Stack connecting with Jim Mora of UConn. Virtually everyone of any influence in the college football world is on speed dial.

Prep pipeline

Williams runs Supreme with three partners — Andrew Schwapp, Mark Jennings and Corey Johnson. Their services are not limited to the very best athletes. All ages and ability levels are welcome. But they do demand that anyone who enters the gym and the program embraces an in-your-face, no-nonsense approach to athletics, academics, life and human potential.

"Stack is a dream-big, eccentric individual," Schwapp said. "He comes from a very, very tough area. He's the most organized person I've ever seen in my life. He's meticulous. I think people have begun to see what his vision was. And it wasn't to disrupt the public school landscape. It was about fostering the progression of that child and making sure they maximize their potential instead of becoming a coulda, woulda, shoulda. Everything he is doing is founded in love and care."

Eighty percent of the Supreme's athletes wind up with scholarships at Division I programs, Williams said. Numbers fluctuate year-to-year and season-to-season but Supreme typically works with 50-75 athletes at a given time, with middle school- and high school-aged players from numerous sports choosing both individual and group services from a diverse menu.

Many of Supreme's athletes are from communities, and schools, with limited resources. And many begin as standout players at public schools before seeking advanced visibility and competition at private schools.

There can be friction in and around that space, the prep school pipeline that Williams knows and works so well. Public school coaches sometimes see elite players depart. Williams' understands public school coaches might be wary of his expanding presence.

"To be fair, it's just misunderstanding," Williams said. "The prep school coaches have a lot of benefits. The public school coaches are vulnerable because they can lose kids. They don't have what the prep school coaches have. So they're very protective. They think I'm sending players to a prep school, like I'm trying to do it. I'm only providing a service if a kid wants it. I'm not asking him to leave. There's a difference. But if [public school coaches] don't take the time to get to know us, they're assuming that."

Williams elaborated, several times grabbing his phone from the table in front of him to keep up with text messages rolling in. He's charismatic, intelligent, a mountain of a man with pythons for arms and a conversational style of the highest energy.

"I understand the high school coach, concerned," he said. "But here's how you override that: establish a rapport with me. You're in a better position to be connected with me, than not be. I have an honor code. It's like this: If we have a working relationship, I feel like I'm indebted to tell you when it comes to your players, what's on their plate. So when a prep school asks me about your kid, I'm going to tell you because we're working together. Now, I can't stop him from going to prep school. But I can at least make you aware that a kid in your program might like to leave. If you want to X me out or ostracize me, you put yourself at a disadvantage because I'll say, OK, I don't owe you anything."

Williams, 39, says his upbringing in the impoverished North End, the son of a single mother, shaped the drive he harnessed as an adult. His father, Stanley Williams Sr., was murdered — stabbed to death during a dice game, Stack said — while Stack was still in his mother's womb.

Stack's mother, Henda, was 18 when she gave birth. Stack was an aggressive kid, loved professional wrestling, got suspended from school quite often. His nickname came from his stepfather constantly shouting "Keep stackin' 'em up!" from the youth football sidelines as a young Williams flattened, and sometimes injured, opposing players.

In his bio on the Supreme website, Williams equates a childhood move from the Stowe Village projects to Albany Avenue to a move from dirt to mud. His mother set a healthy example by how hard she worked and provided positive guidance that sticks with Williams today. She remains in the area and they remain very close. But the family struggled for most everything and Williams, a talented athlete, had few other advocates or role models.

"I was a Division I player but I believed, personally, I was a Sunday guy," Williams said of the NFL. "Had I had what I provide now. The difference was I didn't have anyone invested that way with me."

Williams had a brother, 15 years his junior, who died of cancer at age 12. The diagnosis came during the few years Williams spent in Atlanta as a case manager after graduating from UConn with a sociology degree in 2008. He had become a father, at age 18, to a daughter who was autistic, non-verbal and in a wheelchair her entire life. She died when she was 19, in November 2021.

Williams, a full-time school teacher who lives and works in Windsor, teaches Afrocentric studies at Academy of Aerospace and Engineering. He and his longtime girlfriend, Syrita, have two daughters (Harlem Divine, Divine Wisdom) and two sons (Supreme Wisdom, Wise Sun). There is a lot packed in to everything Williams does, talks about and considers.

"It's interesting because in this industry, a lot of people say things like, 'You've got to watch out for those guys because they just try to target single moms and try to take advantage of them,' " Williams said. "I'm like, bro, realize that I'm a product of a single mom, so my heart is near and dear to that population. You can only imagine the level of intensity I'm going to have in support of these families."

Fulfill your dreams

Williams, a running back listed at 5-11 and 222 pounds in college, was roommates with Larry Taylor and teammates with Jon Wholley, who is now the football coach at Avon Old Farms. Williams played mostly on special teams in his one year as an eligible player with the Huskies, earned an Master's in business administration from the University of Phoenix in 2010, then a Master's in sports administration from Delaware State in 2019. He said Barack Obama's election as President inspired him to take education more seriously. He has written two books.

And he has built Supreme Athlete into an all-encompassing destination that is earning a regional, even national, reputation as a turnstile for elite players.

"We all have joined together to give these kids not only the athletic development, but also the mindset you need to fulfill your dreams," said Schwapp, who works as a physical education teacher at a Bloomfield middle school. "We have a healthy difference of ideologies. Whether you're a kindergarten teacher or a coach at Alabama, your one goal is to elicit internal motivation in that student or that athlete. Stack and I are both no nonsense. He's fire and brimstone. I was that at one point. But through my evolution, I'm kind of changing my approach in order to get to that drive in another way. Bottom line is we just want to get to that internal drive for all of the young men and women we work with."

The skeleton for the Supreme Athlete idea was formed by the high-level athletic training Williams witnessed in Atlanta, and with the Florida-based IMG Academy model in mind. Supreme is affiliated with another prominent Northeast training program, Massachusetts-based Excel Sports Academy. The programs combine to field a 7-on-7 football team that competes up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Williams calls the struggles of his childhood "necessary."

"Because It prepared me for this role," he said. "My compassion, my grace, my sense of urgency, is all heightened because of those experiences. So now I'm very direct and calculated in every single thing. Because I understand what can potentially happen if you don't do certain things. It's very strategic, man. I'm very tactful. And that's why we've been able to be successful, with the staff I have. What we've laid out is very purposeful. From the moment you walk in, I'm trying to impact you psychologically."

The gym's energy smacks you in the face. There's a mood. There's loud music with lyrics that could never be played over the P.A. speaker of any school. Curse words are spoken freely and even written on white boards (SHUT THE F--- UP AND TRAIN MUTHAF----, for example) Supreme Athlete isn't for the fainthearted or for anyone only partially invested.

"Before they pay a penny I say we use profanity, the music has profanity, we're very aggressive, in your face, no nonsense," Williams said. "Just so you're aware, that's how we run our house. If that's something you're OK with, this is going to make a beautiful marriage."

There are also motivational quotes and messages, some written by Williams or staff members. Pictures of dozens of players who have been through the program and gone on to college hang on the wall as inspiration.

"So that is already programmed to help you think of yourself in a certain light," Williams said. "That's purposeful because I know what self-esteem can do for a person. And that's what I need to do first. The body is easy. The mind is the hardest thing to penetrate. ... There's a saying that hard times make tough men, good times make soft men. So I'm trying to preserve the toughness in the way we conduct our business here, keep it very raw and aggressive, adverse conditions. We love them, so we try to annihilate them, mentally. At the end, we console them."

The entire program is also a nod to Asaph Schwapp, one of the top football recruits in Connecticut history when he left Hartford for Notre Dame in 2006. Schwapp, the younger brother of Andrew Schwapp, died of cancer in 2013.

'Hidden Gems'

Among Supreme's training options is a single session for $40. Services extend all the way to "sports consulting," which at $100 an hour or $300 a month includes development timelines and college referrals, and "supreme university," a six-week program, at a cost of $300, that includes "foundational principles" and self-evaluation lessons.

In between, there's a bit of everything, from skill-specific workout plans focusing on, say, speed or strength, to life-lesson mentoring programs. One service is called "prep school plug," which facilitates enrollment in private schools.

The largest population of student-athletes at Supreme is middle school-aged kids. Some who have been with the program for years are into their 20's. Kids as young as 5 are involved. Williams and his staff adjust lessons and approach based on who they are teaching.

"It's honestly really different with the girls," said Keyvanna Bennett, who is from Windsor, attends Suffield Academy and was recently offered a basketball scholarship by South Carolina State. "It's hard core with the boys. With the girls, he's a little more easygoing. He talks to you softly. But once you mess up, you'll probably get the same energy that he has with the boys."

Bennett, who also plays soccer and runs track, is entering her senior year. She has been training at Supreme since she was 10, working mostly with Williams and Jennings.

"It has helped me get stronger mentally and physically because I was going against all boys," she said. "There are times where I've had to make decisions, and it just helped me gain mental and physical toughness. Stack, to me, is like an uncle. He is very easy to go to. He gives it to you real, raw. He will not sugarcoat anything. I would tell [people], basically, if you want to be dog, then you have to train at Supreme. But if you're not serious about what you do, don't even bother. If you don't have the motivation to push through at Supreme, you're not going to make it through. It's about physical toughness, but it's all mental at the end of the day."

In 2021, Supreme Athlete was awarded a $10,000 grant from Gatorade that allowed Williams to improve facilities, pay program bills and staff, and help athletes travel for various sports showcases and competitions. Rosa, the UConn sophomore running back who was the Gatorade Connecticut player of the year at Bristol Central High in 2021, recorded a testimonial that was posted to the Gatorade website.

In the video, Rosa says, "I believe Supreme Athlete is deserving of the extra support because the life lessons and human development that occurs throughout the program. There's definitely a beauty in the impact that working together as a human being can have. Supreme is owned by a Black owner, Stack Williams, along with a Black staff in a predominately poor Black neighborhood who accept all children with all dreams and treat them all the same as one family."

Most workouts at Supreme end with some sort of life discussion.

"Hidden gems," Lawson calls them, "that aren't talked about every day in school or sometimes even at home."

What precedes those conversations is no joke.

"His goal, in a way, is to make [athletes] not want to come back," said Lawson, who won a state championship at Hartford's Capital Prep in 2015, another at Bloomfield High in 2016 and spent a post-graduate year at St. Thomas More in Montville. "Stack doesn't want just anybody in the gym. He's not looking to collect people's money. He wants people to actually want to be great and compete with other great athletes. His whole thing is, that's how life is. There are certain rooms for certain people. The saying goes, 'You never see eagles fly with pigeons,' and that's the kind of environment he wants to build and that's how he comes across as a person."