Dion Williams: McNair High School
Williams was inducted into the Georgia Dugout Club Hall of Fame in 2022
Dion Williams doesn’t care about talking about his achievements and accomplishments during his coaching days.
When a reporter called the longtime DeKalb County high school baseball coach to congratulate him on his induction into the Georgia Dugout Club Hall of Fame, Williams was somewhat surprised.
“It’s hard for me to talk about myself, so I’m glad it’s something they told you,” said Williams, a former McNair High School baseball coach and DeKalb administrator.
“I did it for the kids. I thought it was the right thing to do.”
Williams was inducted into the Georgia Dugout Club Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2022.
In just a little more than a decade at McNair, Williams turned around a struggling program that had never had a winning season. He guided them to three region titles and six state playoff appearances. His 1997 squad was ranked atop the Class 4A poll for 17 weeks, while his team in 1996 finished fourth in the final Class 4A poll.
"He was a competitor and he made me a better coach," former Redan coach Greg Goodwin, a GDC Hall of Fame member, said. "When you were playing Dion's teams, you better be prepared. It didn't matter if he had great kids or average kids, they were going to battle you."
But Williams' legacy went beyond wins. He helped 12 players get drafted and 25-plus players signed collegiate scholarships. His overall record was 200-92 from 1990-2001 before he went into administration and worked at several DeKalb County schools.
His father was professional baseball player George “Boomer” Scott and Williams followed in his father’s footsteps and played professionally as well after he was an all-conference performer at Mississippi Valley State. After his playing career, he scouted some for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1998).
But Williams’ drive for helping coach and develop young baseball players didn’t go unnoticed.
“I was the director of the Little League baseball program at Gresham Park and when Dion took over at McNair, that was a school that nobody wanted to come to,” said Williams’ longtime friend Bernard Pattillo. “McNair never had a winning baseball season and they had discipline problems. Dion came in and said since they weren’t winning anyway, he wasn’t going to put up with any bad attitudes.
“We saw changes at the high school and since we were their feeder system, we approached him and told him about our program since nobody (at McNair) had ever really came down and saw the kids. Dion came down there and got to know everybody on a first-name basis. He turned that McNair program around and people started getting college scholarships and some got drafted. It made the kids want to go play for Dion.”
Williams’ son, Deion, was an All-American at Redan High and played for the Washington Nationals. He runs a baseball academy in Gwinnett County and he and Dion Williams continue to do some baseball instructional leagues.
"Coach Dion Williams's legacy lives on every day through the many, many lives he impacted while he was at McNair High School,” said Parkview head baseball coach Chan Brown, a longtime friend and member of the GDC Hall of Fame. “Many of Coach Williams' players have gone on to coach in either high school baseball or travel baseball. Coach Williams taught young men to be great at everything they did through the structure and discipline of his baseball program he ran day in and day out.
“But the thing about Coach Williams is that many of his players will attribute their success through the relationships and love that he had with his players. Coach Williams comes from a family of baseball. He brought many lifetime experiences to the table when he was coaching at McNair. Due to his experience, his intensity and his discipline, many of his teams won a lot of baseball games. But at the end of the day, I think Coach Williams is most proud of all the successful young men in the world that he was able to have an impact on.”
But Dion Williams would rather keep that to himself.
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