Why Kansas City Chiefs player Joshua Williams visited this Fayetteville school

Joshua Williams walked alone on a rainy Thursday morning as he made his way toward the front doors at Loyd E. Auman Elementary School.

A Super Bowl champion with the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, Williams didn’t have a posse or group of handlers at his side. This wasn’t a publicity stunt for the Fayetteville native, who graduated from Jack Britt High School and Fayetteville State University before becoming a professional football player.

Williams simply wanted to be there for Tara Bratcher, his second-grade teacher at Lake Rim Elementary School in the early 2000s and the current principal at Loyd E. Auman.

“When my favorite teacher — basically ever — asked me to come speak to her school, I just came immediately,” said Williams, who just completed his rookie season as a defensive back in the NFL.

“I got to speak to the kids and this isn’t like a task or event where it feels like I have to get up and do work, this is just me coming to talk to kids the same way I talk to my little cousins. It’s just cool to come back and give something back.”

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'Like a dream come true'

For Bratcher, who remembers Williams as “just a great kid” in elementary school, Thursday provided a full-circle moment.

“It’s like a dream come true. As an educator, we always say that we want to inspire kids to be the best and encourage them to do what they want to do,” Bratcher said.

“. … People always laugh at me because I say these are my babies. To know one of my babies was able to see his dreams come true, it’s a feeling unlike anything else in the world.”

As Williams made his way into a cafeteria full of students, he was greeted with deafening applause and a banner decorated in red and yellow — the primary colors of the Kansas City Chiefs — that read: “Welcome to the Bear family, Joshua.”

“Y’all might seem happy, but I’m telling y’all I’m five times happier to be here and be able to talk to all y’all,” Williams said from the stage.

He read Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” before answering a few questions from the crowd, including one from a student who asked if Williams would live on Pluto if it was the same as Earth. Another student asked how Williams went from Fayetteville to the NFL.

“You can make it to the NFL out of anywhere. You can be anything you want to be out of Fayetteville,” Williams said.

“Growing up, there was way better athletes than me. In high school, I didn’t really start until my senior year of high school — there was just so many better athletes than me. Unfortunately, you guys will get older and you’ll start to see some of the realities of life and consequences to your actions. … As you get older, you have to make hard decisions and be careful who you be around. Just make sure you have a goal.”

'It was a super cool day'

After sharing some wisdom and a few laughs, Williams walked the hallways to greet teachers and students. After spending just over 30 minutes in the cafeteria, he didn’t seem to be in a rush, content to stick around and drop in on classrooms to have closer interactions.

Caydn Haslerig, 8, had a front-row seat in the cafeteria and followed Williams throughout the morning. Haslerig rocked a Kansas City Chiefs T-shirt, an imitation Super Bowl ring and carried around a football that Williams signed.

“It was a super cool day. It was a fun day to see a NFL player,” Haslerig said.

Haslerig kept saying it was “cool” to meet someone who plays with his favorite player: quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the MVP of Super Bowl LVII.

Even with Williams sitting behind Haslerig, the 8-year-old didn’t change his tune.

“He’s second,” Haslerig said of Williams.

Justin Malloy, Haslerig’s third-grade teacher, has been friends with Williams for four years.

“It means everything to me to be able to see a player that actually played in the Super Bowl come back to visit a school,” Malloy said. “That means everything to me and my colleagues. Some kids never get this opportunity, so I’m just thankful that he was able to stop in and just be a blessing to his community.”

It meant just as much to Williams.

“It basically is giving me a boost of — not confidence — pride, I guess, that I get to set an example for these young children and do my best to hope they take the good attributes about me and apply it to themselves,” Williams said.

“I hope I planted seeds in all of them today … anything they can do, I hope they can take anything they can out of my success, add it to theirs, and become far better people than me.”

Standing nearby as Williams said that, Bratcher flashed a wide smile.

“Just to know that a little kid from Fayetteville — who started out with a dream — to see his dream finally come to fruition, it’s just the best feeling,” Bratcher said.

“We talk a lot as educators about what our ‘why’ is, so now that picture that I took with him will be my ‘why’ that I show for everyone all over the world to know that he started out as a little kid with a dream. And now his dream has come true.”

Staff writer Rodd Baxley can be reached at rbaxley@fayobserver.com or @RoddBaxley on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: NFL player Joshua Williams returns to Fayetteville, shines spotlight on students