Inside Max Williams' lifelong pursuit toward his USC debut

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Scott Altenberg, the head football coach at Gardena Serra High School, could see it in his players' eyes as they prepared to take the field for their 2018 season opener up north against Serra HS from San Mateo.

Altenberg's squad had but a few senior starters, and he worried that the decidedly partisan road crowd was already having an effect on his young team. He decided he best address it head-on before kickoff.

"We're in San Francisco and it's a packed house, the place is going crazy, the guys are lining up to run out there and I could see in my guys, they were just, 'Oh man.' I went to speak and Max says, 'I've got this, coach,'" Altenberg says, referring to star cornerback Max Williams. "Max jumps up in front of the team and said about what it is to be a Serra player and these are the moments that we live for. I was like, 'OK, what he said, let's go.'

"The kids were like, 'We got this!' It was crazy and we end up blowing them out. … The kids just looked at him like, 'We've got Max, we're OK.'"

Back at the Williams' family home in Carson in late December, a week or so after the 4-star cornerback had officially signed his National Letter of Intent with USC, his father Maxzell Williams Sr. thinks of one last story to share at the end of a 40-minute conversation about his son's path to this point.

It fits the narrative.

"He was about 6 years old and we were driving on our way to a football game, a big playoff game or something and I remember asking him, 'Man, are you nervous?'" the elder Williams recalls. "He was like, 'No.' He looked back at me like, 'Dad, what's nervous?'"

He laughs and Max chimes in: "I don't really get nervous, I just be like anxious."

Especially these last almost seven months -- since he tore his left ACL not long after giving that pregame speech to his high school team.

He'd miss the rest of his senior season, the one he'd been working toward his whole life. It's still a tough topic around the family dinner table months later.

But then again, if anyone was mentally prepared for that kind of unexpected challenge, it was Max Williams.

Maxzell Williams Sr. had played football at El Camino College and then Nevada before spending a year and a half in the Canadian Football League with the BC Lions. He says he had the option to try the Arena Football League as well, but if it wasn't the NFL, it wasn't worth it to him.

And Max -- the eldest of three brothers now -- was about to be born.

"So I decided to follow this guy around," he says.

Not so much follow -- push, teach, train, coach, motivate.

They had their first big conversation about Max's future when he was just 4 years old, while throwing the football in the front yard.

"I was just coming off of playing football, so I've still got a football mindset. So I told him, 'If you really want to play football, it's a physical sport, you've got to give it everything you've got and I'll help you get there," the elder Williams recalls of that talk. "But if you just want to play for fun, rec leagues, I'll sign you up at the park and you can do what you want to, but it will be hard for me to go watch if you're not taking it seriously.

"I asked him, 'Do you want to just play football or do you want to be the best?' He said, 'I want to be the best.' I said, 'It's going to take a lot of hard work.' He said, 'OK.' This is at 4 years old."

Incredibly, Max says he actually remembers that conversation as well, even as a 4 year old.

"I remember telling him I wanted to be the best ever, and he gave me a speech, like all the work I've got to put in and focus," he said. "He was asking me, 'Are you sure?' I was like, 'Yeah.' I was just a little kid, but yeah, I remember that."

And so the training began, from cone drills in the yard to tossing the football around -- something every day.

His mother Shante Williams pauses to consider her words when asked what she thought then of little Max's focus for the sport at such an early age.

She says that she has "a love-hate relationship with football" for all the time it's consumed for the family, but she knows her husband and sons love it so she's learned to love it. "It definitely has paid off," she concurs.

"I think he just always knew what he liked and what he wanted to do," she says of her eldest son. "He always had a goal to do better. He's always been football -- football has always been life for him, for the family basically. … He started working out since he was the age of 4, in the front yard. Just never stopped after that. It's every day. It's just been nonstop since he was 4."

The most important perspective, of course, is Max's, and it doesn't take long listening to him reflect on his football-focused upbringing to understand the mutual respect he and his father built through the sport -- for Max's drive and dedication and for Max Sr.'s time and energy and investment in steering him to this point.

"Mostly everything is because of him because he's been my trainer since I was 4 years old. He still trains me. … He's the reason why I'm such a good DB," Max says.

Not long after that pivotal discussion in the front yard, his father took him to sign up for the youth football league in Compton, where the family was living at the time. But they were told he couldn't play until he was 5, as per league rules.

"I was upset. I said, 'I'm looking at the kids you got running around picking their nose. My son, he's ready to play," the elder Williams remembers. '"Me and my son talked about it, we said this is what we're going to do. We're going to train even harder for a year and then when you come back I want you better than everybody."

That's the standard Max has been chasing ever since.

Maxzell Williams Sr. recalls proudly the first practice he was able to attend when Max was playing as a 5 year old on the 6-and-under team in Carson (he wouldn't take him back to Compton after the perceived snub the previous year).

"I look, they line all the kids up, all the kids are playing around, joking, having fun. He's serious, like, looking at everybody else like they were crazy," he says, a glint of pride in his eye all these years later.

When it later came time to move up to the 10-under team, the elder Williams reached an impasse with the coaching staff. He didn't want Max taking the pounding of playing running back, while the coaches reiterated he was their best option at that spot.

So he moved his son up to the 12-under team for the next three years.

And eventually he was the young guy again on the high school squad at Serra, trying to prove yet again that his size and youth belied his ability and worth.

"The thing was, he had two things going against him -- he was a freshman and he wasn't very big," Altenberg recalls. "You're thinking, going into it as a coach, this kid's going to be special, but the last thing I want to do is put him in a situation where he may fail at such a young age and kind of stunt his growth. That's generally my philosophy."

It wouldn't take long for Williams to convince him otherwise.

The fourth game of that 2015 season was against Narbonne HS. As his father recalls, Max started at receiver (in a run-dominated offense led by future Arizona QB Khalil Tate) and then came in the third defensive series at cornerback.

It was a 14-14 game with both teams scoring on each of their first two drives, as the story goes, with Narbonne driving deep into Serra territory again when Williams nabs an interception. And then the next defensive series, he picks off another pass, per his father's recollection. Serra went on to win 41-40 in overtime.

Altenberg's memory is that one of the picks came later in the game as he baited the quarterback, but they agree it was the night Williams proved to everybody that he belonged in the starting lineup.

"He had two big huge plays in that game. … I remember that being really the time where he arrived," Altenberg says.

As Maxzell Williams Sr. also recalls, though, his son took a shot to that left knee and would have to come out of the game. When he returned he was "basically on one leg," but by that point Narbonne wasn't interested in challenging him anymore.

The injury would cost him four games, his father remembers, but it didn't slow down his soaring stock as a burgeoning college prospect.

After that freshman season, Boston College extended the first offer.

"Then an hour later it was like Florida State. Then the next morning it was Louisville. So he got three ACC offers, then Washington State. Then after that it was a snowball effect to where he had 15 offers just like that after freshman year," Maxzell Williams Sr. says.

Williams would earn his 16th offer that summer at USC's Rising Stars Camp.

The Trojans were officially in early on the coveted cornerback, but what happened later would really seal his college choice.

Altenberg is talking on the phone last Wednesday and notes that he just had Williams back up at the high school, as well as another former Serra alum and USC standout, Marqise Lee.

Both Williams and Lee tore an ACL at about the same time in late August and were comparing notes on their progress.

But talking about Williams makes Altenberg think of another former USC star WR and fellow Serra alum.

"The thing about Max, he reminds me a lot of Woody -- Robert Woods -- in that he's really businesslike in the way he did things when he was here," he says. "Really had kind of a plan, understood what he wanted to do and he was just really good about it."

As quickly as Altenberg can tell one story about Williams another comes to mind.

He forgets the opponent now, but he recalls one team was convinced that Serra was intercepting their offensive calls because Williams had perfectly jumped a couple routes. In reality, Williams was simply picking up on cues from the receiver he was defending and that coupled from his prep work during the week allowed him to dissect what was coming next.

"He's a very good athlete and he's strong, he's got quick jumps, so he's got some really good physical characteristics. He's not very big, he's not a huge kid, but he's just incredibly smart," Altenberg says of Williams, whom USC lists at 5-foot-9, 175 pounds. "So I think he ends up being kind of like, whatever height deficiency he has he makes up for it by positioning. He puts himself in really good position and he understands it. ... He's a 5-star mental player without a doubt.

"He's one of the best that I've had -- I've had a lot of good players -- and he's one of the best in preparation and in-game kind of mental notes he does."

That reminds Altenberg of another story …

Serra was playing Chaminade HS, which had a receiver named Michael Wilson who would go on to Stanford. He was the guy the defense had to key in on that week.

"It was a Monday, we came out on the field and we're doing some walkthroughs, prep stuff. I moved the kid that was playing Michael Wilson, I moved him to the slot and I said, 'All right guys, they haven't done this a lot, but when he's in the slot this is what he likes to do.' And before I said it, Max said, 'He's only done it nine times this year and he's run six outs ...' He just rattled it off like it was nothing," Altenberg recalls. "I'm like, 'Holy Cow.' This was game like 8 and Max had already studied the film we'd given him, he already knew his tendencies from when he goes into a spot he'd only done like nine times. But Max knew exactly the routes before I even said it. That's kind of who he is."

And all of that helps underscore how tough it was when Williams went down injured in that first game.

"It was the most devastating thing that could happen to our team this year," Altenberg says plainly.

Also personally devastating, of course.

The emotions rush back for Shante Williams some four months later, sitting at the family table and reflecting on this trying fall.

"It was tough. Just, he worked so hard to get to his senior year, and for him not to be able to participate was really hard," she says, needing a few moments to gather herself. "… For that to be just taken away, it was hard."

RELATED: Inside Max Williams' road to recovery

Williams had felt his left knee buckle on a punt return, but he thought he could shake it off and keep playing. Later, he was jogging when it buckled again and he knew he was done. But even in that moment, he hadn't braced for the severity of the news.

He'd get the call on his birthday, letting him know the MRI results showed a torn ACL and torn meniscus and that his last high school season was over as soon as it began.

"That was horrible," Williams recalled back in December. "Every time I think about that I get emotional. It was real rough. I was crying. It was just horrible. And it was on my birthday so that made it worse. My dad actually showed up because my coach called him -- I couldn't talk to nobody at the time."

Maxzell Williams Sr., meanwhile, had to make sure his son was looking forward -- the same way he had been since he was 4 years old. The same way he did when he was told he couldn't play that first year because he wasn't old enough.

This was much different, sure, but the mindset in a way had to be the same.

"I had to take a different approach because I knew how devastating it was and how it affected so many people that I kind of like blocked out of the reality of the whole situation and tried to turn it into just basically Day 1 of our rehab," the elder Williams says. "So it's not about missing a season -- you're not a high school football player anymore. High school football is done.

"Your focus isn't on what-ifs, your focus isn't on anything that has to do with high school football anymore. You're now a college athlete, and right now you're getting ready for spring ball, for college football. And this was a couple minutes after we found out and got the MRI results back."

The day after the bad news came a much better call.

USC head coach Clay Helton talked to Williams for 20 minutes, making sure he knew that the Trojans still very much wanted him and that nothing had changed. Williams had been silently committed since August, though he wouldn't publicly announce his college choice until October.

Altenberg had thought for a while that his star pupil would maybe end up at Oregon or perhaps Stanford, which was pursuing him aggressively.

"He just said, 'This is what I'm going to do, coach.'That's what he wanted," Altenberg says.

While Williams had already made that choice, that call from Helton reaffirmed his decision and left no doubt.

And with that, he went back to work -- determined to exceed expectations in a new way, to "come back stronger than I was before."

Hearing Williams say that in late December, it was clear he had conviction behind those words. As spring practice has begun, watching him working off to the side on his own with August in mind, he looks well on his way.

But listening to Helton talk on National Signing Day in February (Williams signed during the early window in December) was perhaps most telling.

"In 25 years I’ve never seen a kid work harder," Helton said then. "Our doctors and our physicians are like blown away by where he’s currently at. He’s not on pace, he’s ahead of pace right now. The kid is working so hard to be ready for next season."

In reality, he's been working for it since he was 4 years old, this physical setback just an unexpected test to the drive and determination that's carried him this far.

Catch up on our other USC Next Up features …

-Inside Nick Figueroa's 'crazy journey' to USC

--https://usc.rivals.com/news/inside-nick-figueroa-s-crazy-journey-to-usc