NICEVILLE — Former Bay High School boys basketball coach Rob Williams died in a boating accident near the Mid-Bay Bridge in Choctawhatchee Bay, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Stan Kirkland confirmed on Saturday.
Williams was among three people killed in the accident, which occurred between Thursday night and Friday morning, Kirkland said. The body of Taylor M. Evanoff, 18, was found Friday about a mile south of Dana Point. Williams’ body was found around noon Saturday near the wreck site, about a half-mile from Legendary Marine in Destin. A third body, a female, was found in Joe’s Bayou near sundown Saturday, but Kirkland said authorities were waiting to notify her family before releasing her name.
Williams, 47, was the registered owner of the boat and a Niceville resident. He is survived by four children.
He was born in Port St. Joe and a graduate of Wewahitchka High School and Gulf Coast Community College. He made his mark as a head coach at Bay High School over five seasons, where he amassed a 110-45 record with regional appearances in each season. The Tornadoes reached the pinnacle under Williams with the school’s first state Final Four berth in 2003.
Williams left Bay in 2004 and also coached at Lowndes and Lanier County high schools in Georgia. He was an assistant coach at Chipola College and head coach at Alabama Southern for one season. He was to be hired at Mosley in 2007, but instead took a position at Lanier County a month after a verbal agreement to take over the Dolphins’ program.
Rutherford boys basketball coach Rhondie Ross said he met Williams when they were teammates on the men’s basketball team at Gulf Coast in 1989.
When Ross moved back to Bay County in 2001, he joined Williams’ coaching staff at Bay. He remained an assistant at Bay until taking over the head coaching position at Rutherford and building a highly successful program there during the past decade.
“We were friends, we talked quite a bit,” Ross said Saturday. “Recently he came over and watched us when we played in a classic at Fort Walton Beach on the Monday and Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving. He came to both of my games.
“The day after Thanksgiving we watched game film, then went out to Gulf Coast and watched tournament games out there.”
Ross said that Williams, who had been out of coaching for a few years and was in private business, told him that he lived vicariously through him.
“He still had the coaching bug,” Ross said. “He’d give me pointers and I’d bounce things off of him.
“He had a tremendous impact on me. He taught me a lot about defense, game planning and strategy. He was a tireless worker and showed me a work ethic.”
Ross said that Gary Speights, currently a teacher at Mowat, was a mentor to Williams dating to when Speights was a teacher and head basketball coach at Wewahitchka in the early 1980s.
“One of the greatest things was that he wound up coaching my son at Bay High, that was really neat,” Speights said.
“He had a vision that he told me he would play college basketball one day, which he did. He said one day he would be a coach like me, and he did. He wanted to put (his players) in position to go to the next level. That was his goal.”
Speights said that he hadn’t spoken with Williams in about three weeks, although he did put in a call to Williams on Friday, not knowing about the accident.
“He was doing pretty good for a young man from Wewahitchka, Florida,” Speights said. “His goal was to put his family in position to be successful. He loved his kids very much.”
Speights said he didn’t receive confirmation of Williams’ death until late Saturday afternoon.
“It felt like losing a son, losing a loved one,” Speights said. “He coached my son … that he came under his tutelage was very special. I knew he was taken care of, taught the right things. I knew he was going to be disciplined. Do it the right way.”
Port St. Joe head basketball coach Derek Kurnitsky said Williams had a major influence on his career. The two first met, he said, during the mid-1990s at Florida State University.
As Kurnitsky recalled, Williams was returning to school in his late 20s, and they were managers together on head coach Pat Kennedy’s men’s basketball staff.
“We knew each other very well,” Kurnitsky said. “He got me the job at St. Joe. When the job came open I knew he was at Bay High. Even though he played at Wewa he was a St. Joe guy. He got me hooked up. He got my foot in the door.”
Kurnitsky said he last saw Williams in a chance meeting during the summer when Kurnitsky’s daughter was in the hospital with a staph infection and Williams was there to visit his grandfather.
“He was a heckuva basketball coach, a great teacher of the game,” Kurnitsky said. “We played Sneads tonight … He’s the reason I’m in St. Joe. It’s just surreal.”