Williams coached at Bradley Tech

So many swear to have been his favorite.

Former students and colleagues recall Ken Williams being tough on his students and athletes. A longtime teacher and coach at Milwaukee Bradley Tech, he set the bar high for his pupils and pushed them to clear it.

At the same time, he had a knack for giving a kid the special attention that made him or her feel like they were the one.

“He touched a lot of lives,” said Sereena Fayne, a former Tech basketball standout who went on to coach at Riverside from 2002-’07. “We all say that we’re his favorite. That’s how he treated us all.”

Williams, a former English teacher and girls basketball coach and the winner of five state titles as a coach in track and field, died Tuesday after a bout with pneumonia. He was 68.

Williams coached girls basketball at Tech for 28 years, a run during which he not only coached Fayne, who coached Riverside to a City title in 2005, but also Alina Cunningham, who coached King to the state tournament in 2004 and ’07.

“He took pride in talking about how many of us had college degrees, how many of us had master’s degrees, how many of us were coaching,” Cunningham said. “He was so excited about that.”

Williams, however, earned hall of fame status as a track coach. His team won a boys state title in 1995 and girls state championships in 1996, 2009, ’10 and ’11. Though he wasn’t always listed as the head coach, Williams was heavily involved with the boys and girls programs.

Williams also has the distinction of coaching the fastest sprinters in state history: Michael Bennett, a 1998 graduate, still owns state records in the 100 and 200 meters; Dezerea Bryant, a 2011 graduate, owns the girls state records in those events.

The Wisconsin Track Coaches Association inducted him into its hall of fame in 2012.

“He definitely had an eye (for talent). He knew it when it saw it,” said Tracy (McCubbin) Borkin, who succeeded Williams as track coach. “He was a strategy guy as well, but at the end of the day he wanted the kids to do what they were best at doing and he brought that out in them.”