Big shoes fit Skyline's Kasen Williams

SAMMAMISH — I'm good, dad. I'm good.

Kasen Williams stands in the backyard catching passes from his father, Aaron. Williams is just a child, but Aaron is already teaching fundamentals.

If a ball sails toward Williams above the waist, thumbs together. Below the waist, pinkies together.

When Williams throws the ball back, Aaron provides instruction.

"Over the top. Bring it over the top, Kasen."

But, while father and son play catch in the yard, Aaron refuses to let his child play youth football. At least, not right away. It doesn't matter how often Williams begs.

No. No. I'm really good. At recess, I play all the time.

Instead of signing his son up for football, Aaron Williams convinced him to try soccer. Kasen needed help with his footwork.

Before he matured into one of the top high-school receivers in the country. Before he won three state titles at Skyline. Before he decided to follow his father's footsteps and play for Washington, he was just a child with big feet and little coordination.

His feet were so big he couldn't walk around the house or up the stairs without tripping.

"I used to always tell him, footwork is the key," says Aaron, wearing a Washington sweat shirt.

Williams played soccer, but he never stopped talking about football.

"If you can handle the pain and you're a good athlete, you can play football," Aaron told his son when he was younger. "It's no big deal. You can start playing football in high school and be great at it."

No, Dad. I'm really good. I'm really good.

When he was in fifth grade, Aaron and Williams' mother, Rhonda, relented. He played running back. He found instant success.

"I had always just been playing around on the field and I didn't really know what it would be like in an actual game, and the first two times I touched it, I scored," Williams says.

Washington freshman Cooper Pelluer was the quarterback then and, when the team needed a big play, they called, "Kasen Go." Williams would split out wide, outrun the defense and wait for Pelluer to launch it downfield.

Williams was growing into his big feet.

But there were lessons learned along the way. When Williams was in eighth grade, he came home with a C in one of his classes. Rhonda and Aaron pulled him from the track team. Williams couldn't even practice. He was well above the required grade-point average, but he didn't meet the family's standards.

Coaches called to ask Rhonda why Williams wasn't allowed to compete.

"That's not our minimum, it's your minimum," Rhonda would say, trying to explain the higher standard she set for her son.

By the end of the season, Williams got his grades where they needed to be. He was finally able to participate. He immediately went out and set a school record in the high jump and came close to the long-jump mark.

It was then that Aaron, who played for the Huskies from 1979-82, began to understand his son's potential.

For Kasen, the reality that he might grow into an athlete capable of catching 74 passes for 1,209 yards and 20 touchdowns — his junior year statistics — came during his eighth-grade AAU basketball season with Seattle Rotary, when he was rated as one of the top talents in the Northwest.

"I never really thought I would actually be going to college for football," Williams says. "Sports were just something I did. It wasn't really that big of a deal."

For Rhonda, it hit during Williams' freshman year. Former Spartans coach Steve Gervais didn't play freshmen on varsity. It was an idea Rhonda liked.

"I thought that was a great policy," she says. "It made sense and, next thing I know ... " Williams was playing in the Class 3A state title game against O'Dea.

Despite all his success in football, basketball and track, Williams remains grounded. It starts with his father. Aaron knows what it takes to play college football and, even though there are four boxes of mail from Division I universities in the living room, sorted alphabetically, he often tells his son, "To me, you're just OK."

It motivates Williams. It is a friendly competition between father and son.

"I'm not satisfied until he says that I'm great," Kasen says. "Until he says that I'm great, I'm going to keep working."

As he narrowed his list of potential colleges from 10 to five and finally to the UW, he weighed sports and education. But family factored heavily into the decision.

Throughout the process, many assumed he would pick the Huskies. When he set out five hats last week at the first Spartan Family Barbecue, it seemed like a formality.

Then Williams threw in a twist, showing how important the bond between father and son really is by having his father reveal his decision. Aaron unzipped a Skyline jacket to uncover his old Huskies jersey.

It was a symbolic gesture, a sign of how far Williams has come since those days in the backyard.

"Growing up, everyone talks about how my dad was one of the better receivers at UW and had this great catch and all this type of stuff," he says. "For me it was just wanting to be able to fill his shoes."

I'm good, dad. I'm good.

Now that Williams' future is decided, he can focus on football. He has yet to play a high-school season that didn't end with a state championship. He will catch passes from sophomore quarterback Max Browne, but he's confident in this group's potential.

"At Skyline, that's what we go for," Williams says. "We don't go for anything less."

He enters his senior season as one of the country's top receivers, a key piece to the Huskies' recruiting class.

"Kasen has been the most consistently good wide receiver over the last three years," says CBS College Sports recruiting analyst Tom Lemming. "He's got good size, good football speed — even though he's not a blazer — but he catches everything with his hands. He runs well after the catch. He's a smart football player with terrific athletic ability, body control, balance."

He finally fits his feet.

"I'm glad I'm big enough to fit those," Williams says with a laugh.

I'm good, dad. I'm good.

Mason Kelley: 206-464-8277 or mkelley@seattletimes.com