Marlon Williams had a vision for Little Rock Central girls basketball when he took over the program nearly four years ago. He distinctively wanted to change things from the inside out but with a twist.
"We want to improve the culture, but we also want to have fun," he said not long after he was hired during the summer of 2020. "We're going to work and continue to build, but we want to enjoy ourselves while we do it. Hopefully, we'll be able to contend pretty soon."
The Lady Tigers immediately became a factor in Class 6A under Williams, and eventually did something that no other girls basketball team had ever achieved at Central.
The Brinkley native completed a miraculous turnaround for the Lady Tigers, who won their first state championship in their debut appearance in a final by knocking off defending champion Conway 58-40 on March 8.
"We've all been through a lot together," said Williams, who is the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas Preps Girls Coach of the Year. "When I got here four years ago, [a state title] was the goal."
The win might have been particularly special for Williams, who had worked in the Conway School District the previous 18 years before he was hired at Central. That stretch included a nine-year run as the junior high school coach for Conway Blue, where he led the team to five conference titles.
That success carried over to Central. The Lady Tigers went a combined 19-31 from 2018-20, but since then they've had winning records in each of Williams' four years.
This season, Central endured injuries and had a stretch where it lost four of five games in late December through early January. The Lady Tigers were also 14-12 a week before the state tournament began. But Williams' team turned it on to upset both Fort Smith Northside and North Little Rock in the second round and semifinals before taking down Conway in the final.
"It was all worth it," Williams said of the adversity he felt his team had to overcome. "Everybody saw the character. ... I knew they were going to play their best game [in the final] because it was just a culmination of all of that stuff. It just came true, we put it together, and I'm just so proud."