By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Mike Williams stepped down as Highland Park's boys basketball coach on Monday after a highly-successful seven-year run that included five Class 5A state tournament appearances and a runnerup state finish this past season.
Mike Williams resigned Monday as Highland Park's boys basketball coach after a highly-successful seven-year stint. [File photo/TSN]
Williams, who informed his Scot players of his decision Monday afternoon, said that stepping down at Highland Park, which gave him his first head coaching job in 2018, was one of the toughest decisions he's ever had to make.
"I'm wiping tears from my eyes right now,'' Williams told TopSports.news. "Highland Park took a chance on a young asstantant coach that had no head coaching experience and I had applied for jobs before and hadn't gotten an opportunity.
"I knew what I could do, or what I believed that I could do, but I wasn't proven and Highland Park and Topeka Public Schools as a whole, they had to kind of step out on a ledge to put me in the position that I've been in and I'm thankful for that, to be given this opportunity to be the head coach at Highland Park.''
Williams, the TopSports.news Shawnee County boys coach of the year the past three seasons after leading the Scots to a 71-4 record over that span, said that a big factor in his decision to step away from basketball was to be able to devote more attention to his family and his education.
Williams' son, Mike Jr., is a 2025 Highland Park graduate and will play college basketball at Barton County Community College, while Micah is a star sophomore soccer player for the Scots. Mike Sr. is scheduled to earn his Master's Degree in the summer of 2026.
"I want to make sure that people know that this wasn't because I got another job or I had a job offer waiting,'' Williams said. "I never put in for a head coaching job since I've been the head coach at Highland Park and I've never been offered another job, so it wasn't like I was running out for the next best opportunity.
''I wear my emotions on my sleeve when I get involved in something. I'm neck deep in it because I want to do a good job and I want to impact people, so I've been so wrapped up in Highland Park every day for the last seven years that there were a lot of times in my life when the basketball program came before me and the basketball program came before my family. I hate to say that because that's not the man I want to and as a father, but it was the coach that I wanted to be and the leader that I wanted to be for Highland Park.''
Williams said he's very proud of what he and his teams have been able to accomplish at Highland Park even though the Scots came up just short of their ultimate goal of winning a state championship.
After back-to-back third-place finishes, the Scots dropped a heartbreaking 58-55 overtime decision to Kapaun Mt. Carmel in March.
"There's not many regrets that I have about my time at Highland Park, but my biggest regret is just not getting a state championship for that school,'' Williams said. "We won leagues, we won a lot of games, we won (Topeka Invitational Tournaments), we won sub-states multiple times, had five trips to state, four in a row, three final fours, a runnerup finish.
"We accomplished so much and my biggest regret is just not getting the state championship going back to Highland Park, but, man, we got dang close and I can say that I feel like we exhausted every avenue to put the boys in the best opportunity for them to attain that goal.''
And although Williams feels he needs to step away from basketball at this time, he knows that it's almost a certainty that he'll return to coaching at some point.
"Basketball's in my blood,'' said Williams, who starred at Topeka West and also played at Washburn University. "I've wrestled with this decision for months and didn't want to make it. It wasn't what I wanted to do all the way, but it was what I did feel was right for right now.
"But coaching is who I am and I can be the first to say that I'm not done coaching, but I'm done coaching for the time being.''
