A night for Starla -- Sky brings attention to Williams' legacy

The sounds of children laughing and screaming had Rich Williams utterly confused.

So upon arriving late to Emmons Grade School in Antioch for a Thursday basketball practice last February, the assistant coach opened the gym doors and saw, lo and behold, his daughter, Starla, who happened to be the head coach, standing tall at half-court with grade-schoolers charging at her.

Starla, 6 feet 2 and a former Antioch High School and Division I basketball player whose big-and-strong daddy proudly says he made into a "football-basketball player," had her grade-school girls pumped up. They were bouncing off her like pinballs and falling on their backsides. They were laughing. Starla was laughing and clapping.

Rich Williams had to laugh, too.

Suffice it to say, Starla's charging drill was a hit, so to speak.

"The kids absolutely loved her," Rich Williams says. "And she loved them."

The very next morning, a little past 8 o'clock on Feb. 12, Starla was driving her Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible eastbound on Grand Avenue in northern Lake County. Rich says Starla, who was driving alone, got into a left-hand turn lane to turn onto a side street, turned her vehicle and was hit broadside on the passenger side by a Ford Excursion heading westbound.

The driver of the Ford Excursion was treated for minor injuries and was released.

Starla was nonresponsive at the scene, having suffered severe trauma to the head.

Six days after the accident, having never gained consciousness, she succumbed to her injuries.

She was 25, kind, attractive, with an infectious smile and blond hair so long it would rival Rapunzel's.

"Just a sweetheart of a young lady," Rich Williams says of Starla, his and wife Terese's oldest of two children. Son Skylar is 15. "She never caused any problems for us in any way shape or form. Never. I would tell Starla to go out and have some fun.

"Imagine me telling my daughter to go out and party," he adds with a chuckle. "She was so straight-laced and just a good girl. Starla was an absolute angel. She'd come home from school and do her homework. You wouldn't have to tell her twice. If you ever told her something, you didn't have to tell her again. Just a great kid. Absolutely stellar."

After Starla's passing, Lindsay Dresser, an account executive for the WNBA's Chicago Sky and whose dad, Jeff, coached Antioch's boys basketball team for many years, called Rich Williams and asked him about putting together a fundraiser in Starla's name.

It takes place Saturday, when the Sky has its 2010 home opener against the Indiana Fever at Allstate Arena (7 p.m.).

Money from tickets purchased in advanced will go a memorial scholarship set up in Starla's name.

Grade-school kids like the ones Starla coached at Emmons will also benefit, which appealed greatly to Rich Williams. Scholarships will be awarded to Dennis Kessel's basketball camps. Starla had been trained by Kessel during her high school playing days and later had gotten her first coaching opportunity under him.

"The whole impetus behind this fundraising effort is to help and continue to educate the kids in basketball at the Emmons school," Rich Williams says. "This scholarship foundation is going to be providing monies to provide training and coaching for these kids (boys and girls grades 6 through 8), hopefully for an indefinite period of time."

Despite always being tall for her age - "She was almost 11 pounds at birth. She came out a bowling ball," her dad says with a smile - Starla wasn't into sports growing up. She never picked up a basketball until she was a seventh grader.

By the next year, she was starting. She played on Antioch's sophomore team as a high school freshman, and then when sophomore coach Don Zeman took over the varsity the following season, he pulled up Starla with him again.

A powerful low-post player, she competed three varsity seasons for the Sequoits, graduating in 2003, and earned a scholarship to Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

"I think she was well recognized by all her (high school) teammates as being a very physical, aggressive basketball player," says Rich Williams, who didn't mind that. After all, he was a football player, wrestler and track athlete at Round Lake in the 1970s. "There were many times that some of the girls on the team would get very upset with her in practice because she was very physical."

Starla played four seasons for IPFW, majored in graphic design and graduated.

But unable to find work in her chosen field of study, she started coaching, first for Kessel and then at Emmons. She and her dad were in the process of contacting high schools about the possibility of coaching at that level next. With Starla's high-level playing background and her knack for teaching kids, Rich saw a future in coaching for his daughter.

She was taking classes at the College of Lake County to earn her teaching degree.

Then came the morning of Feb. 12. Rich and Terese were suddenly living every parent's worst nightmare.

Tuesday marked three months since the Lindenhurst couple lost their daughter, and the days aren't getting easier.

Rich, a packaging designer who supplies packaging components to industrial manufacturers, calls himself a "social creature." By virtue of that, he feels he's better equipped to handle the unfathomable grief that he and his family are experiencing.

Besides, he knows it's his job, more than ever, to take care of his wife and son. Starla, he says, adored her baby brother.

Rich does take solace in knowing just how wonderfully popular and loved his daughter was by so many people.

He described the support from family and friend immediately following Starla's accident as "amazing" to both him and his wife.

Family came in from all over, including West Virginia, to offer support and be with Starla in the hospital. Some of Starla's former college professors did, too. A former college basketball teammate of hers flew in from Paris, France, and another did likewise from Washington, D.C.

For a midmorning wake on a Monday, people lined up outside door.

"When Starla was in the hospital, we dominated the intensive care waiting room unit," Rich says. "I met so many people that I didn't know. There were just tons of people that we did not know who were friends of Starla's.

"Just an overwhelming support system came in place."

You sense that support system will never go away.

To help support the Starla Williams Memorial Scholarship fund, tickets for the Chicago Sky's home opener against the Indiana Fever on Saturday night must be purchased in advance by calling (312) 994-5988 or (312) 994-5962.

BEGIN ATTRIBUTIONjaguilar@dailyherald.comEND ATTRIBUTION