SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- Shane and Mila Williams were high school sweethearts. Their mothers went to school together. They thought they would live in Grove City, Ohio, forever -- just as their parents and siblings had.
“We had lived there our whole lives,” said Mila. When they told their family and neighbors they were moving to Warner Robins, she said everyone was shocked.
Two years ago this month, Shane accepted a job with Academy Sports in Twiggs County. He and his family never dreamed they would now be at the Little League Baseball World Series with dad coaching and son, Logan, playing.
Logan, 12, had never played Little League baseball before moving to Warner Robins. Shane coached him in travel ball because there were no Little League programs in their area.
When Shane started considering a move to Georgia, one of the first people he contacted was then-Warner Robins American Little League President Mark Knight.
With the help of Knight and his wife, Christy, who happened to be a Realtor, things started to fall into place for the Williamses.
The family took a trip to visit Warner Robins, and the first place they stopped was the Flint Energies Sports Complex, where Warner Robins American plays.
Once Shane accepted the position and moved his family down, he was introduced to Buddy Deal, who coaches with him now in South Williamsport.
Deal told the couple he was hosting tryouts and to bring Logan. Deal said after seeing about a dozen balls hit Logan’s chest and chin as he tried to stop the ball, he knew he wanted him on his team.
“That’s my guy,” Deal said.
But Logan was first introduced to Warner Robins before that. He watched the 2009 all-star team play in the World Series from his home in Ohio.
“ ‘Dad, I wanna go play there,’ ” Shane recalled his son saying while watching the Southeast game against Chula Vista, Calif., that year.
Now he is one of those boys.
“Whoever would’ve thought that in my first and second year of Little League I’d make all-stars?” Logan said.
Not knowing anyone in the town could have been daunting to some families, but the baseball community embraced the family with open arms.
The Deals and the Williamses have formed a bond. The wives are friends and the husbands are friends and coach together. Shane has been Deal’s assistant coach for two years now.
Daughter Olivia, 9, also plays softball on a C-ball team at Warner Robins American and was selected for the all-stars team under last year’s Little League Softball World Series championship manager, Roger Stella.
When Shane was asked to be one of the coaches for the baseball all-star team back in July, he never imagined it would take him and his son this far.
When he moved his family nearly 700 miles to Warner Robins, he wasn’t expecting to be at the same place he and his son had watched on television just two years before.
“This is a bucket list item for dads and sons,” he said.
