Texas Tech got it's latest impact offensive player when Beckville running back/slot receiver J'Koby Williams announced for the Red Raiders following his official visit to Lubbock.

Williams is a multi-sport star who shines for Beckville in football, basketball and track & field.

On the gridiron Williams put up 2,408 all purpose yards and 39 touchdowns as a junior on his way to being named District 10-2A Most Valuable Player and to the first ever THSCA Super Elite Team among other honors.

To learn more about the newest Texas Tech playmaker, we spoke with his head football coach, Beckville's Cody Ross.

"J'Koby, I've had him now for five years almost. He was a 7th grader when I got to Beckville back in 2019. One of the first things I remember about J'Koby, it was track season, that's when I got there and we had just started track. I remember seeing this little bitty skinny dude that could absolutely fly over the hurdles. He was already running hurdles at the time. Coach Evans, one of our coaches, had him running hurdles. I went to watch our junior high district track meet just a couple weeks later and he was anchoring our 4x400 relay as well. We had some kids who could run pretty good all together but J'Koby was just a 7th grader, and we had to kind of combine a team to be able to run a full team since we didn't have great numbers and we ran basically against other 8th graders. J'Koby got the stick in the 4x400, he was probably 20-30 meters behind the young man, and he just absolutely took off and finished the race about 10 meters ahead of him. Had an incredible race. The heart, the determination I saw out of him that day, I knew he was gonna be special. Coach Evans, our junior high coordinator at the time, had told me multiple times 'that kid right there is gonna play in the NFL one day' and I thought man, that's awesome, but as a coach you don't really look at a 7th grader and think that.

Watching J'Koby, obviously his next year, his 8th grade year, he had a great, great football season and they went undefeated. Then he was burst into the spotlight as a freshman on our 10-4 team, my second football season. Him and a couple other guys were a big part of that quick turnaround. We were kind of a year ahead of schedule. I really thought we were about a year away from really breaking through. I felt like we could make the playoffs and maybe have a chance to win a playoff game his freshman year, but obviously we turned the tables and ended up making it to the regional final. I think that's really when he burst on the scene.

He's a great young man. He goes about his business in a professional-type way. He's a goofy kid, he's a 16-17 year old kid too but J'Koby is a worker. He's a workhorse. His talent is what brought people here to look at him and the coaches and different scholarship offers and all that, but when you get to know J'Koby, one thing about him is it doesn't matter if you're from the University of Texas or Texas Tech or LSU or Alabama or whoever it is, if you're from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, if you're from ETBU, and you come by our office and you wanna see J'Koby Williams, he's gonna make time for you. He feels like that's part of his nature, if they're gonna come by and see him he's gonna come by and see them. He comes in, I don't have to speak for him. He comes in, shakes their hand, sits right down in the chair, speaks really well. His mom has done an incredible job raising the young man. He always talks to those guys, always gives them a high-five, shakes their hand, tells them he appreciates them coming by. There's been a lot of traffic obviously. A lot of guys coming through, a lot of offers coming his way, but it doesn't matter who it is, big or small, he'll make time for them. The kind of character that he has, his talent obviously brought a lot of attention but once you get to knowing J'Koby he's just an unbelievable kid."

"One of the first things we talked about - J'Koby and I when it started not long ago - once we knew he was gonna have a chance to be pretty special and have some people come through and see him, the most important thing that I thought for me as a coach and I think for him, was building relationships. We talked about the relationships he's built at Beckville with his teammates and his coaches, the relationship he and I have is a special, special bond, and I told him pay attention to these guys when they come by here. Everybody is gonna love you because you're talented. They're all gonna want you because you're a really good football player but pay attention to how they talk to you, on the phone, pay attention to how much they try to contact you, when they do contact you how sincere are they? We talked about all those things, all those ins and outs of how you build a relationship.

From the get-go several schools have done a good job doing that. I just kept coming back to, and J'Koby came coming back to the same thought process, is Texas Tech has gone above and beyond. Several coaches have reached out to him during the course of his recruitment. When they first came by coach (Josh) Cochran, obviously he's an East Texas guy. He's come in and spent numerous amounts of time in there. Just talking to us as a staff, talking to J'Koby, watching him workout here and there. They've done a really good job with coach Cochran coming by the most and then obviously Juice (Johnson) and coach (Zach) Kittley coming by to see him. Several coaches got on the phone with him. He's talked to the receivers coach, he's talked to some of the guys in-house. They do a good job getting on FaceTime with him and just the things that they're supposed to do. Just building relationships with J'Koby, talking to him about a lot.

When I talk to him about who he's talking to, and I don't wanna push him to where coach Ross wants to go, it's not about me, it's about J'Koby. So when I talk to him about the process, he talks about each one of those schools but he talks about Tech guys being the most active, the ones who talk to him to the most. I think at the end of the day they've done a great, great job building a relationship with a kid and that's what he sees."

"I tell people all the time J'Koby is a special talent. No doubt about it, he helped put our place on the map. We've got a lot of really good high school football players, man. There's not a ton of kids that you're just gonna look at and go 'wow, that's a good looking kid walking down the halls in high school football'. We've just got a bunch of tough, small-community, tough-nosed, hard-nosed kids that have just been playing with each other for a long time and love to compete. That's really what you put together along with some special talent.

Of course J'Koby is on a different level but I've got a quarterback that's a gonna go to college. He might play quarterback, he might play linebacker, he may play H-back. He's a coaches kid, his name is Calan Castles. He's 2024 kid and he'll be a college player. What level for sure, we don't know yet. He's got some interest from some FCS schools and things like that, but he's a hard-nosed kid.

The kid that probably has the biggest upside to make it to the Power 5 is Jorden Prince, J'Koby's little brother. He's a 2026 kid, he's coming into his own, he's pretty much following in big brother's footsteps the way he puts his work together, goes about doing things, spends some time up there on his own. Spends some time with J'Koby when they're on their own. I think that Jorden over the next 12-18 months, Jorden is really gonna pick up a lot of steam because I think he's got some special abilities with what he can do. He's a different kid, he's more of a prototypical tailback where J'Koby is your slotback that can move around all over the field and scat, do some different things. Jorden is gonna be your tailback type kid that can get back there and tote the rock for you. So both great kids, special type kids and we've got a lot of good ones. We got a lot of good kids in our program. Not a lot of them are gonna be big time division 1, Power 5 kids like J'Koby is but just a lot of hard-nosed kids that like to work hard together."