When Beecher basketball coach Mike Williams was a freshman in college, a good friend of his who was still in high school was shot and killed, something that impacts Williams to this day.
“He was still in high school, and he was robbing people and we didn’t know it,” Williams said. “He got caught by some undercover cops and they killed him. I keep his obituary in my office at work.”
Williams, a teacher at Flint Northwestern, has always used the story with his students, including to Northwestern student and athlete Willis “Ray” Arrington.
“I know I showed it to Ray and told him the story,” Williams said.
Arrington, who would’ve been a senior at Northwestern this year, was shot and killed in an alleged attempted robbery Aug. 4 in Flint. Police say five people, including Arrington, approached a man at his home and tried to rob him. The homeowner, who was armed, shot three of them, wounding two and killing Arrington.
“There’s no justifying what he (Arrington) did or what happened,” Williams said. “You just can’t go around trying to take people’s stuff. That will get you killed. And if you don’t believe it, now you have a perfect example of a great kid who made one dumb decision and his life is gone.”
Arrington is another young man with potential who died too soon in a city that is too familiar with its young men dying or going to jail before they’ve even reached adulthood. Arrington leaves behind family, teammates, coaches and friends to cope with a loss that not only makes no sense, but was also entirely preventable.
“It’s a crisis in our city, and it doesn’t have to be just black male leaders, we just need leaders period,” Williams said. “It doesn’t have to be a black and white thing, but it’s gotta be addressed. If nobody’s addressing it, this is just gonna keep happening.”
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Arrington was a gifted athlete. On the basketball court, he epitomized heart and toughness. He was undersized but unafraid to take on much bigger players in the post, do the dirty work around the basket, rebound, play defense and make hustle plays.
Two of Arrington’s games, in particular, stand out to me from last season. During the regular season in a loss to Saginaw Buena Vista, Northwestern played one of its worst games of the season. The team’s shooters were struggling and BV built a big lead. Simply put, it would’ve been easy for the players to pack it in and think about the next game.
Arrington, however, played hard throughout the game, and he did so after injuring his shooting wrist in the first half and having it heavily bandaged. In a blowout loss, he continued to attack the glass, continued to play his hard-nosed style and did so while playing in pain in a game that his team was out of for most of the second half.
The final game he played for Northwestern, a regional semifinal loss to Mt. Pleasant, was his best one. With scorers Jaylen Magee, Deondre Parks,
Travon Mitchell and Syro McDonald on the team, Arrington was never counted on to provide offense, other than being around the basket for dump-off passes or working the offensive glass.
Against Mt. Pleasant, Northwestern’s shooters went cold, and Arrington responded with a career-high 18 points and also grabbed 9 rebounds. The game could’ve gotten out of hand with the team’s shooting problems, but Arrington’s unexpected offense kept the Wildcats competitive much of the way, even if they fell short at the end.
“It’s gonna be hard when we (Beecher) play Northwestern,” Williams said. “As competitive as I am, I want the best players out there against my team. I know (playing against) Ray was gonna make my team better.”
As important as he was to the basketball team, Arrington was an even better football player.
“Ray was a bona fide Division I athlete,” Williams said. “He could’ve played football anywhere.”
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I’ve struggled with how to cover this story. This is not meant as a defense of Arrington’s actions that night. Instead, it’s to point out that Arrington touched the lives of many family members, friends, coaches, teammates and opposing players — his toughness on the court and his sense of humor off of it are two recurring themes when people talk about him.
“I just wanted to say some good words about Ray,” Williams said. “I love Ray. He’s a great kid who made a very dumb decision, and he paid with his life. I just think we as a community have to take responsibility for our kids and be held accountable for the kids that we (as educators) serve.”
His life had value. His friendship meant something to people. Many, many people have suffered a great loss, and will have to cope with it the rest of their lives. Lives are forever changed because of one completely avoidable act.
Now, the best we can hope for Arrington’s life is that he serves as a reminder to his friends and teammates of the danger of having even a momentary slip off the right path, of the danger of losing focus on the bigger picture for even a second.
The mistake that he made doesn’t change the fact that people loved him, cared about him and were enriched by having him in their lives. When our young people die in Flint, the soul of our community, the future of our community dies with them. We need kids like Arrington to get out of Flint, to go to college, to succeed, and then we need them to come back and teach others how to do it.
One of the things former Flint Northern and Michigan State star Mateen Cleaves said earlier this year that has really stuck with me is, “Every time I talk to kids in Flint about college, I try to make it sound like heaven.” That’s what Flint needs — adults who are successful in life not only coming back, but making sure that kids understand that college is attainable for them whether they play a sport or not. That they can have a better life, whether they play a sport or not.
My hope is that people stop thinking about violence, about death, among young people in Flint as a ‘Flint problem.’ This impacts everyone in our county, everyone in the suburbs. Everyone can be a leader, everyone can be a role model, everyone can be a solution.
Originally published by the Flint Journal
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