The fifth name on Coach K's legendary 1982 recruiting class - the Godfather Class alongside Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson, and Jay Bilas that Coach K himself credits with putting Duke on the map to stay. A 6'6" Park Forest, Illinois forward and four-year Duke role player whose senior year culminated on the 1986 national title-game team. Earned his BSE in biomedical engineering from Duke's Pratt School in 1986, his M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary, then planted and led Triumph Community Church in Bolingbrook IL as senior pastor for 19 years (2000-2019). Now Senior Director for Quality Assurance at HAVI and a Trustee on the Wheaton Academy Board. The Brotherhood in pulpit form.
Guard6'6"1982–86
Park Forest, IL native (south Chicago suburbs along the Lincoln Highway) • Class of 1982 • 6'6" Forward, jersey #40, 190 lbs • Fifth member of Coach Mike Krzyzewski's legendary 1982 recruiting class alongside Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson, and Jay Bilas - the class that Coach K himself credits on coachk.com with putting Duke on the map to stay • Four-year Duke career 1982-1986: 73 total games, 126 career points, 369 total minutes • Freshman 1982-83: 13 G, 3.1 MPG, 1.9 ppg, 71.4% FG (10-of-14 - efficient role-player line on Coach K's third Duke team that went 11-17) • Sophomore 1983-84: 2 G, 2 total minutes on the 24-10 Duke team that won the program's first NCAA Tournament bid under Coach K • Junior 1984-85: 27 G, 5.1 MPG, 47 pts, 1.7 ppg, 58.3% FG on the 23-8 Sweet Sixteen team • Senior 1985-86: 31 G, 6.1 MPG, 54 pts, 1.7 ppg, 45.7% FG on the FOUNDATIONAL 1986 NATIONAL TITLE GAME TEAM that went 37-3 (NCAA Division I record at the time), won the Big Apple NIT title, the ACC regular-season title, the ACC Tournament title, the NCAA East Region title, established a 21-game winning streak, went undefeated at home, and lost 72-69 to Denny Crum's Louisville Cardinals in the title game at Reunion Arena in Dallas • Earned a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, Class of 1986 • Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pennsylvania • Founding and senior pastor of Triumph Community Church (Presbyterian) at 341 Remington Boulevard in Bolingbrook, Illinois from 2000 through 2019 - nineteen years in the pulpit; preached his farewell sermon on June 16, 2019 ("Pastor Weldon Williams Moving On") • Senior Director for Quality Assurance at HAVI, the Rosemont-Illinois global supply chain company that handles much of McDonald's Corporation's worldwide ingredient and packaging supply chain, since approximately 2014 • Member of the Board of Trustees at Wheaton Academy, the K-12 classical Christian college-preparatory school in West Chicago, Illinois that was founded in 1853 by abolitionists • Father of Evan Williams (Wheaton Academy Class of 2015) and multiple sons • Featured in the June 2020 Wheaton Academy "Voices on Race and Justice" published interview alongside Wheaton Academy Spanish teacher Christian Rivera • Quoted in a June 9, 2011 Duke Basketball Report tribute on the passing of his Duke teammate Tom Emma (Duke PG 1979-83) at age 49
Now: Senior Director for Quality Assurance at HAVI, the Rosemont-Illinois-headquartered global supply chain company that handles much of McDonald's Corporation's worldwide ingredient and packaging supply chain, since approximately 2014. Senior pastor of Triumph Community Church (Presbyterian) in Bolingbrook, Illinois from 2000-2019 (19 years; preached farewell sermon June 16, 2019). Board of Trustees member at Wheaton Academy, the K-12 classical Christian college-preparatory school in West Chicago, Illinois founded in 1853 by abolitionists. Earned his BSE in Biomedical Engineering from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering (Class of 1986) and his Master of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary. Father of Evan Williams, Wheaton Academy Class of 2015. Fifth member of Coach K's legendary 1982 Duke recruiting class alongside Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson, and Jay Bilas - the class Coach K himself credits on his official website with putting Duke on the map to stay.
Weldon Williams came up out of Park Forest, Illinois - the south-suburban Cook County village along the Lincoln Highway that was, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, one of the most ethnically integrated communities in the Chicago region, home to families whose kids grew up in racially mixed public schools that the Chicago Tribune at the time held up as examples of how American suburbs could work. He was 6'6", a forward, and one of the higher-ceilinged high-school basketball prospects in the Chicago Heights area in the early 1980s. Mike Krzyzewski's Duke staff signed him in the spring of 1982. He was, in the language Coach K himself would later use on his own official website to describe the recruiting class that arrived in Durham that October, a member of the 1982 class made up of Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson, Jay Bilas, and Weldon Williams.
The five-name list is, in the words Coach K's coachk.com site uses to describe its impact, the recruiting class that was rated one of the nation's best and put Duke on the map to stay. It is the recruiting class on which the entire modern Duke basketball program was founded. Four of those five names became permanent fixtures of Duke basketball history. Johnny Dawkins was the 1986 Naismith National Player of the Year, the 1986 ACC Player of the Year, and the 10th overall pick of the 1986 NBA Draft. Mark Alarie was the 18th overall pick of the 1986 NBA Draft. David Henderson played four years in the NBA. Jay Bilas became the most-recognized college basketball analyst at ESPN. Weldon Williams - the fifth name on the list, the 6'6" Park Forest, Illinois forward - became the four-year role player on the Duke roster whose path after Cameron Indoor Stadium would lead, twenty years later, to the pulpit of Triumph Community Church in Bolingbrook, Illinois. The Brotherhood that began in 1982 did not produce four legends and a footnote. It produced four legends and a pastor.
Wheaton Academy is the classical Christian college-preparatory school in West Chicago, Illinois that was founded in 1853 by abolitionists who wanted to start a school that would train their kids to fight the evils of society. Weldon Williams serves on its Board of Trustees and was the parent of an alumnus (Evan Williams, Class of 2015). His son's experience at Wheaton Academy was, in his own framing in the published 2020 Voices on Race and Justice interview, the moment a sixth-grade child finally felt that all of his teachers liked him - the kind of Kingdom Community moment Williams had spent nineteen years preaching about as senior pastor of Triumph Community Church. For a Brotherhood member whose post-Duke path went through Westminster Theological Seminary, the Triumph Community Church pulpit, and the HAVI corporate engineering executive office before arriving on the Wheaton Academy Board, the school where his own son finally felt fully known and accepted is the natural recipient of his time, talent, and treasure. Gifts to The Warrior Fund and the broader Wheaton Academy mission support the financial aid and Kingdom Community programming that allows students of all backgrounds to be fully known and fully accepted at the institution Williams has chosen to serve.