Southwest Flavor Ep. 155 - Corey Williams

**Ron Arenas** (0:01)
All right, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Southwest Flavor. Happy Tuesday to all of you. We have a great show for you this morning, and our guest is Corey Williams. Good morning.

**Corey Williams** (0:12)
Morning, good to see you.

**Ron Arenas** (0:13)
How you doing?

**Corey Williams** (0:14)
I can't complain, I'm doing pretty good.

**Ron Arenas** (0:15)
Good, good. And with me today is our co-host, Ron Kirk from Arcadia Landscape.

**Ron Kirk** (0:20)
How you doing, Ron?

**Ron Arenas** (0:21)
I'm doing good.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:22)
Good, good, good.

**Ron Arenas** (0:24)
So Corey, what's going on with you? You're always, you're so busy, man.

**Corey Williams** (0:28)
It's that time of year. You know, I got my kids' league started. So we're in the gym Saturdays and Sundays, and then you got the day jobs. So every year I have this gauntlet of about 41 days of no day off.

**Ron Arenas** (0:41)
Ooh, okay.

**Corey Williams** (0:42)
So I'm in day nine of 40 So it's okay. You know, I take a little break, come in here, but then I go back to the office. Well, thank you.

**Ron Arenas** (0:48)
I appreciate that.

**Corey Williams** (0:49)
Absolutely. But like I say, when you really look at it, it's six weekends, 12 days a year that I'm in the gym with the kids. It's a lot of work before.
It's some work during. And you've been a part of it, and I appreciate your sponsorship and support of the Kids League. But it's just one of the things I do to kind of give back. I think...

**Ron Arenas** (1:08)
You've been doing it a long time, too. How long have you been doing it?

**Corey Williams** (1:10)
We started summer of 2024 This is year 22 of this league. So yeah, we've been doing it for a while. You know, it's interesting, but it's something, it's a passion of mine.
I know I can't change the world, but what we're trying to do is trying to save something that is important to me, which is the culture and the environment of sports and competition. It's changed so much, and I know it'll never change back. But if we can give a small little gift to the kids in Tucson, then I want to be a part of doing that.

**Ron Arenas** (1:40)
Of course.

**Ron Kirk** (1:41)
Amen to that.

**Corey Williams** (1:44)
I tell people all the time, I made it to the University of Arizona and my parents never paid a dime.
I played in my junior high team. I played on my high school team. And every summer they would send me to one camp. And back then the camp was 200 bucks, 180 bucks, 300 bucks, whatever. But I was a four day overnight camp or something like that.

**Ron Arenas** (2:01)
Oh, wow. Okay.

**Corey Williams** (2:02)
So at the most, my parents would do that once a year. But that was all I paid to play basketball. You can't get a pair of shoes for that. Right. So, you know, opportunity and the chance to develop.
I've been able to partner with great people in the community who agree that that shouldn't be a pay for play situation. Opportunity should not be just for those who can afford them. I think, you know, we could be missing out on a world class softball player on the South side. We may have a championship golfer or a tennis player or basketball player, but we've got to create the venue for the kid to develop. I mean, once we establish the kid is talented, then it's on them to continue to develop their talent. But if we don't have that initial gate of, hey, come find out if you like baseball, come find out if you like basketball, come find out if you like football. We might be missing out on talent, and even the thing is, it doesn't even matter if the talent develops.
What that exposure to athletics is gonna do for that young person, you can't, it's immeasurable. You don't know, because you take a kid, pre-teen kid, struggling with their identity, struggling to fit in, struggling with confidence, struggling with self-esteem, and you put a baseball glove in their hand or a basketball in their hand, and they have some success, and they meet teammates, and they develop some camaraderie, and their self-esteem goes up, and they learn to trust people, and they learn to be a part of a team. Those qualities are gonna pan out in their life at some point, and it's gonna help them as an adult. That's our goal. It isn't to crank out division one talent, because you can't really, there's no formula for that. But what you can do is help build strong young people, and you can give young people tools. You can't make them work, you can't make them successful, you can't make them talented, but you can give them tools. And you can also shape their perspective. And for me, I think that's important.