On June 8, 2014, the Palmer Williams Group held one of its first events – a youth football camp at Prichard Municipal Stadium. A decade later, the organization is still at it, with the 11th annual Palmer Williams Group Athletic Youth Camp on Saturday at Highpoint Park in Prichard.

“When you start out with a mission, you just think it’s going to work out,” said Sherman Williams, one of the organization’s founders, on Saturday. “Along the way, you’re going to have challenges, bumps and bruises, but it’s what we try to teach the children. If we can’t persevere, how can we sit here and tell these children that they need to persevere? So being here 11 years don’t surprise me. …

“Whenever you have good, you’re always going to have evil right next to it. Your discouragement has to turn into encouragement. When you’re being discouraged, you have to use that as motivation, and that’s what we’ve been doing the last 11 years is staying motivated.”

A Blount High School star, Williams went on to play on Alabama’s national-championship team for the 1992 season and the Dallas Cowboys’ Super Bowl XXX-winning team in the 1995 season. But Williams was found guilty on Dec. 6, 2000, by a federal jury in Mobile of one count of conspiracy to distribute marijuana and two counts of attempting to possess marijuana with intent to distribute. He also pleaded guilty to a counterfeiting charge.

While Williams was in prison, his college roommate, David Palmer, kept in touch with him. Like Williams, Palmer had been a state prep star – at Jackson-Olin in Birmingham – and played in the NFL after the Crimson Tide.

Williams was incarcerated for 15 years. When he was released from prison, he and his former teammate sought a way to influence disadvantaged youngsters in a positive manner before the children’s minds acclimated to the negative influences they commonly saw around them. The result was the Palmer Williams Group.

While Highpoint Park serves as the hub for the Palmer Williams Group’s Highpoint Cowboys youth sports teams, the organization is involved in more than athletics.

“Year around we have sports, and year around we have academics,” Williams said. “We partner with the Mobile County Public School System, and we have an EYAC, which is Entrepreneurial Youth of America Club, that we work with Vigor High School and Williamson High School. This is our third year of doing that, and we plan to expand.

“We also have football, we have cheerleading, we have basketball. Then after basketball, we have baseball. Then you have soccer, so all year around we’re keeping them busy, we’re keeping them occupied.

“We’re also trying to keep them academically sound. We work on Lifesync Academy, where we teach them social skills. We teach them how to be job-ready. We teach them financial literacy. Financial literacy is a very big part of what we do because myself and David, we come from backgrounds, economic situations that wasn’t always the most pleasant or positive one. We try to let them know that finances are very important to be able to have success, to be a productive citizen, to be able to have leisure time, to be able to afford to do things that you want to do. You have to be able to manage your financial situation, so financial literacy is a very big component of what we do.”

On Saturday, Williams’ volunteer coaches featured a bevy of former football players, including Chris Edwards, Brad Ford, Pierre Goode, Kevin Jackson and Vick Lockett from Alabama, and Chris Evans and Pat Thomas from Auburn.

Also on the field with the youngsters was Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Cephus Johnson III, a former Davidson High School and South Alabama standout.

“These guys understand the mission,” Williams said. “We got some great guys from two of the best universities in the country – the University of Alabama and Auburn University. We got guys that played football at the highest level. We got a great group of guys that really enjoy coming out and spending time and sharing time with the children. And the God-gifted abilities that we had wouldn’t be no good if weren’t able to pass it along and share it along with the next generation, and that’s what these guys see. They see the bigger picture.”

Eleven youth camps down, Williams said what’s next is to be determined.

“I’m not in control,” Williams said. “My lord and savior Jesus Christ is, and I follow the spirit. I remember a time in my life when I didn’t follow the spirit, and I had an end time. I ended something in a bad way by going to prison. That was the ending of my fleshy life and my life that wasn’t pertaining to following the word, following the will of God, so now I follow the will of God and whatever the spirit of God tells me to do – if he tells me this is the last one, this is the last one. If he tells me I got 20 more to do, I got 20 more to do, so that’s just how it is. I just follow the spirit.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.