When Serah Williams arrived on campus in Storrs, Connecticut she was pleased to hear certain words pronounced ‘properly’ again. After three seasons in Madison, Wisconsin, the midwestern dialect had become seared in her brain. Which, for a kid that grew up in Brooklyn, was a lot to take in.
“Some people pronounce it ‘bag-el’ or ‘melk’ (instead of milk), it just makes my ears ring,” she says with a laugh. “I’m just so used to being in different areas.”
While Storrs is hardly New York City, the cultural connection she felt at UConn was enough to feel at home again.
But home is something of a nebulous term for Williams, who grew up in Brooklyn but spent her teenage years in Toronto, Canada. Even the basketball court, where she seems to be at her most natural, couldn’t be considered a home until she entered high school.
It wasn’t until middle school that her brother, gifted with the perceptive powers of noticing that his sister was quite tall, suggested she try to play basketball.
“I actually wasn’t very good when I started playing,” Williams says of those years.
Through a friend, she ended up on the radar of New York prep basketball coach Fred Fortune, who saw something in the young forward from Brooklyn. He got her in the gym every weekend and Williams took it from there. Her competitiveness got her thinking that if she was going to put that much effort into something, that she had to be good at it.
The rise could be best described as meteoric, as Williams stayed in the gym with Fortune and eventually became a top player in the borough. But while Serah’s basketball career was taking her off, her mother had larger concerns to worry about. With harsher anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from President Donald Trump, then serving his first term, the family decided it might be best to move out of the country.
Serah didn’t know much about Canada outside of Drake, then in the middle of his reign atop hip-hop’s hierarchy, but knew that her mother’s concerns were valid. While the change was massive, Serah and her siblings were allowed to pick their destination. Which is how they arrived in Canada in 2018.
“I think the diversity made the transition easier because in New York, my neighborhood was a lot of Caribbeans, Hispanics and Africans” she explains. “In Toronto, it was a lot of Caribbeans and a little more Middle Eastern and Asian people. But we were familiar with certain parts of their culture so nothing was a big shock.”
What really helped Serah ease into Canadian life was basketball. A friend of hers played for Canada Elite, one of the country’s premier AAU teams, and, just like she did in New York, got in front of their coach and played her way into consideration.
Since she was a bit of a late riser, Williams wasn’t an extremely sought after recruit. But after three years dominating the Big Ten on a Wisconsin team that was always out of the Tournament picture, she wanted to spend her last year helping a team with championship expectations. LSU and South Carolina were both hot on the trail but ultimately, getting a bit closer to home and playing for the reigning title holder was too good of an opportunity to pass up. And yet, even Serah herself was shocked by just how active her new fanbase was.
“It got leaked that I was visiting here,” she recalls. “I don’t know how they found out, by the way. Kudos to whoever found that out. And then when I committed, I think I went from like 7,000 followers to like 11,000 in less than a day.”
While Paige Bueckers has taken her massive social media following with her to the WNBA, there is still a deeply engrained and national fanbase for UConn women’s basketball. Williams has already felt the love so far in Storrs and is looking forward to what opportunities are out there for her. On the NIL front, she’s ready if a perfume brand ever comes calling.
“I have a growing perfume collection,” she says. “I’m very girly and I’m happy there’s a scene for fashion for women with long legs and clothes made for us. Just to show people, ‘you might be long but you don’t have to wear highwaters. Like this is cute stuff made for us too.”
On the floor, she’ll be expected to fit in alongside Sarah Strong, the reigning Freshman of the Year and one of the top players in women’s college basketball. While there isn’t yet a nickname for the tandem, and not much of a way to delineate them aside from a single letter difference in their spelling, Williams sees a world in which they play well together.
“I think in media, it takes time to get comfortable,” Serah says of Sarah. “I think she’ll get there but she’s the complete opposite of what’s she’s portrayed to be.”
How so? We ask.
“She’s very funny,” Serah explains. “I know the media portrays her to be this awkward person but she’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”
As a new season begins and a title defense is on in Storrs, Williams is ready to be the same player she’s always been, just improved further. And if you look at her averages and numbers from Wisconsin, if she remains that potent of a scorer and rebounder, she’ll be in the National Player of the Year discussion at years end.
“[I’ll be] just a better version of me at Wisconsin,” she says. “All around, dominant on both side of the floor, a great teammate, become a better passer and just competitive. I can’t cuss on here but you get the point.”