Nine days after arriving at Hutchinson Community College, Ronald Williams was ready to quit.

Homesick and unhappy, Williams left Kansas and flew back home to Ferriday, Louisiana without even telling his parents and was prepared to settle for trying to be a walk-on at a local HBCU — Grambling State.

Until realizing how upset he’d made his father.

“My dad had woke up that next day and came in my room like, ‘What you doing here?’” Williams said. “I was like, ‘Man, I quit. I can’t do it.’ He was so mad that he actually got up and left and went to Atlanta and stayed with his sister for like a week.”

Williams decided to return to school after that one week at home. And for a second time in a two-week period, he and his dad made the nearly 13-hour drive from Ferriday to Hutchinson, Kansas.

It paid off.

Three years later, Williams is now preparing for his first season at Alabama as a four-star prospect who will be an immediate factor in the competition for playing time within the Crimson Tide secondary.

It’s the latest step within a journey that’s included three years at Hutchinson, three position changes and a missed opportunity that ended up being a blessing in disguise.

It all traces back to early 2017.

And to a forgotten calculator.

***

Before Williams was ever on the radar for the Crimson Tide, he was all set to play for a different Alabama school — South Alabama.

The high school quarterback committed to the Jaguars as a high school senior in 2016 and planned to eventually join that Joey Jones-led program.

Except he couldn’t.

It was because of what happened that day in early 2017. Williams accidentally left his calculator at home the day he was scheduled to take the ACT test and didn’t realize it until after he had already started the 30-minute commute from Ferriday to the test site — Copiah-Lincoln Community College.

Instead of turning around and driving home, Williams stopped at a local Walgreens, rushed inside and bought a new calculator.

But the stop caused him to be late for the test, which meant he wouldn’t be able to take it that day and would have to wait about two months before being able to get another shot at it.

“I got the score I needed,” Williams said, “but it was too late for South Alabama to accept me.”

So Williams ended up at Hutchinson, where — after the brief hiatus — he evolved from a no-star recruit without a clear-cut position into a first-team All-American cornerback.

After starting out at safety during a redshirt year in 2017, Williams was moved to wide receiver later that fall and then finally to cornerback right before the start of fall camp in 2018.

While Williams began 2018 as a backup, he wound up starting three games at cornerback later in the season, started getting scholarship offers following the conclusion of spring ball last year and ended up making good on a prediction he’d made with his teammates entering last spring.

“I remember, we were just out there talking and running on the field one day,” Williams said. “One of my teammates was like, ‘Bro, where you want to go to school at? What offers you think you going to get?’ And I was like, ‘Man, I’m going to Bama. I’m going to Bama, bro.’ I was being cocky at the time, like, ‘I’m going to Bama.’ But for it to really happen, it’s crazy. It really is crazy.”

***

In Williams, Alabama is getting a 6-foot-2, 190-pound cornerback who would have had five interceptions at Hutchinson last season if not for two of the interceptions being called back due to penalties on other players.

It’s possible he could factor into the competition for the starting cornerback job previously occupied by Trevon Diggs.

It’s also possible he could be an option at the Star/nickel back spot with Shyheim Carter now off to the NFL.

“We have not typically recruited a whole lot of junior college guys, but the junior college guys that we have, (they) have fulfilled a need and been able to contribute and play early on here and play well for us,” Tide coach Nick Saban said. “So we’re hopeful that will be the case. He’s got really good size. He’s played Star, safety and corner, so he has versatility as a player. He played at a really good junior college program where they’ve had a lot of success and he was a real contributor to that, so we’re excited about the opportunity to have a guy like that to add to the group so we’re not too awful young and get a little maturity as well.”

And for Williams, he’s a lot better off than if he’d settled for just simply walking on at Grambling.

And he’ll now — three years later — finally get his chance to play college football in the state of Alabama.

All of that came up during one of his dad’s recent trips to the barber shop.

Surrounded by some friends, he talked about his excitement for his son’s future at Alabama.

Talked about all of the obstacles from these past three years.

And talked about how crazy it is that if his son had simply remembered to take his calculator the day of the original ACT test, he’d be playing at South Alabama right now instead of for the Crimson Tide.

“The good Lord works in mysterious ways,” he told them.

Matt Zenitz is an Alabama and Auburn reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mzenitz.