Years ago, I swept the floors at Allen Fieldhouse. Now, I photograph KU basketball
Editors note: Kansas City Star visual journalist Dominick Williams has a unique career path. This is his first-person account of how a rough start after high school eventually led to a job at The Star and a redemptive moment while on assignment.
Career paths go in all sorts of directions. Some people meander along a trajectory with lots of dead ends and turns that eventually lead them to where they want to be.
Others seem set from the start with a straight line to their success.
For me, that path could best be described as a less-than-direct track that eventually twisted and turned to form a full circle.
As one of the photojournalists on the staff of The Star, I feel like I have arrived at a destination on my career path where I’ve wanted to be. My journey here was definitely not along a straight line. The first steps on this trip definitely looked like I was heading for a career other than a professional photographer.
The year is 2005. Fresh out of Salina Central High School, I enrolled at the University of Kansas as a freshman with absolutely no clue what I was doing with my life. Living in Lawrence on my own for the first time, I felt what I felt like true freedom for the first time. Freedom to make decisions that most 18-year-olds would make. Some good decisions, mostly questionable ones.
By the end of my first semester, I was put on academic probation and given a chance to rebound in my second semester. Shockingly, my decision making didn’t get any better, which led to me being kicked out of school due to an abysmal GPA, not a surprise considering I treated classroom attendance like an option. Safe to say, I was lost.
The only option I had straight out of the dorms was to move back home to Salina, Kansas, and work for the summer. With no idea what my next move was, I was going whichever way the wind blew. My parents, as generous as they had been, told me that moving back home permanently was not an option for me and strongly suggested that I figure it out.
We agreed that moving back to my small town life and small town ambitions was not the proper route so I decided I would move back to Lawrence and go back to school. They helped me out with a couple months rent, and from there I literally had to figure it out. I stayed and kicked it in Lawrence, and by kick it, I mean worked several dead-end jobs, think burger flipping and french fry dunking, to survive and imbibe. The time between the ages of 21 and 24 was a blur.
Eventually I got sick of coming home smelling like grease so I looked into some temp work doing something else. One of those jobs was as a night janitor at the study halls at KU.
After flunking out, this job was a constant reminder that I needed to literally and figuratively clean up the mess I had made of my college career. I was cleaning crap off toilets and mopping pissy floors at 3 a.m., sometimes coming to work so hungover that I would nap in the custodial closet.
It was humbling to a 20-something, working with folks that had been doing this for 20+ years. I didn’t see this as my future. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with that lifestyle, or any job that puts food on the table, but I knew I needed something different for MY life.
Motivated by overflowing trash cans and the lingering smell of cleaning supplies, I started taking classes at Johnson County Community College, a 35 minute commute that took every ounce of energy I had in me. I was working from 3 to 11 a.m., going home to shower, driving to make it to class by 1 p.m., and somehow finding time to sleep and do my homework. It was a grind.
With the job only being temporary, I knew I needed to make something else shake or these classes would go by the wayside the same way my freshman year went.
As my temporary hours ran dry, I applied to work as a custodian at the world famous Allen Fieldhouse. Being a huge University of Kansas fan growing up, this was hallowed ground. Even when I was cleaning the study halls, I would look over at the fieldhouse in awe. This was as close to a dream job that I could see for myself at that time.
When I started, it was wild to me that I could get to witness the games and the atmosphere that this place provided, and that I was supposed to be there. I was cleaning player and coaches’ locker rooms, seeing Danny Manning and Coach Self daily, riding the floor Zamboni across the concourses, cleaning the newly built Booth Hall of Fame while looking at all the history of the school sports programs, taking out the trash in Bill Self’s office sometimes and spending extra time looking at all the Big 12 Championship trophies. It was a great job. But still, I knew I needed more. I decided to give school another shot.
Throughout high school, I was always an artist. I knew it was one thing that made me feel fulfilled. I fully pursued that path at JCCC. I used up nearly all my electives trying to figure out what type of artist I wanted to be. Fine arts, graphic design—neither of those felt right to me.
On my last elective, I chose a photography class, because I literally didn’t have any other options for art classes. My first camera was my grandmother’s film camera from 1982, built years before I was born. From the very first frame I shot and developed successfully, I was hooked. I knew this was it.
I was so hooked that I often never left home without my camera. I took photos of co-workers and friends as practice. I remember bringing my film camera on a shift and snapping pics on (and off) my lunch breaks, even snapping a couple pics of the fans throwing the school paper confetti. I needed to be taking photos for life. This was 14 years ago.
Fast forward some years, I took my passion for photography and turned it into a fairly successful freelance photo career. Working with publications like the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, I leveraged my experience working with journalism heavyweights into a full-time job with The Kansas City Star.
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since my start in July 2024. Going from a few freelance gigs a month, to multiple assignments a day, photographing sports for the first time, producing video content regularly, and gaining a new understanding of what it means to work as part of a newsroom.
On November 9, things came full circle for me when I photographed my first KU game—back at Allen Fieldhouse for the first time as a fully fledged photojournalist.
Even now, I can hardly believe it. It took so much time and effort and energy and focus to get here.
So many times hustling my craft so I didn’t have to sweep and mop these floors that I walked across to get to the media room that I often vacuumed and wiped down. Walking past the home team locker rooms that I emptied trash from (and once saw head coach Bill Self in his towel, by accident) to my placement on the baseline of the court that I’ve seen KU legends play on, and that I’ve picked up so much confetti from.
I sat on the floor and just absorbed the pregame video that I had previously watched so many times before holding a broom and dustpan in my hand, now with a camera. Sitting next to seasoned veterans of sports photography, shooting my first ever basketball game, and it was against North Carolina, the only other team that can truly match KU’s “blue blood” status in college hoops. Unreal.
Walking back through the fieldhouse after the game, I started to almost instinctively look for spots on the floor to spot mop or sweep.
When I got to my car, I cried. I feel like I’ve lived so many lives to get here. In a lot of ways, I shouldn’t be here.
If it weren’t for several chances and opportunities, either taken or given, the support of others, and some serious effort, I wouldn’t be. This is the type of full circle moment that only really comes in movies or books. It served as confirmation in my mind that I’ve taken the next step. Confirmation. Redemption even. And I no longer have to take out the trash.
This story was originally published April 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
