Update: Kell's Williams Wins 3rd Gold

Updated Monday 4 p.m.

Editor's note: In one of those glitches that happen in online news sometimes, the update we did Saturday on Kendell Williams' hurdles championship vanished, except for the headline. We apologize for the confusion. Here's an abbreviated version of what we initially wrote, just for the record.

Kendell Williams is such a dominant athlete as a high school junior that she single-handedly earned Kell fifth place in the Georgia High School Association AAAA girls track and field meet this weekend.

Williams cruised to her third title of the meet Saturday by winning the 100-meter hurdles in 13.49 seconds, a tenth of a second slower than her state-record time in the preliminary but still fast enough to beat the rest of the field by more than a second.

She earned 30 team points for her victories in the 100 hurdles, the long jump (state record) and the high jump.

That left Kell well behind state champion Redan, which compiled 58 points, but solidly ahead of sixth-place Tri-Cities' 21 points.

And did we mention Williams is only a junior?

Original Report

Kendell Williams and Marcie Merriman combined to win three gold medals for Northeast Cobb on Day 2 of the Georgia High School Association girls track and field meet Friday in Albany.

Williams started the day by crushing the competition and history in the long jump with a leap of 20 feet, 8.5 inches.

That topped the 13-year-old Georgia AAAA record (19 feet, 10.75 inches by Tameisha King) by almost 10 inches and put Williams more than 2½ feet ahead of runner-up Alisia Jenkins of Statesboro.

Next up was the high jump.

Williams came into the meet with a qualifying jump of 5 feet, 10 inches, only half an inch behind the 15-year-old Georgia AAAA record. But this time the Kell junior had to settle for just the gold medal with a winning jump of 5 feet, 8 inches, which was 6 inches clear of a trio in second place, Woodland’s Briana Brown, Lambert’s Savannah Smith and Ware County’s Brittany Ealey.

Still, Williams wasn’t done setting records for the day.

She ran a heat in the 100-meter hurdles, in which she set the Georgia AAAA record of 13.48 second last year while winning the state championship. She walked off the track with a new record of 13.39 seconds, more than a second faster than any other runner in the field. (She also holds the AAAAA record of 13.69, which she set as a freshman.)

Williams has earned 20 points for Kell with her two wins, putting the Lady Longhorns second in the team competition after two days.

She’ll go for the hurdles gold and an even lower record around 2:15 p.m. today. You can watch the meet live at www.ghsa.tv.

Merriman also had a golden Friday for Lassiter.

She won the 3,200 meters with a time of 10:51.69, more than three seconds ahead of Alpharetta’s Rachel Thorne in the almost-2-mile race.

Combined with her , Merriman has scored all 13 points for Lassiter, good for seventh so far in the team standings.

Lassiter teammate Morgan Ainslie finished 13th in the 3,200 meters, lowering her season-best time from 11:42 to 11:28.69.

Back at the AAAA level, Molly Schenck had another strong performance, finishing fourth in the 3,200 meters in 11:15.73. She finished seventh in the 1,600 meters Thursday.