Update: Williams Breaks Long Jump Record

Updated 4:15 p.m.

Kendell Williams entered the state long jump competition at the AAAA meet this morning as the favorite; she left it as the record holder.

The Kell High junior had the best qualifying jump for the meet at 19 feet, 7 inches—2 inches farther than second-best Alisia Jenkins of Statesboro and 3.75 inches short of the state record, set in 1999 by Tameisha King.

Now Tameisha King is the answer to a trivia question: Who held the Georgia AAAA long jump record before Kendell Williams?

Williams smashed the record with a jump of 20 feet, 8.5 inches, the GHSA reported on Twitter. That adds more than a foot to her 2012 best and almost 10 inches to the state mark.

Williams was going for gold medal No. 2 this afternoon in the high jump. We'll update when we get results.

Original Report

junior Kendell Williams will begin her quest to add three more state track and field titles to her gold-medal collection today at the Georgia High School Association girls meet at Hugh Mills Stadium in Albany.

Williams, who won the Class AAAAA 100- and 300-meter hurdles as a freshman, set the Georgia Class AAAA records in the 100- and 300-meter hurdles while winning gold in those events and the high jump last year.

She is competing in the 100-meter hurdles, the high jump and the long jump this year.

She has the best qualifying marks in the field in all three events: 5 feet, 10 inches in the high jump; 19 feet, 7 inches in the long jump; and 13.80 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles.

The AAAA long jump competition starts at 10:30 this morning, and the high jump begins at 1:30 p.m. Williams is favored to have those two gold medals in hand by the time the qualifying heats in the hurdles are run at 6:20 p.m.

The hurdles final is Saturday afternoon around 2:15. See the attached meet programs for AAAA and AAAAA.

The state meet started Thursday and included the finals for the 1,600-meter run.

At the AAAAA level, Marcie Merriman scored three points by finishing sixth in 5:05.04, more than two seconds better than her qualifying time. Teammate Morgan Ainslie finished ninth in 5:09.43.

In the AAAA final, Molly Schenck ran seventh in 5:13.52, almost five seconds better than her qualifying time.

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