Jarrion Lawson sweeps jumps at USA Junior Championships

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Jarrion Lawson was feeling the pain of victory during the triple jump in the USA Junior Track & Field Championships at Indiana University on Saturday.

The Liberty-Eylau (Texarkana, Texas) senior was nursing a sore shin from his win in the long jump a day but earlier shook off the discomfort long enough to win the triple jump in the sixth and final round with an effort of 51 feet, 3¾ inches to complete a sweep of the horizontal jumps.

Lawson edged collegian John Horton of Houston (51-1½) and Felix Obi of Franklin (El Paso, Texas) (51-0¾) as part of a sweep of the top three places by athletes from Texas.

"My shin was hurting but dropping out was not an option for me," said Lawson, who won the long jump on Friday with a wind-aided 25-6. "I am a clutch person. I like competition and when it came down to it I believed that I could do it."



Lawson will get another challenge in the IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain on July 10-15. The top two finishers in each event earned a berth on the U.S. team contingent upon attaining a qualifying standard.

Meeting the World Junior championship standards in the long jump and triple jump are not a problem for Lawson, who recorded the top high school marks in the nation this season of 25-8 and 51-10¼ to win the Texas State 3A titles.

The pain in his left shin on his takeoff leg, though, was a problem for Lawson on Saturday. Lawson fouled on his first two attempts before a safety jump of 49-10¼ to earn a spot in the final and three additional jumps.

Lawson improved to 50-8¾ in the fifth round to move into third place. Lawson had no doubt that he was going to win the competition on his final jump.

"I was just getting warmed up," Lawson said. "Once I went (50-8¾), I knew that I was going to go far."

SEE ALL THE RESULTS HERE.



Like Lawson, Robin Reynolds and Kendell Williams had distractions to overcome while shuffling between events.

Reynolds, a Jackson (Miami, Fla.) senior, won the women's long jump at 20-5¾ despite taking four of six jumps to compete in the 400-meter prelims where she was a heat winner in 53.24 to advance to today's finals.

Williams, a junior from Kell (Marietta, Ga.), competed in the heptathlon and the long jump simultaneously. She finished fourth in the long jump at 19-10¾ and is the first-day leader in the heptathlon with 3,431 points.

In the heptathlon, Williams had marks of 13.73 in the 100 hurdles, 5-11¼ in the high jump, 32-3¾ in the shot put and 24.82 in the 200. Williams mark in the heptathlon high jump was higher than the winning mark of 5-10¾ in the open competition.

Yearly leading marks in the 400 hurdles were turned in by Eric Futch of Penn Wood (Lansdowne, Pa.) and Shamier Little of Lindblom (Chicago, Ill.). Futch ran 50.73 to eclipse his nation-leading time of 51.18 run in the prelims on Friday.
Little ran 57.44 to pass collegian Kaila Barber of Notre Dame over the final two barriers.

Reigning World Youth champion Ajee Wilson of Neptune (N.J.) ran a controlled race to win the women's 800 in 2:04.86 and pull Danielle Aragon of Billings (Mont.) to a runner-up finish in 2:05.06. In the men's 800, Washington state record holder Tanner Sork of Union (Vancouver, Wash.) finished second to Shaquille Walker of BYU, 1:49.39 to 1:49.57.



In the women's 100-meter hurdles, George Washington (Denver, Colo.) sophomore Dior Hall finished second to Morgan Snow of the University of Texas, 13.26 to 13.45, to take the spotlight away from Californians and training partners Trinity Wilson and Sasha Wallace.

The UCLA-bound Wilson of St. Mary's (Berkeley) , the 2011 California State champion and World Youth Champion, finished third in 13.52. Wallace, the 2012 State champion from Holy Names (Oakland), was fifth in 13.55.