How Lauryn Williams Made Olympic History
By Christy Cabrera Chirinos
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Amy Deem can’t help but smile when recalling how their journey started.
Lauryn Williams wasn’t the tallest of sprinters, a fact that led some major programs to shy away from her during the recruiting process. And early on, her mechanics were far from ideal.
“I watched her run and I mean, technically, she was a mess,” chuckled Deem, the longtime director of Miami’s track and field program. “We can joke about it now. Still, I just felt like she had all the tools to be a really top-notch sprinter.
“But did I recruit her thinking she could be an Olympian? No.”
Turns out not only would Williams become a national champion at Miami, she’d eventually become one of the most decorated Olympians in Hurricanes history, winning multiple medals on the track before shifting her attention to bobsledding in 2013.
A year later, at the Sochi Winter Games, Williams became the first American woman – and only the fifth athlete – to medal in different sports at both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
It’s a feat that, even now, makes both Williams and her former Miami coach beyond proud.
“It’s been really, really cool to just think about how you never know what’s around the corner,” said Williams, who today juggles her work as a consultant helping young athletes manage their money with various speaking engagements around the country. “I figure the biggest thing I think I’ve benefited from, now that I’m a little bit older, is how that experience helped me realize that something else awesome is around the corner.
“I don’t look at life and wonder what’s the next sad thing that’s going to happen. I look at life and say, ‘Okay, what’s the next awesome adventure I can pursue or embark on or God’s going to send my way? I’ve had enough happen in my life that I can say, ‘Wow! I’ve had a really awesome life and there’s no reason for it to not continue being awesome.’ It’s made me open to embracing whatever comes next.”
Still, as remarkable as her journey has been, Williams arrived at Miami figuring, much like Deem, that she would hopefully have a successful college career and earn her degree.
Getting that degree, and not making Olympic history, was her biggest priority.
It wasn’t until after her sophomore year that Williams began to wonder if representing her country could be in her future. To that point, she’d run some solid races against some of the top athletes in the country but knew she wasn’t quite reached her full potential.
“There was kind of a light bulb that went off and I realized, I’ve been the best person on the track a few times, but I haven’t been the winner. I needed to figure out what was prohibiting me from winning,” Williams recalled. “So I came in my junior year with a different approach. I’ve got to figure out how to show up when it’s time to show up, as opposed to winning a smaller race, but not winning the big one. … There was a mindset change my junior year and I think that’s what allowed me to win the national championships and it just happened to be the Olympic year. My coach had to sit me down and tell me, ‘This is a really big opportunity you’ve got on your hands. You’ve got to think about this and make a decision that’s best for you.'”
That conversation came in 2004, after Williams posted a 10.97 in the 100-meters at the NCAA Championships. That won her a national title.
The fact her time was the second fastest in the world that year paved the way for her to earn a spot on the Olympic team where she’d eventually bring home a silver medal from Athens.
She’d later compete in Beijing in the 2008 Games and win a gold in London four years later as part of the U.S. 4×100-meter relay team.
Williams opted to retire from track in 2013, but a chance airport run-in with former track teammate Lolo Jones opened her mind to the possibility of competing in a whole other sport.
It was after that that Williams opted to give bobsledding a try and it didn’t take long for her to realize the strengths she’d had on the track translated well onto a different, icier track.
“That meeting at the airport just gave me the confidence to say, ‘Hey, this is something I’ve thought of very passively and here’s a girl in front of me that’s done it and knows how to do it,'” Williams said. “I just thought to myself, ‘Why not?'”
By August – just six months before the Sochi Games – she’d earned a spot in bobsled camp. By the time the Olympics rolled around, she had earned a spot in the top American sled with Elana Meyers-Taylor.
And at Miami, the Hurricanes celebrated her success – even if they weren’t always sure of all the things, technically, Williams was doing.
“I love the Winter Olympics, but when she first talked about it, I didn’t know all of the skillsets of it. She taught me a lot,” Deem said. “But I think what bobsled entails was what her strengths were in training for track. So, I wasn’t surprised she was successful. … Lauryn loves to be challenged and she doesn’t do well when she’s bored, so this new challenge was huge. She has that team mindset, so the camaraderie and teamwork that you need in bobsled, she just fell in love with it. That’s why she loved the relays when she ran.”
It was a love, Williams said, was fostered during her college career.
“Choosing the University of Miami was a game-changer for my whole life. I was a track and field athlete in high school and pretty much just kind of survived off of natural talent,” Williams said. “In thinking about what school I wanted to, I wanted to go to a place where I wouldn’t have to wear four layers of sweatpants to go to practice, so traveling from Pennsylvania to Miami was a big deal for me. … Then, Coach Deem’s leadership and her ability to not just coach me, but also nurture me was a really big deal. … Having the right person at the University was also a really big part of me being able to grow and blossom into the athlete that I did.”
