Dream thrower: UNI's Williams posts big Relays win

DES MOINES - Jill Williams paced back and forth, nervous as a mom should be.

Would Northern Iowa thrower Jordan Williams' top discus toss hold up in Saturday's tense finals at Drake Stadium?

Mom had to wait - and pace - a while to find out.

“We just tell him to go out and have fun,” an eventually jubilant Jill Williams said. “I'll carry the heat for him.”

Jordan carried a Drake Relays flag out of the ring after unleashing a winning throw of 190 feet, six inches.

He beat second-place Gabe Hull of Iowa by less than an inch - two millimeters to be exact (58.07 to 58.05), so the stress was catching.

“It was intense,” said Williams, a former Monticello standout who hit his top mark on the first throw of finals, then watched Hull and others take their best shots. “On the outside, I was trying to sit there and be calm. But on the inside, I was pretty shaken up. I beat him by that much - two centimeters, so it was very close.”

Wonderfully close for the Williamses.

Excruciatingly close for Hull, who took fourth in the event last year and saw his last throw fall slightly shorter than the one before.

“The whole day had been progressively getting better, so I felt that since the (previous) one was just (two centimeters) behind the guy who was leading, the last one, if I stayed constant to what I'd been doing, it would have been further,” Hull said. “Unfortunately it didn't work like that.”

Williams had never won a Relays event.

Not as a high school or college Panther.

“It only took me nine years, but I did it eventually,” he said. “I knew this was my last Drake Relays.”

But it's far from the last anything, for Williams or Hull.

“I'll see him again at regionals,” Williams said, “and probably nationals.”

Hull found a silver lining in his near-win.

“It's another steppingstone,” he said. “Here, Big Tens, regionals, nationals and so forth.”

Williams said his father, Greg, coached him in high school.

And proud but nervous mom?

He's always able to find her in the crowd.

“Her and my grandmother, they're over there just muttering to themselves,” Jordan Williams said. “Visualizing me beating everyone, I'm sure. They get really excited.”