You know you're a track star when you can't name the most difficult moment of your athletic career.
For Oaks Christian, Calif. sophomore Lauren Rain Williams, there haven't been many.
After about five minutes of silence and stuttering, the 2015 New Balance Nationals Indoor 200m Champion has it.
"In 2009, I was at Junior Olympics and I had won the long jump but [the officials] saw someone else's jump as something else that was higher so she won," Williams said. "I was pretty disappointed getting second place when I was actually first. Everyone basically knew but they wouldn't change it [until a few months later]."
Williams handled the humbling moment with grace, the same way she has presided over the national level track and field scene since the tender age of five years old.
After sitting out of high school competition last year, the sophomore has charged onto the national scene with a full-fledged competitive fire. During the indoor season, she set a new National Sophomore Class Record of 23.39 for 200m and added an All-American, fourth-place finish in the 60m Dash to her 200m national title at the New Balance Nationals Indoor Championship.
Just a few weeks into the outdoor season, Williams already owns the US #1 FAT marks in both the 100m at 11.55 and the 200m at 23.43w.
Both of those outdoor marks came at the Maurice Greene Invitational at her school in Westlake, Calif., named for the professional sprinter famous for his on-track antics.
The trophy awarded to the winners of the 100m Dash at the meet featured an unusual tribute to the four-time Olympic medallist.
"I really didn't understand what it was for," Williams said of the unique prize. "I thought it was a joke or something to be funny. I've never seen a trophy that doesn't have a running person."
The award is far from her first. Williams owns seven international age group records (including five wind-aided) and countless AAU National Championship titles. She has appeared in ESPN Magazine, Sports Illustrated and as the cover athlete on the 2012 issue of Youth Runner Magazine. Her most impressive marks of 11.94 for 100m and 24.04 for 200m as an 11-year-old will never be ratified as official world age group records because meet officials did not bring a wind gauge to the meet.
Though she has plenty of individual accolades, Williams has found something new in the experience of competing for her high school - the meaning of team.
"It's been amazing," she said. "I'm really excited, it's way bigger than youth track. It's more of a real team now in high school. You have to really bond with your teammates."
Oaks Christian is already starting to see results, as the Girls 4x100m relay ranks US #1 45.94. The ladies will squad up again on Thursday at the in both that event and the 4x400m. Williams, along with cousin Miah Webb, and teammates Sarah Johnson and Schuyler Moore, thinks they can run throw down 3:45. A time like that would put rank the quartet at the top of the national leaderboard.
It's a stark difference from one year ago, when Williams was enrolled at Long Beach Poly but chose not to compete for the national sprint powerhouse.
She now commutes about 60 miles to stay with Webb and her aunt and uncle during the school week and comes back home to her mother, Lorraine, and her father and coach, James Henry, on the weekends.
Lauren claims the commute isn't bad. It certainly affords her the opportunity to grow closer with her relay teammate in senior Webb - though Williams claims they mostly keep the competition on the track.
"[Poly] just wasn't the fit that we were looking for," said Lorraine, who has gained her own fame for running the TrackMom.com website. "It has nothing to do with the caliber of athletes there. Long Beach Poly had a lot of positives in terms of the potential of the team. She just never was that happy there for the track part and the school part."
Lorraine competed in track in junior high and early high school, as did her husband, Henry. His main sport was football, which he went on to play at UCLA and Cal State Long Beach. They always encouraged Lauren to participate in every activity as a child, but her proclivity to the track could not be ignored.
"Lauren has this thing that I can't even explain because I don't have it," she says. "She locks in and that's a wrap on it. She's very much internally driven and when I say that, I mean she is motivated by herself. People say, 'you want to be like Mike'... or whoever, and she is not like that in the least. I used to be like, 'do you want to watch videos of Flo Jo?' and she'll say 'no.' And it took me awhile to realize, but eventually I was like, 'that's not what drives you.' [She would rather watch races of herself]. She'll say, 'Mom, look at that, that's me.' [And] that's what motivated her."
Lauren doesn't hesitate when asked how she's stayed enthralled with the sport for so long in what is still a young career.
"The adrenaline," she said. "I like the crowds. Sometimes, I think people get scared by the crowds but I really like that part of it and being able to compete in a big stadium. I think that's my craft and that's what I have to do so I've never really gotten bored of it."
