Did Jarrion Lawson have the best NCAA championship meet ever?!
The NCAA championship meet is the only meet on the calendar that really matters if your goal is to become a track and field legend. It’s where Christian Coleman broke the collegiate record, weeks before beating Usain Bolt in the World Championships. It is also where Grant Holloway went undefeated in hurdle races before become a World Champion himself, just weeks after that meet. But every once in a while somebody does something, so ridiculous that we will probably never see it happen again. Jarrion Lawson is that man. He competed for the Arkansas Razorbacks which is arguably the best team top to bottom in the NCAA. However, you wouldn’t know that when he was there, because in 2016 he showed up to the NCAA meet practically by himself. He went on to score more than half the points on his team at the NCAA championship. In fact, had he showed up and left the entire rest of the team at home, he still would have finished sixth in the nation, without any help. The truth is that Jarrion Lawson, is honestly a forgotten superstar. But whether or not you were paying attention, there will likely never be another athlete like him for a long time.
How good was Jarrion Lawson in high school?
Jarrion Lawson’s NCAA championship performances were quite literally the meet of his life. He won the 100 meter dash, the 200 meter dash, and the long jump before helping Arkansas to finish third in the 4x100 meter relay. But before that competition, his final meet as a senior his dominance started all the way back at the high school level. He was actually the best long jumper and triple jumper in the state of Texas as a senior, but never ran the 100 meter dash or the 200 meter dash officially. That was probably for the best, because that year Texas had the Gatorade national track athlete of the year running in the 100 meter dash.
Jarrion’s performances were good enough to earn him a scholarship to Arkansas, the same team that had already won national championships with Tyson Gay and Wallace Spearmon leading them. He got to work immediately as a freshman finishing fourth in the NCAA indoor long jump. He actually ran the 200 meter dash outdoors for the first time on record and ran 21.20 which is really fast, but not fast enough in the SEC. As a sophomore competing indoors he won the entire NCAA in the long jump. By this point in his career he was already moving away from the triple jump, and starting to compete even more in the sprints. He didn’t make a conference final in any sprinting events yet. He also underachieved outdoors at the NCAA level, only serving as a relay body for the Razorbacks. Keep in mind, this is man who had just won the NCAA championship several months before. So his talent was clearly undeniable, he was just waiting to put it all together.
Jarrion Lawson completed the Jesse Owens triple
During his junior year he continued to compete indoors getting second in the NCAA, but he finally made a sprinting final at the SEC championships. Jarrion finished fifth in the 100 meter dash outdoors. By this point he ran 10.19 seconds, which was proof that he was now a threat in that event. But he also shocked the world by finishing 3rd at the NCAA championships in a wind assisted 9.90 seconds.
Entering his senior year it was now clear that Jarrion was a legitimate sprinter and long jumper. With the triple jump far behind him, the coaches at Arkansas made a plan to prep him for the Jesse Owens triple including the 200 meter dash. Jarrion ran the 60 indoors and made the NCAA final, finishing fifth while winning the long jump once again. But outdoors he showed up to the SEC championship meet for the first time making the finals in all of his events. That includes the 100, 200, and long jump. He didn’t get a medal in either sprint race, while winning the long jump. But the only thing that matters is that he was there, and that experience came with him to the NCAA championship meet.
The rest is history, because Jarrion Lawson then went out and did the unthinkable. He won the 100 meter dash at the NCAA championships. Until that moment Jarrion Lawson literally had never won a college meet in that event up until that point. He won the long jump, which isn’t a surprise, but nobody really expected him to do anything special in the 200 meter dash. But Jarrion proved everyone wrong and won that event as well. He beat future World Champion Christian Coleman in order to do it. The 30 points he scored by himself would have tied him for sixth overall in the nation. That means that Jarrion literally could have competed for any team in the nation and it wouldn’t matter. As long as you had him you were going to go sixth in the nation at least. But he did all that for Arkansas so the rest of the help they gave him pushed them all the way up to second, losing to Florida in the end.
What happened to Jarrion Lawson
Since that time Jarrion Lawson has basically focused on the long jump ever since. He’s an Olympian and a World Championship silver medalist, who never won a 100 meter dash competition after his NCAA championship performance. He’s actually never officially contested as 200 at all since that moment. It is unclear what the future of his career will look like, and we might even have seen the last of Jarrion Lawson. But one thing is for certain, we will never forget the man who literally was the team that dominated the NCAA all by himself.