GENEVA, Ohio — In a pack of cream and crimson, the IU men’s track and field team circled the SPIRE Institute’s indoor track in celebration Saturday. Junior Cooper Williams, head and shoulders above most of his teammates, brought up the rear.
He was not the center of attention, nor did he command it after falling short of a victory in the men’s 800-meter finals on the second day of the Big Ten Indoor Championships. More than two hours prior to the team's victory lap around the 300-meter track, a fourth-place finish in his primary individual event left Williams frustrated and mute.
But following the race, there was still one more event for him to run.
Williams ran the second leg of the 4x400-meter relay — his fourth event of the weekend — and contributed three scoring performances for the team. He helped IU tally 120.5 points to win its second Big Ten Indoor Championship since 2017.
“I always want to run as much as possible in order to get the points that we need,” Williams said after the two-day meet. “It’s tough sometimes when it doesn’t go your way in the individual event, but you got other races to go.”
Before the meet, IU head coach Ron Helmer said Williams would compete in multiple events to earn as many points as possible, hoping to secure a team championship. Williams needed to be a leader, compete hard and inspire his teammates to do the same.
That mentality starts with his preparation. Williams is an athlete who tries to keep practices light-hearted. By smiling and laughing with his teammates, he hopes they forget about the stress and pain of collegiate running.
“The biggest thing with running is when it gets to the point that it feels like a job, then you come in and you don’t have any fun with it,” Williams said. “When you’re just going through the motions, you’re not going to produce the times you want.”
Last season, Williams said he took his races too seriously sometimes. Self-doubt used to pour into his mind.
“Well before the race, I would only be able to think about the race and how I’d feel,” Williams said. “Then I would also look at the guys I’m racing against and think ‘These guys have been up there a long time. Should I be there?’”
He lacked complete confidence and struggled because of it.
Williams was coming off his first NCAA Outdoor Championship in 2018 when he placed 13th in the 800-meters and earned Second Team All-American honors. Yet it wasn’t until a week before the Big Ten Indoor Championships last season that he recorded a time fast enough to qualify for the national indoor meet the following year.
But on March 9, 2019, Williams lined up next to two All-Americans at the start of the NCAA 800-meter indoor finals. The University of Kansas junior Bryce Hoppel was to his left, and Texas A&M University junior Devin Dixon was to his right.
Since then, something clicked.
“Who cares what happens, just get out in front and go,” Williams said he thought before the race. “I’ve carried the mentality where there’s no doubt, with anyone that you race, you have to feel confident. It gets into you, and it makes you race better.”
He’s adopted a more carefree mindset since that race. He has fun while competing. But Williams still trains like one of the top runners in the country and sets the standard for the team’s middle-distance runners.
“There’s never an effort on his part to have an easy day,” Helmer said. “He’s going to get the most out of every workout that he does, and when he does that, then he’s always putting it out there for the rest of them to chase — to aspire to.”
On Friday, Williams earned the top time in the 800-meter preliminary races and ended the day by running another 800 meters during the third leg of the distance medley relay. Alongside freshman Matthew Schadler, junior Teddy Browning and senior Dushawn Tunstall, Williams and the distance medley relay team placed first with a time of 9:41.36.
After two races, Williams was tired. He said he was going to focus on getting rest, eating food and, if time allowed, watching another episode of "Dexter" on Netflix to decompress before bed.
Williams lined up at the 800-meter start line Saturday with the number nine on his hip. His name was echoed across the facility as the Big Ten Indoor runner-up in the event last year.
Now, he had the top time from the preliminary races and stood next to seniors Shane Streich of Minnesota and teammate Adam Wallace with a chance to take first place.
Once the gun fired, the race was off, and it started quickly. The top runners in the field dashed out ahead of Williams early, and he got stuck in the middle of the pack. Williams said he thought he would sit behind and relax, but he couldn’t make any strategic moves during the race to put him out in front.
Williams found himself in the second and third lanes attempting to pass the runners ahead of him. He couldn’t move up, and in the final 60 meters, Williams didn’t have enough energy to make up lost ground in a sprint. Despite an attempt to extend his lengthy frame for third place, he placed fourth with a time of 1:49.13. Head down, hands on his hips, he was disappointed.
But IU needed him for the meet's last event, the 4x400-meter relay, because Iowa was making a run toward the top of the team standings. He had to move on from defeat and prepare while continuing to support his teammates.
Between jogging back and forth within the outside lanes of the track and stretching with the relay team, Williams clapped and cheered for the Hoosiers as they competed.
“He’s still that goofy kid that we all know,” junior Ben Veatch said. “He’s weird, he’s funny, he’s just lovable. But at the end of the day, he’s really taken responsibility for his role on the team.”
IU led the meet by 7.5 points over Iowa with two events left. There was a chance the winner would be decided in the final race.
Instead, Veatch and senior Kyle Mau placed second and third in the 5,000-meter run to score 14 points. They clinched the victory for the Hoosiers. Williams and the team’s 4x400-meter relay followed with a fourth-place time of 3:10.35, scoring five extra points.
Their teammates leaped and cheered on the edge of the track while they raced toward the finish line. On the second leg, Williams took the baton at third place in the heat but closed the gap on the competition and nearly took the lead before the next leg.
IU placed first in the opening heat before Iowa ran in the second and took first overall. After four races, his weekend was over.
Williams said after the meet he was prepared to run in both relay events. He wanted to be a reliable leg no matter what, even if it meant he couldn't focus solely on winning the 800-meters.
Individual recognition evaded Williams, but it was a team effort that won the meet. He did whatever the IU men’s track and field team asked of him, which warranted a victory lap with his teammates. Williams will have a chance to redeem himself in the 800-meters March 13-14 at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“He’s the ultimate team guy,” Veatch said. “He knows he didn’t do his best today, but we had his back.”
