Florida’s best girls high school track athlete is from right here in Polk County.
George Jenkins’ Chelsi Williams has just been announced as the 2024-25 Gatorade Florida Girls Track & Field Player of the Year
What exactly is the Gatorade Player of the Year? Well, it’s the top honor in high school sports, which celebrates the nation’s best high school athletes for their achievements on the field, in the classroom and in the community. Williams joins the likes of Sanya Richards of (2001-02, St. Thomas Aquinas High School, Fl.), Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (2014-15, 2015-16 & 2016-17, Union Catholic High School, N.J.) and Angelina Napoleon (2022-23, Allegany-Limestone Central School, N.Y.).
“I’m very excited (and) I’m very grateful. … I feel very blessed because Gatorade is a very big company and it’s just very surreal to earn this award. I feel very grateful, and I kind of feel speechless,” Williams said.”
But it wasn’t her speech that earned her the Gatorade accolade, though she does speak well. The Ledger’s 2025 Track Athlete of the Year and hurdler-jumper went unbeaten in the 100-meter hurdles, the long jump as well as the triple jump this past season, earning gold medals in all three events at the FHSAA Class 4A state meet, leading the Eagles to third place as a squad. Williams’ time of 13.28 seconds in the 100 hurdles at the FSU Relays ranked No. 4 nationally among prep girls competitors this spring. And at the same event, she broke meet records in both the triple jump and long jump with her leap of 41 feet, 07.25 inches in the former ranking No. 8 nationally and her distance of 20-3 in the latter, which ranked No. 10 this spring.
“(I’m) very proud. What a great way to end a high school season. Seeing all the work we did definitely paid off,” George Jenkins track coach Curtis Williams, who is also Chelsi’s father, said. “…Truthfully never really thought about it (the award). We just take it from track meet to track meet — year to year and all that good stuff. We never really think of winning awards and stuff like that. Only thing we think about is how we can train and how we can get better.”
And she was able to train and get even better in 2025 because there weren’t any hiccups like there were in 2024. In 2024 she suffered two separate hamstring injuries at two different meets, though she was still able to garner The Ledger’s 2024 Track Athlete of the Year. Still, the injury adversely impacted her because she ran the 100-meter hurdles at the FSU relays in a 14.1, but she wanted to rack up a low 13, which would have been an improvement from her 13.6 time at state.
Well, the very next year the year-round training broke the FSU relays records in 100 hurdles, long jump and triple jump.
What a year.
Williams just got finished with the Nike Outdoor Nationals, and she will head to Georgia at the end of the month on a full track scholarship where she will study to eventually get into veterinarian school and go to the Olympics.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: George Jenkins’ Chelsi Williams selected as Florida’s Gatorade Track Athlete of the Year
Reporting by Robert Magobet, Lakeland Ledger / The Ledger
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
