Mitchell Williams (2001) - Southern Miss M-Club Hall of Fame

Mitchell Williams

Induction:
2001

Athletics has always been about dreaming. Dreaming that you could achieve things that no one ever dreamed that you could accomplish. Dreaming of hitting a game winning home run, making the winning basket, running for the game winning touchdown or perhaps more appropriately heading down the home stretch with the wind in his face leaning for the tape to win an important race.
    For the second year in a row we induct an individual who had a great deal to do in helping to build our track and field program. Last year we inducted Donnie Young, one of the school’s greatest sprinters, while tonight we recognize Mitchell Williams for his contributions as a middle distance and distance runner for the Golden Eagles. Like Young, Williams was there to make a difference, to give whatever it took to help establish the Golden Eagle track program.
    If you will remember the Golden Eagle track and field program had been dropped in the late 1950s and was not revived until 1979. When Marshall Bell began the daunting task of rebuilding the program few if any one gave him much of a chance to build it into a competitive program. But Bell knew that if he were going to rebuild the program into one that could compete on a regional level and eventually a national level he would need a special type of athlete. Athletes that would be content to run without a track to call their own, athletes that would be content with the satisfaction that they were a part of building something special instead of trophies and great honors.
    Bell found one of those types of athletes in Mitchell Williams. After a successful multi-sport career at North Forrest High School, Williams elected to stay close to home and run track and field and cross-country for the Golden Eagles. Although scholarship monies were few and far between for track athletes in those days, Williams approached his career at Southern Miss with a positive and contagious attitude.
    At a time when Marshall Bell and the Southern Miss track program needed leaders. Needed someone who was willing to step to the forefront and show people what was possible and that the dream that Bell had for Golden Eagle track was indeed possible.
I won’t stand here tonight and talk with you about statistics because I believe Mitchell’s contribution to Southern Miss track and field goes beyond any stats and records I could share with you tonight. I will tell you that he still holds the school record for the 800-meters outdoor with a time of 1:51.20 and was a part of two relay teams that still hold records in the indoor 3200-meter relay and the two mile relay. And I will tell you that whenever Marshall bell needed to count on someone to step on that track or on that cross country course and give his team a lift, the one that he turned to more times than not was Mitchell Williams.
    Records and stats don’t always accurately measure the contributions that one makes to his alma mater and to the sport in which he competes. Records and stats go away with time, but an athlete imprint on his or her program, lasts for a long, long time.
    As a four-year letterman from 1980 to 1984, Mitchell Williams made the type of imprint on Southern Miss track and field and cross-country that made the program better.