Hubert Lawrence, STAR Writer

Six months from now, Jeanine Williams of Immaculate Con-ception High School might have been the favourite for the 2016 Girls' Championship gold medal in the Class One 100 metre hurdles.

Instead, the slim student-athlete has followed famous footsteps to Auburn University in Alabama, USA, after accepting a four-year track scholarship there.

Williams, who also reached the Champs Class One 100m final, said the Jamaican Carifta trials was the pivotal moment of her 2015 season.

"Everything came together on that day, and I ended up qualifying for the Carifta team to go to St Kitts," she recalled.

After that, Williams was second at Champs in the Class One 100m hurdles and also at the Carifta Games in the Under-20 category. At the Games, she ran her fastest time of the year, 13.40 seconds, in a Jamaica one-two finish with 2013 World Youth Champion Yanique Thompson.

Williams, who wants to study medicine, has high ambitions.

"I really want to gain Olympic medals in the hurdles, as well as World Championship medals," she said.

She is an admirer of 2009 world champion Brigitte Foster-Hylton, and said "she was always so powerful, and she was humble, and anytime she won, she was so happy."

Auburn has had a long line of successful Jamaican athletes. They include hurdlers Lacena Golding-Clarke, Vonette Dixon and Dean Griffiths, decathlete Maurice Smith, jumpers Elva Goulbourne, Jovanne Jarrett and Shelly-Ann Gallimore, and sprinters Kerron Stewart and Juliet Campbell. The current Auburn roster includes Joniele Smith, the former Wolmers' sprint star.

Williams will be coached by Bahamian Henry Rolle.

His past hurdling pupils include Dixon and 2009 World 400m hurdles bronze-medal winner Josanne Lucas of Trinidad and Tobago.