Williams wins state shot put title
Published 11:42 am Tuesday, May 27, 2025
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By Brian Pitts
Enterprise Record
From the Central Piedmont Conference to the Midwest Regional to the 4-A state championships, Cooper Williams was relentless. The Davie track & field senior went out in a blaze of glory, winning the shot put state title with a 58-11.75 throw at North Carolina A&T on May 16.
Once again, he all but wrapped up first place on his first heave. The runner-up mark was 55-10.25 by Alexander Central senior Garison Millsaps.
“I kind of knew that would be the winning mark,” Williams said. “Yeah, I relaxed a little bit after that.”
Williams came back with a vengeance after suffering bitter disappointment in 2024, when he finished second in the state at 55-2.25. Now he has an outdoor state championship to go with two indoor crowns in the shot from 2024 and 2025.
“Last year I really messed up at states, so I was really happy to finally do good against the bigger competition like outdoor states,” he said. “Last year I don’t even know what happened. I did awful. It was mainly mental. I just stressed myself out until the point that I felt like I was going to get sick. This time I did not freak out. I tried to stay as calm as possible, and I knew the hay was already in the barn (after the first throw).”
Williams also showed his prowess in the discus, finishing fourth at 164-6.
“A part of me was kind of sad. I missed third by two inches,” he said. “That part hurt a tiny bit, but I was still happy. I didn’t even make it to state last year in discus.”
Interestingly enough, Williams had a humble beginning as a thrower. You know what an afterthought is. As a sixth grader, Williams was after the afterthought.
“I remember when they told me I would have to run the 800 because I wasn’t good enough to throw the shot with everybody else,” he said. “I had my heart set on throwing, so I told them: ‘No, I’m not running the 800. I’m either throwing or I’m not on this team.’ I ended up getting good enough to start competing with everybody else.”
As a freshman, he was throwing a 40-foot shot and a 109-foot discus. Fast forward to his senior year and his career bests are 63 in the shot and 166 in the discus.
This closed the book on an incredible track & field era at Davie. Cooper’s older brother Spencer captured four state titles in 2021-22 (outdoor shot put in 2021, outdoor shot in 2022, outdoor discus in 2022, indoor shot in 2022). Spencer holds the 4-A state meet record in the shot at 64-3.75. Their throwing coach all these years was mother Diane, who quietly helped her boys to seven state titles.
“I was so excited (after winning the state),” Cooper said. “It felt like everything I had done was finally worth it. All I put into it, all the hours I put into the sport really paid off.”
Now Cooper will turn his attention to the University of North Carolina, where Spencer is a junior thrower. In the recent ACC championships, Spencer took fifth in the shot at 58-10.75 to earn all-ACC second team. Spencer and Cooper will be teammates in a few weeks.
“(Fifth is) really good considering most of those guys were fifth-year seniors,” Cooper said. “I’m super pumped about (joining Spencer at UNC). It will help me deal with college life. I won’t be nearly as stressed out, knowing if I have any questions I can always talk to him and ask him for help.”
Sweet’s Pole Vault
Wow, Davie’s AJ Sweet was electric in the pole vault. He soared 15-0 to claim second place.
“I talked to him a little bit,” Williams said. “He seemed confident and ready to go. I had no doubt that he was going to perform.”
The junior did some magic before finishing behind Apex Friendship senior Owen Lee, sitting in first place at one point late in the competition. Lee wound up at the top at 15-6, but Sweet’s work was beautiful to watch. The 15-0 tied his personal record, a mark he also hit during the 2024-25 indoor season.
“I was pretty excited,” he said. “It was the first time in a while that I had been over 15. I had been stuck at the lower heights for a while.”
One of his pole vault coaches is father Marc Sweet, who was beaming with pride.
“It’s been an amazing journey since we started working on this as a middle schooler, watching him grow, watching him keep working hard and getting higher and higher,” Marc said. “In middle school, he had an interview with Jeff George, who is head of MileSplit. AJ said: ‘I’m looking for 15 feet.’ He only jumped 12-6 back in middle school and here we are now at 15 feet. When he cleared 15, he was about a foot and a half over the bar. When he went to 15-6, he went to a different pole. He was too strong for the pole and he bent it too much. He blew out the pole and it wouldn’t let him get high enough up.”
As a freshman, Sweet finished seventh in the state at 13-0. As a sophomore, he was fifth at 14-6 to become the No. 1 sophomore in the state. All the arrows are pointing up for Sweet. He’s the foremost junior in 4-A and the first-, third- and fourth-place finishers were seniors.
“I see 16 in the very near future,” Marc said.
“I’m hoping for gold next year,” AJ said. “If I can get 16 or better next year, that would be really nice. I feel like I’m pretty close to getting 16.”
Williams and Sweet scored 23 points together and carried Davie to seventh out of 60 teams in the team standings. The top six: Mallard Creek 71, Cuthbertson 40, Garner 39, Riverside 31, Reagan 29, Enloe 28.