Oklahoma Sooners & NFL Blog

AUSTIN – Many of the athletes who won state titles Saturday could tell inspiring stories of how they started toward their ultimate goal.

Irving's Adron Tennell, the Class 5A long jump champion, was no exception.

"I really started long jumping just to get out of school early," he said.

OK, so it's probably not the kind of inspirational story that coaches will spread around.

It's also not the kind of story Tennell's competitors wanted to hear after he sailed past them at Mike A. Myers Stadium.

Tennell's winning jump of 25 feet, 7 ¾ inches was nearly a foot better than any other competit- or.

It was more than a foot better than his previous best this season of 24-6 ¾.

"It was the perfect way to end my senior year," Tennell said.

And the perfect way to end his time as a competitive long jumper. His long jump career lasted a whopping two years.

Track coaches around the nation would probably love to see what lengths the 6-5, 200-pound athlete could reach over the next four years, but Saturday was his glorious goodbye.

Tennell won't be jumping into sand pits next year; he'll be leaping to catch passes at Oklahoma.

The receiver is one of the prize recruits for the Sooners, who also signed South Grand Prairie's Malcolm Williams, a defensive back who won the 5A triple jump Saturday.

Tennell and Williams have talked a lot the last few months, but not much about track. Even on the biggest day of the high school track season, even on a day when they each had their best jumps of the year, their conversation would probably turn to football.

"That's what we talk about all the time," Tennell said.

But on Saturday, the big news of Tennell wasn't about a touchdown. It was about where he touched down. His winning leap came on his last attempt, when he was in second place behind Abilene's Lyle Leong.

"When he hit that last jump, I knew it was big," Irving coach Joseph Pouncy said. "But I didn't know it was that big."

It was big enough to break the 5A record of 25-6, although it won't be recognized because the wind was slightly over the limit.

That's a bummer for the OU-bound Tennell, who could've taken the record from former Longhorns receiver Roy Williams, who set the mark while at Odessa Permian.

But that was a small disappointment in a big day for Tennell, who didn't even attempt his first long jump of the year until the basketball season ended. Football season is for football, he said, and basketball season is for basketball.

Track season pretty much fills the gaps in between. It did for the last two years, anyway, as Tennell blossomed into a coveted college recruit for football and basketball.