Titans International

The 20-year-old star will join Michael Frater and Gregory Little at the Kingston-based Titans International Track Club with the blessing of her now former coach and mentor Ato Boldon. She retains her agent HSI Sports and managers LEEP Marketing.

“Briana, by her own admission, has grown comfortable over the last season and needs to be more challenged, so with my blessing and encouragement, she’ll be joining Michael Frater and Gregory Little’s group,” Boldon said.

“From the beginning, she and I knew I’d have to hand her off to someone who could coach her full time and as she turns 21 soon, now is the time.

This is the next chapter in her development and I’ll continue to advise and guide her, as I have since she was 10.”

Boldon has been Williams’ mentor and coach for the past decade. During that time, she ran a World U15 age-group 100m record of 11.13 in 2018.

That same year, she won three gold medals -100m, 200m and 4x100m - in the U17 category at the Carifta Games and was named winner of the coveted Austin Sealy Award.

Later that year, at age 16 and competing at the U20 World Championships in Tampere, Finland, Williams won the 100m in 11.16 before setting a new national U20 record of 22.50 while winning the 200m.

In doing so, she broke the previous U20 championship record of 22.53 held by the Bahamian Anthonique Strachan.

Williams won three more gold medals at the 2019 Carifta Games.

But according to the young star, it was time for a change.

“I'm excited about this new chapter and happy to be training in Jamaica,” said Williams.

“I have to thank Coach Ato for how much he has done for me and my career so far. He will always be a father figure to me.”

Titans International boasts an impressive roster that includes Yohan Blake, the 2011 World 100m champion and second-fastest man of all time, and Akeem Blake, the 2022 NACAC 100m champion, who was also a semi-finalist in the 100m at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

Under the guidance of Frater and Little, Kemar Bailey-Cole, the 2014 Commonwealth Games 100m champion, has been resurrected after years of injury and illness threatened to end his once-promising career.

Williams, a Nike athlete, is a Digicel Brand Ambassador and a Brand Ambassador for Grace Foods.

Correction: In the original story published we mentioned that at the World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland, Briana Williams broke the championship record held by Veronica Campbell Brown. That was incorrect. The record of 22.53 was held by Anthonique Strachan of the Bahamas. Strachan set the record at the 2012 championships.

The performance prompted TITANS International Coach Michael Frater to express his pride in the achievement. “Proudest moment as a coach, so far. @JazeelMurphy finally lowering his PB after almost 10 years,” Frater posted on Instagram.

It was some achievement indeed and a long road back for one of the more promising talents from just over a decade ago.

Murphy was once a standout high school sprinter at Bridgeport High School. Blessed with raw speed and electric acceleration, he was among a talented group of young sprinters like Odean Skeen and Kemar Bailey-Cole from the era of the early 2000s, who seemed destined for greater things.

“Jazeel, as a youngster was on several junior teams and ran sub 21 at Carifta,” recalled David Riley, one of the top coaches in the country. “He was one of more the more promising athletes from that era but he had some lingering issues due to differences in his leg length (but) definitely the ability was always there.”

Murphy won the U17 sprint double at the Carifta Games in St Lucia in 2009 in 10.41 and 20.97, respectively, the latter a championship record. He won the U20 100m title in Jamaica in 2011 in 10.27.

Building on his momentum and rising status as perhaps the next great sprinter from Jamaica, the former Bridgeport High School athlete, won another Carifta U20 title in Bermuda in 2012 in a very windy 10.31 (5.7m/s). He later ran 10.29s for fifth place at the World U20 Championships in Barcelona, Spain, that same year.

The future loomed bright for Murphy, who would later join the Racer’s Track Club where it was hoped he would follow in the footsteps of Usain Bolt, who by then had won his sixth Olympic gold medal. However, in the years that followed, through injury and other related issues, Murphy failed to live up to expectations and began a steady decline.

After 2012, when he ran his personal best 10.25 into a headwind of -1.2m/s in Barcelona, Murphy seemed to get slower over time. Between 2013 and 2020, Murphy ran season-best time of 10.25 in 2013, 10.65 in 2014, 10.39 in 2015, 10.50 in 2016, 10.61 in 2017, 10.51 in 2018 and 10.85 in 2020. After almost a decade, no one remembered Murphy or even cared. He had become a statistic. Another of Jamaica's talented athletes who had fallen through the cracks.

Last summer, all that began to change.

Murphy, now 27, joined TITANS International in June 2020, weighing in at a whopping 260 pounds, Coach Gregory Little revealed to Sportsmax. TV. The first order of business, Little said, was to get his weight down under a two-year plan that will see him running even faster in 2022.

“This year was about conditioning and we want to get him up and running next year, getting him back to the feeling of running fast,” said Little, who believes Murphy, now down to about 185 pounds, should be running 9.9s by 2022.

“Hopefully, he can. He is just starting to learn everything about track and field.”

The first signs of Murphy’s revival came at the Olympic Destiny meet on May 22 when he ran 10.35. The following week he ran 10.28 just off his personal best at the time. Another 10.28 followed on June 5.

At the national championships, he ran 10.34 in the preliminary round but only after coming to an almost complete stop after emerging from the blocks thinking there was a false start. Realizing his mistake, he sped down the track but ran out of room and placed fifth.

His next stop was Mission Viejo in California on Sunday where he made the breakthrough, clocking a lifetime best of 10.17.

Little is hopeful that this is just the beginning of a revival for the ages, one that could see Jazeel Murphy take a major step forward in fulfilling his true potential.

Called TITANS International, the club already has one famous Jamaican athlete on its roster but Frater plans to recruit more athletes as the club finds its footing within the Jamaican landscape.

TITANS is the acronym for Training Intelligently Towards Athletes Natural Speed, he said, explaining that he intends to use the information garnered while being coached by Francis and then Glen Mills, two of the best in the world.

Francis has coached the likes of former 100m world record holder Asafa Powell and Nesta Carter as well as Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson. Mills was the man behind the iconic exploits of Usain Bolt. He also coached Blake as well as Warren Weir.

“I think the experience that I have gathered competing at the highest level and then being under the tutelage of Stephen Francis and then Glen Mills; I don’t think many people in the world have had that experience, so I am just going to use the knowledge that I have gathered from these great gentlemen,” he said

Track has always been an integral part of Frater’s life, winning medals in high school in Jamaica at Jamaica’s Boys and Girls Championships and at high school and college in the United States of America.

“I grew up on track and field. It’s something I have always wanted to do,” Frater said in explaining why he started the club.

“I am not going to go away from track and field. I am always going to be involved in track and field in every aspect of it so the next step is actually having my own coaching group. So myself and Gregory Little; we formed a group and we are working with some athletes now, Yohan Blake being the top athlete that we have at the moment.

“So, it’s just about getting a good group of athletes together and building on that.”

Frater represented Jamaica for more than a decade at several Olympic Games and World Championships.

Under Coach Francis, Frater surprised many when he won a silver medal in the 100m final at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki. Three years later, he was a finalist in the 100m at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China where Usain Bolt set a world record of 9.69s.

In 2012, he was a key member of Jamaica’s 4x100m team that won gold at the London Olympic Games in a world-record of 36.84, a time that made Jamaica the first team to run faster than 37 seconds in the sprint relay.

In June 2011, Frater ran a personal best time of 9.88 that made him the sixth fastest Jamaican male sprinter.

Following his retirement from track, Frater, 37, joined the coaching staff at St.Jago High School in 2019, paving the way for the formation of his own track club.