At first glance, he's hardly the type of kid you would expect to excel at three sports.
At 5-foot-2 and 122 pounds, Nathan Williams, a 14-year-old you may have seen leading the pack at a varsity cross country meet, has little experience under his belt, but his accomplishments in sports over the last year are pretty mind-boggling for a freshman in high school.
As a runner, Williams competes for Centennial High School's varsity cross country team, coached by Mike McGuire; and the Blazin Onez cross country club, coached by Bobby Boden.
As a cyclist, Williams rides for McGhie's Vegas High Roller Bicycle Club and manager Steve Clausse.
And as an inline skater, he competes independently.
And the thing about Williams -- when he competes, he usually wins.
On Sept. 16, Williams got up early and ran for Centennial with his freshmen counterparts at the Sierra Vista Invitational at Mountain Crest Park -- he finished first -- before having his mom, Julie, drive him up the annual Mount Charleston Hill Climb a bit later, so he could ride in the 17.5-mile cycling race up the mountain.
After getting up at 4:30 a.m. to run the 2.5-mile course in his 23rd event of the calendar year, Williams made his 24th event hours later just as memorable, finishing first in the Junior division with a time of 1:32.48. The teen, who is sponsored by McGhie's and Coronado Investments Money First in cycling, finished 26th of all riders in the race.
Despite his first-place finish, which was an hour and eight minutes faster than the second-place finisher in his age group, it seems Williams still didn't realize what a feat he had accomplished, especially for someone so new to the sport.
"I think I could have done better," he said. "It was hard. We had to push ourselves up the mountain in the bike race."
His interest in cycling started two years ago when Lance Armstrong won his seventh straight Tour de France. The young athlete had a V02 max test done to gauge the highest rate at which oxygen can be taken in and utilized during exercise by a person and scored an impressive 67.5. Armstrong registered an 83.7.
Williams detailed how he trains for cycling events.
"Sometimes I'll go on my trainer that I have in my house, but most of the time I'll go out over the weekend to the Red Rock Loop, and then I like to go to the Tuesday night crit (criterium)," he said, referring to the area's weekly short course race.
With 12 competition days of cycling this year and some very strong finishes, Williams may have a career as a pro cyclist somewhere down the road.
Dan Williams said his son's performance was stellar at the Tour de Summerlin.
"It was highly competitive," he said. "There were 630-some riders or something and he finishes in the top 30. He doesn't understand anything but 'Go for it.' "
Another sport the teenager has excelled at this year despite having little experience is inline skating, a sport Williams said he got into "because one of my friends was in it." He said his most memorable accomplishment was completing the Long Beach (Calif.) Marathon.
In short track events, Williams has several first- and second-place finishes over the past year in a sport he will be putting on the back burner for a while to concentrate more on maturing as a cyclist and a runner.
The sport Williams is currently excelling at is cross country, even though he's a self-proclaimed uncoordinated, flat-footed runner without sprinter's speed.
"I pretty much run flat-footed," he said. "I don't roll my foot like you're supposed to. I'm trying to change it. I'm not sure if I'm trying the hardest to change it because for me it seems hard to run on the balls of my feet."
At the Larry Burgess Las Vegas Invitational on Sept. 9, in which most of the best distance runners in Las Vegas participated, Williams finished fourth with a time of 15:59.46 on the 3-mile course, just 30 seconds behind race winner Solomon Bennett of Silverado, a senior who finished 13th in the NIAA Class 4A state meet last year.
"I was hurting the whole way," Williams said. "I had to push myself mentally to stay with them (Bennett and second-place finisher Jeremy Sudbury)."
His father said that's all part of the beauty of his son's story -- that he doesn't know that he is not supposed to be this good so soon.
"Part of that is he doesn't know who the competition is," Dan Williams said.
Proving he may be one of the best young distance runners in the West, Nathan Williams won the Dana Hills (Calif.) Cross Country Invitational on Sept. 30, finishing the three-mile course in 15:34.3 in a meet dominated by runners from the Golden State.
One year ago, Williams was still an eighth-grader at Cadwallader Middle School in the northwest part of town. It was there that he first realized he was pretty good at running distances.
"It's kind of a natural thing, but the thing that really got me into running was the mile at school," he said.
After tasting a bit of success in his physical education class in middle school, he decided to make a big leap by entering the inaugural, 26.2-mile Las Vegas Marathon.
Although the longest he had ever run prior to the marathon was about 5 miles, Williams decided to enter despite a warning from his middle school coach.
"His coach from Cadwallader recommended against it," Dan Williams said. "But in the end, I can't go on the course and yank him off."
The marathon was a great challenge, Nathan Williams said.
"It was pretty fun at the start. But I started hurting about halfway," he said. "You just have to push yourself, pick somebody to run with and try to keep their pace. A couple miles down the road, like the 18-mile mark, I found a 15-year-old kid to run with."
Williams said his body was talking to him in a big way after the event.
"I felt good, but I could barely walk," said Williams, who runs a 5:15 mile and plans on doing the half-marathon at this year's event on Dec. 10. "I was limping around for like a week at school."
He said it can be tough trying to balance education with athletics.
"It's hard to budget my time because I have to get homework done for all my classes and then I have to do a cross country meet," he said. "It's a challenge."
He said another challenge is his dyslexia, a reading impairment, although his father thinks this condition may be a big part of the reason why his son is so talented in endurance events.
"We look at it more as a gift than a hindrance," Dan Williams said.
The younger Williams said stamina is an essential part of his success.
"The reason why I'm good at all of them is because it takes endurance to do it," he said. "I think it just came natural."
He said he knows his success in sports can eventually help him in his future.
"That is my goal, (to get a scholarship to keep running in college)," said Williams, who plans to try out for the Centennial track and field team next spring. "I want to try to get a full ride."
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