"I'm excited, really excited," Jesse Williams tells one and all.

[YouTube Video Link -  Jesse Williams becomes World Champion - from Universal Sports]

And it's obvious why the the North Carolina-reared, California-schooled, Kansas-trained, Oregon-resident high jump star is bursting with exuberance heading into Olympic year 2012.

He came to St. Louis to accept the Jesse Owens Award as USA Track and Field's men's athlete of the year and played a starring role in the gala banquet that packed the Hyatt Regency ballroom as the feature festivity of USATF's Annual Meeting.

Spectacular triumphs in the IAAF World Championships at Daegu, South Korea, and in the season-long Diamond League circuit, along with his year list-leading 7-9 1/4 win at USA Nationals, clinched the nation's top track and field award for him.

In the process, the 6-foot, 155-pounder with springs for legs became the first Jesse to actually win "the Jesse." (Sprint great Carmelita Jeter ran off with the female athlete of the year award and the equivalent "Jesse.")

Williams - a graduate of Broughton High School in Raleigh, N.C., and the University of Southern California who now lives and trains as a Nike-sponsored athlete in Eugene, Ore. - will celebrate his 28th birthday two after Christmas and then it's onward and upward into what he confidently expects to be a sensational 2012.

A visit to The Armory for the Millrose Games on Feb. 11, 2012, will be a major step on his way to the USA Olympic Trials at historic Hayward Field in Eugene and, hopefully, the London Olympic Games.

"This will be just my second trip to The Armory and I'm looking forward to it tremendously," said Williams, in a brief break from his assignment, along with all the other banquet honorees, of signing autographs for their many well-wishers. The autograph line was hundreds long and weaved down and around much of the Hyatt's fourth-floor reception area.

"The only other time I jumped at The Armory was back in 2001," he said. "I came up from North Carolina for the National Scholastics, jumping for Broughton High, and set a PR (6-8 3/4.) I felt pretty good about it, too, even though I only placed third. If I have this right, a guy from New York, Dan Olson, won it, and guy from Virginia, Quinton Matthews, placed second.

"I remember it as a terrific facility, great for jumpers, and I understand it's even better now. Not sure exactly what other jumpers will be there for Millrose, but I'll be ready for a great competition regardless. Millrose hasn't had a men's high jump the last few years at Madison Square Garden, but way back I knew the high jump was always a big feature of the meet at the Garden.

"We want to rebuild that Millrose high jump tradition. We want to give the fans a lot to cheer about."

From Broughton High, Williams spent a year at North Carolina State before transferring to USC, where he won two NCAA titles. Training sessions in Manhattan, Kan., under the tutelage of K-State jumps-master Cliff Rovelto gave him added confidence.

Charles Austin would be proud of all that Williams has already achieved. It's the shoes of Austin, the Lone Star leaper out of Southwest Texas State University, that Williams hopes to continue to fill.

Not since Austin's ultra-dramatic, highest-stakes, last-leap triumph at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics has an American won the HJ at the Games. Then, Williams' win at Daegu put him in Austin's elite category as the lone American HJers to strike gold at the World Outdoor Championships.

Austin soared 7-9 3/4 to claim the World Championships gold at Tokyo in 1991 (with countryman Hollis Conway in third place); Williams won at Daegu by clearing 7-8 1/2.

Adding to the luster of Williams' big-big Daegu win was this: between 1993 and 2009, a span of 18 years and nine World meets, Team USA had drawn a complete medals blank as the titles went to Russia, Cuba and Bahamas (two each), along with Germany, South Africa and Ukraine (one each).

Not only that, but the best that Americans could manage in that long spell were a sixth-place by Conway in 1993, sevenths by Tony Barton in 1995 and Jamie Nieto in 2003 and an eighth by Austin in 1999.

For Williams, the recognition keeps piling up. He's won three of the last four USA outdoor titles, going 7-6 1/2 in 2008 and 7-5 in 2010. And only Austin (lifetime best of 7-10 1/2 in 1991) and Conway (7-10 in 1989) now outrank him on the all-time USA list.

He knows he'll be ranked No. 1 in the world when all the year lists come out, and will thus have to lug the heavy burden of London Olympic favorite heading into the 2012 campaign.

Williams' stunning Daegu triumph added to the rarity of a vertical leaper being honored as the finest track and field athlete in the land, ahead of all the runners, jumpers and throwers who've been dominating things in recent years.

It's been so long that a USA high jumper gained this kind of prestige that even Williams laughs about it.

"You may not remember what the high jump actually is," he kidded. "It's that thing we do... without a pole."