Archives for May 2014

May 28, 2014

For today’s blog post I’m going Letterman on you by providing a list of things that make hurdlers hurdlers. I came up with twelve, and listed them in descending order, Letterman-style, although I’m aware that the order doesn’t really matter.

You know you’re a hurdler if:

12.            You have had dreams in which you are hurdling.

11.            You have yelled at people for walking in your lane, sitting in your lane, standing in your lane, and/or placing gear in your lane.

10.            You have run over somebody who was standing in or walking through your lane.

9.            You have attempted to educate non-hurdling teammates on how difficult and physically demanding hurdling is, only to realize they’re never going to understand.

8.            When running with no hurdles in your way, you feel a bit unsure as to what you’re supposed to do.

7.            You have tripped over something while walking and played it off like you were practicing your hurdling technique. read more

May 21, 2014

So at our state meet last weekend the girl I coach won the 100m hurdles in a new personal best of 13.52, and it would’ve been a state meet record except the wind was over the allowable legal limit. It was a great race in which she looked very fast between the hurdles and very fast over them. The only glaring flaw in the whole race was that she popped up at the start.

So all the other coaches were congratulating me later on and remarking on how wonderfully she ran. But my mind was still on the boys’ 110 prelims, where my guy was on his way to finishing in the top two and automatically qualifying for the final before the speed of the race finally caught up to him and he clobbered the ninth hurdle with the foot of his lead leg, falling back to fifth or sixth place and out of a spot in the finals.

All I could think about – as soon as it happened and for the rest of the day – was, I should have jammed him. I should’ve jammed him in practice. This state championship meet was his first race on a mondo surface after running on slower rubber surfaces all season long. I knew the faster surface would cause crowding issues. When practicing block starts, I should’ve moved the hurdles in three feet to mimic the crowded feeling he’d have in the race. But I’d only moved them in the usual one foot, which wasn’t enough to prepare him for those hurdles rushing up at him. read more

May 8, 2014

For today’s blog I’m inserting an excerpt from an article that will appear in the May issue of The Hurdle Magazine, which will come out on Wednesday May 14th. The article is entitled “A Different Kind of Warrior.” Here’s a snippet:

Hurdling is all about individual expression. More than any other event in track and field, hurdling is about styles. There are as many styles as there are hurdlers. You see hurdlers like Aries Merritt, David Oliver, Liu Xiang, Jason Richardson, Dayron Robles, all having extreme levels of success, yet all with contrasting hurdling styles. While there are similarities that can be pointed out from hurdler to hurdler, you can tell who is who just by how they look over the hurdles.

One of my funniest memories occurred several years ago when one of my athletes, messing around toward the end of practice, imitated the styles of several hurdlers. “Let me do Dominique Arnold,” he said. And he looked just like Arnold over the hurdle. Then he said “let me do Trammell,” and he looked just like Terrence Trammell. He did two or three other hurdlers and it was hilarious. All the other hurdlers, as well as myself, nearly fell on the ground laughing. But a very important point was being made: you can identify a hurdler by his or her style. Your style is your thumbprint. It is your identity. read more

May 2, 2014

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling

My take on the whole Donald Sterling thing is a little bit different from most. I think that any time we are reminded of the racism that exists in our society, we must take the opportunity to be introspective and to be honest with ourselves regarding our own latent prejudices. I’m sure that if you were to ask Sterling if he is a racist, his answer would be no. As he said in the phone conversation that ignited the whole scandal, he does pay his players handsomely, so what’s the problem?

As an African-American who attended predominantly white schools throughout most of my educational career and who taught at one for almost two full decades, I never considered myself to be someone who held any prejudices against whites. But a couple years ago I wrote an article decrying the fact that American hurdlers were losing races to slower hurdlers from other countries because those foreign hurdlers were better technically. I mentioned that Sally Pearson couldn’t beat any of the American female hurdlers in an open 100 meter dash, yet she was beating them consistently over the hurdles. read more