Hall of Fame Love
by Steve McGill
At an indoor track meet on the last weekend of January, two of my former athletes were inducted into the North Carolina High School Hall of Fame. The meet took place at JDL Fast Track in Winston Salem, NC, and I was attending anyway because a hurdler that I coach privately, Ayden Thompson of Bunker Hill High School, was competing in the 55 meter hurdles. Ayden ended up not having that great of a day. He ran his slowest time of the season (8.03, well off his pr at the time of 7.83), and didn’t qualify for the final. The ceremony for the Hall of Fame inductees took place around 12:30, and featured several athletes and coaches who had reached legendary status in the sport at the high school level.
My two athletes who were being inducted were Johnny Dutch and Keni Harrison, both of whom attended Clayton High School in Clayton, NC — just outside of Raleigh. Dutch graduated in 2007, and Harrison graduated in 2011. Back in the early days of Dutch, I was coaching with a youth track club called the Raleigh Junior Striders, and then in his later days I, along with my coaching partner at the time, formed our own smaller club called Hurdlesfirst Track Club. So, I knew Dutch since he was eleven years old, when his older sister Ashley was a high school star at Broughton High School in Raleigh, before the family moved to Clayton. In the case of Keni, I was her private hurdles coach in her last two years of high school, as I wasn’t coaching for a club anymore by that time.
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At the ceremony, I was asked by Brett Honeycutt, the organizer of the event, to accept the award for Keni, since she couldn’t be there, as she is now training in California. So I accepted the award for her, and that was really cool. Honeycutt, who is a track historian, was standing at the front door of the facility when I first arrived in the building. He recognized me instantly, greeted me warmly, and in our brief conversation he proceeded to rattle off names of athletes I’d coached over the years, going all the way back to Cameron Akers who, in 2000, became the first athlete I’d ever coached to perform at a national level. I was very touched that Honeycutt had my coaching history in his head, as it made me realize from an outsider perspective how much of an impact I have made on the North Carolina hurdling scene. Also, his enthusiasm made me all the more excited to be there.
The highlight of the day for me was seeing Johnny Dutch again, as I hadn’t seen him in probably over a decade, and we had fallen out of touch. I was standing in the infield with the other inductees (since I was representing Keni) and their families. A few of the inductees had like double-digit family members there, and they were all smiling and laughing and joking with each other while I stood there by myself wondering where the hell Dutch was. Then finally he showed up, and his mom Deborah was there with him. I walked over and gave Johnny a dap and a hug, and I gave his mom a big hug. It was so good to see them again.
Catching up with Johnny Dutch at the track meet after the Hall of Fame induction.
For those of you who don’t know, Dutch attended the University of South Carolina after graduating from high school. At USC, he won a national championship in the 400 hurdles, and then went on to have a stellar professional career, making a World Championship team and finishing with a personal best of 47.63. Harrison, meanwhile, has gone on to become one of the greatest 100 meter hurdlers in history. Out of high school, she attended Clemson University, and then after her second year there she transferred to the University of Kentucky, where she won an NCAA championship in the 100 hurdles and finished second in the 400 meter hurdles in the same meet. As a professional, she broke the world record in the 100 hurdles in 2016, and was an Olympic silver medalist in 2021, among many other achievements, including multiple national championships in the 100 meter hurdles. As mentioned earlier, she is still competing. Prior to the beginning of fall training in 2022, she and her best friend — sprinter Jenna Prandini — moved from Texas to California to train with the legendary Bob Kersee, who also coaches Sydney McLaughlin, Athing Mu, and a few other stellar athletes.
The Hall of Fame ceremony gave me some time to reflect — to look back on my career and appreciate all I have accomplished. Or, should I say, to appreciate all that my athletes have accomplished. As a coach, I’m the invisible one. The athletes are the stars. If anyone knows me, it’s because of whom I’ve coached. I’ll never forget the time, about ten years ago, when I was coaching the hurdlers for Southeast Raleigh High School, and we were at a meet somewhere in Maryland or Northern Virginia, and a kid walked up to me and asked, “Did you coach Wayne Davis?” I nodded and assured him that, yes, I did coach Wayne. The kid kept walking and said to one of his teammates, “He coached Wayne Davis!”
Wayne, who was two years younger than Dutch, was another member of that Hurdlesfirst Track Club group that I consider to be my golden era as a coach. Wayne went on to win an NCAA Championship in the 110 hurdles while competing for Texas A&M University. Wayne too has already been inducted into the North Carolina High School Hall of Fame.
The way I look at it is, I’ve coached a lot more athletes who aren’t Hall of Famers than I have athletes who are. And many of those names that nobody has ever heard of are just as important to me as those that everybody has heard of. Those who didn’t go on to run in college matter just as much to me as those who went on to run professionally.
Keni Harrison’s Hall of Fame plaque
And as I said in another article months ago, the dogs are in the yard. Which means, my focus now is on the athletes I’m coaching now, and in helping them to reach their potential, whatever that may be. Ayden Thompson, last weekend, ran a new personal best of 7.73 in the 55m hurdles at the NC 2A state meet. That time puts him in position to start the season right around 15-flat or a little bit under. He’s getting looks from DII schools and small-conference DI schools. We’re hoping to go under 14.5 by the end of outdoors. This kid was 17-low when I started with him two summers ago. I’m proud of him. He’s been putting in the work — on the track and in the weight room, and in regards to his diet. He’s made sacrifices. He’ll never be in the Hall of Fame, but he’s definitely in my personal Hall of Fame.
And then there are the two girls I’ve been working with all off-season — Grace Galloway, whom I mentioned earlier, and Marie Madsen. As I discuss in another article in this month’s issue, I still haven’t gotten Grace to where she is three-stepping confidently — something I was certain I’d be able to do when the off-season training started. So, like any other coach, whether or not they’ve coached legends in the past, I’m doubting myself. And I have to work through that self-doubt in order to continue to give Grace and Marie what they need. The fact that I’ve coached Hall of Famers in the past doesn’t change the fact that I still go through the same struggles that any other coach would go through. There are no magic formulas; there’s just the grind. So we’ll keep grinding.
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