What Courage Looks Like
With Veteran’s Day having just passed, and with the Thanksgiving holiday on the horizon, I find myself thinking back on athletes I’ve coached who serve as examples of people I consider to be heroic, and for whom I am grateful to have had the chance to coach. There are many, obviously, as there are for any coach. I think back to Wayne Davis II winning the indoor national championship after spraining his ankle in the prelims. I think back to Johnny Dutch and Keni Harrison doubling in the 110/100 and 400 hurdles at outdoor nationals in different years. I also think back to many hurdlers on my school teams over the years who, though not nearly as talented as Dutch and company, similarly worked their butts off, got the most out of their talent, and came up big in big races time and time again, sometimes under significantly adverse conditions.
But the athlete that I look back upon as being the most heroic, and for whom I am most grateful, is not even a hurdler. It’s a girl I coached during the latter stages of my years at Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, NC. Jenna was a sprinter; she specialized in the 100 and the long jump, as well as the 200. Quiet by nature, Jenna wasn’t the type to draw a lot of attention to herself. If you didn’t know her well, you would mistake her for being laid-back. But Jenna was an exceptionally hard worker with a very real competitive streak.
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She had participated in gymnastics since her early childhood, was a varsity cheerleader in the fall, and began running track in the ninth grade. However, it wasn’t until her 12th grade year that we grew really close. In her first two years, we had another sprint coach who had taken her under his wing; then, in her junior year, one of my post-collegiate athletes who had a very astute sprint mind designed most of her workouts and mentored her in the details of sprint mechanics and strength training. Both of them ended up leaving, so by senior year it was just Jenna and I.
Our bond actually started to form during her junior year, when she took my AP Language & Composition class. Many of the writing assignments involved writing about oneself, whether in the form of narrative or argumentative essay. Through her writing, I got to know her story – her struggles to retain her self-esteem in the world of competitive gymnastics, her desire to compete for a state championship in the 100 meter dash, the depth of loss she felt when her first sprint coach left the school. We talked often outside of the classroom, and I began to really appreciate her personality. She had a writer’s personality – quiet on the outside, but with a lot to say when given space to express herself.
When senior year rolled around, she decided to drop cheerleading so she could train in the fall and compete for a state championship. She had run 12.42 as a junior, and it was looking like something in the 12.00 would be required to win states as a senior. In the early fall, training was going very well; she was hitting 29 seconds in her 200 reps just floating. But then a foot problem developed. It didn’t seem like much at firs – just a nagging pain – but it ended up lingering throughout the whole year. I had her see a podiatrist friend of mine who provided her with new insoles and recommended a series of exercises to do regularly. All of it helped a little bit, but the pain always came back.
During the spring season, I kept her events per meet limited to two. Usually she’d do the 100 and 4×100; sometimes she’d drop the relay and do the long jump, but the long jump seemed to make her foot hurt worse. The 200 was basically abandoned, as she had lost much conditioning due to the inconsistency of her training caused by her foot problems.
By May, it wasn’t looking like she’d be able to vie for the state title in the 100, but that she’d still be able to score some points. So we entered her in that event.
Warming up before the prelims on Friday (it was a two-day meet), she said she felt fine and she did look fast. But later in the warm-up the foot began to bother her again, and by the time the starter called the athletes to the starting line, the foot was causing her severe pain. She hobbled through the 100 meter prelims and barely qualified for the final.
The next afternoon, she hobbled again through the final and gutted out a 4th-place finish despite her obvious pain. The 4×100 meter relay would be an hour later, and we had planned on using her as our anchor leg. But with the pain, there was no way that was going to happen now. Her meet was over, her season was over, her senior year – which we had expected would be a year of glory and accomplishments – was over. Still, she wanted to give it a shot. And because she was a senior and because I didn’t want to make a final decision just yet, I told her to get some ice on her foot and we’d see how it felt.
After icing, she warmed up with the other relay team members, but the foot began hurting even more. She came to talk to me in the infield. She still had her training shoes on. I took her aside and told her she didn’t have to run the 4×100, she didn’t have to put herself through further pain. “We can put someone else in,” I said. I assured her she wouldn’t be letting the team down, and I let her know that I felt really bad for her, but that I was still very proud of her. I was getting all philosophical, explaining how life isn’t always fair and you’ll bounce back from this because you’re a warrior and all that corny stuff that coaches say.
Her response was to take off her training shoes … and to put on her racing shoes. She laced them up tightly, emphatically, and when she finished she said, “I’m running the 4×1.”
And she did. Anchor leg. Even though we didn’t win, she made up some ground on a couple competitors who had received the baton in front of her, and she did not favor her foot at all. She ran with an expression of anguish on her face, her eyebrows furrowing as she bit down on her bottom lip. I do believe I also recall seeing a tear dripping from one of her eyes – a tear of effort and determination.
This moment is not one that I can include in my resume among the outstanding performances of athletes that I have coached. But it is a moment that I will always remember, always treasure, always feel grateful for. When Jenna changed into her racing shoes, she was showing me who she was. When she ran down that final straight-away in the 4×1, she was showing me what courage, what heroism looks like when it is unleashed.
In spite of me, really, she dug deep and found something deep inside herself that I didn’t even know was there. To this day – and that was five years ago – Jenna and I remain very close. I couldn’t be happier.
Jenna and I together after the state meet.
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