Chasing Grace Read online

  Is this a surprise party? I wondered to myself.

  It was Sanya Richards Day.

  The doors to the ballroom opened, and instead of a backdrop, lights, and cameras, a roomful of people turned and applauded me. The St. Thomas athletic director, George Smith, and my high school coach, John Guarino, organized the surprise event to announce me as the 2002 Gatorade National High School Girls Athlete of the Year.

  July 25, 2002, was officially named Sanya Richards Day, according to a proclamation signed by our congressman, a commendation from the city of Fort Lauderdale, and a congratulatory letter from Jeb Bush, Florida’s governor at the time.

  I became Florida’s first track and field student-athlete to earn national athlete of the year honors, joining other Floridians like baseball stars Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez and football star Emmitt Smith as recipients. Joining them on that esteemed list propelled me forward. Not only was it the greatest honor of my young career, but it also motivated me to live up to expectations. The people who chose me for the award believed in my ability to move on and establish myself among the greats, and it once again validated the commitment I was devoting to my training.

  It wouldn’t pay off to get stuck in what was. For me, it was always necessary to flip the dial forward. A short memory pulled me out of that negative experience in Jamaica, because even though I dealt with the crowd and the losses, and for the first time struggled against defeat and devastation, I looked from the positive perspective. Eventually, I saw the Jamaicans’ jeers as coming from a loving place. They were disappointed because I wasn’t there competing for Jamaica, and as a competitor myself, I could understand that frustration. I embraced it and found a way to empathize. It’s not a negative memory in my mind, even though it was tough to be on the receiving end.

  We’re all children of God, and because of that, we’re all the same, regardless of where we were born, where we live, or what we look like. I learned how to be compassionate by experiencing the opposite.

  PUSH

  Support, God, and pressure are all needed to reach your full potential and manifest your talent.

  It’s important to surround yourself with people who believe in you, people who add to your journey with encouraging words, support of your dreams, and a shared positive outlook.

  Those relationships are important, but nothing will compare to your relationship with God, who is always with you.

  His love is what will guide you through the pressure-filled moments that create diamonds.

  Chapter 3

  SOLDIER STATUS

  Finding Your Voice

  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

  JEREMIAH 29:11

  The pride and winning tradition of The University of Texas will not be entrusted to the weak or the timid.”

  The first time I walked into the University of Texas weight room as a seventeen-year-old freshman and saw those words etched on the back wall, I knew I was in the right place. It reminded me of the feeling I had when I made my official recruiting visit as a high school runner and determined that Austin would be my future home.

  Unlike my official visit to UCLA, where Monique Henderson kept calling me “the recruit,” the Lady Longhorns were welcoming and friendly. Raasin McIntosh and Nichole Denby were my hosts. Raasin was a hyper, fun, crazy girl from Houston, and Nichole was a cool, calm, and collected girl from California. I just knew I wanted to be their teammate. Right away, we formed an unbreakable bond, which helped us push each other during practice and in competition.

  I was young and eager when I arrived on the Forty Acres of the University of Texas campus, ready to race and train with all my new teammates as the powerhouse that was the Lady Longhorns’ track and field team. National championships were the goal.

  Our coach, Bev Kearney, was larger than life.

  She was one of only two female black Division I head coaches in collegiate track and field, and I admired that. Until college, most of my coaches were male, aside from Mrs. June Simpson, one of my very first coaches in Jamaica, and I wanted to be around someone I could relate to and aspire to be like.

  A flashy dresser and slick talker, Bev’s aura was so mesmerizing that she could convince you of anything. Her style mimicked Baptist preachers and Southern grandmothers. Her sermons could come anytime, anywhere. She wanted to keep us motivated and sent us inspirational text messages and emails throughout the day. She cared about our success on the track, but like our mother away from home, she was also endearing, always welcoming us into her home. Most of the team, me included, was completely enthralled by her. She drove the nicest cars, her hair and nails manicured to perfection and her outfits coordinated down to her socks.

  With Bev, it was her way or the highway.

  The Texas track and field teams were not combined. The women’s team was its own program. We had our own coaches separate from the men. We didn’t even go to the same competitions if we didn’t have to. Bev rarely spoke to Bubba Thornton, the men’s head coach, and we didn’t mingle or associate with the men’s team.

  Bev was livid when I started dating one of the guys on the track team my freshman year. She never told me I couldn’t date whoever I wanted to, but I always felt like I was betraying her by entertaining someone on the guys’ team. Despite her strict and rigid ways, the team bought in and wanted to please her.

  She had a favorite saying. “If they aren’t in burnt orange and they can’t score us any points, we don’t speak or interact with them,” Bev preached. “When we enter a competition, we’re on a mission, and it starts the moment we walk into the arena.”

  Her message rang out loud and clear: if you wanted to be the best, you can’t be friends with everyone.

  “Do you want to be respected or liked?” she’d ask us routinely and rhetorically.

  Bold in burnt orange, with Texas across our chests, we formed a formidable group, whether we were coming or going. Always well dressed, because that was important to Bev and to most of us, we held our heads high and eyes forward. No one messed with us. We were the mean girls of college track and field, and we owned it. We wanted to get in people’s heads before we ever lined up, and it was a tactic that didn’t go unnoticed.

  It was all about perception. Often mistaken as our bodyguard, Bruce Johnson, our strength coach, led the team into every competition venue. At six foot three and three hundred pounds, his presence was intimidating and imposing. Truly a gentle giant, he was a huge part of our team success.

  One of my favorite experiences as a Lady Longhorn came during my freshman year in 2003 at the NCAA Indoor National Championships in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

  There were two heats of the 400-meter final, and the fastest time decided the overall winner. The heats are seeded by time. I was in the fastest heat. Rarely does the time from the slower heat ever win the championship title, so I was a bit overconfident and ran my race to win as opposed to running for my best time. I won my section but lost to South Carolina’s Lashinda Demus from the slower heat. I was disappointed. Winning as a freshman would have been a colossal achievement, but it motivated me for the final event of the competition, the 4x400m relay.

  The Texas women always had great success on the 4x400m relay. South Carolina presented our biggest challenge, and each leg of the relay was evenly matched. The entire squad needed to run a strong race in order to win.

  Despite being the youngest on the team, I called a group huddle. I channeled my inner Bev and reached within for a motivating moment. I pleaded with my teammates to dig deep and pull out a big win. We all had worked so hard and believed so fervently in Bev’s plans. To embolden them, I told them our reputation was on the line. To close, I quoted my favorite slogan from the weight room wall and told my team this one was for Texas.

  Keisha Downer was our first leg. She gave it everything she had and put Raasin in great position. After Raasin’s leg, the race open
ed up, and it became a two-team battle. Moushaumi Robinson, a senior, was our third leg and raced against a career-long foe, South Carolina’s Demetria Washington. They handed off the baton together, setting up a rematch between Lashinda and me. The stadium erupted. The air was electric. As I rounded the final bend, still a step ahead of Lashinda, I remember hearing Coach Bev yelling, “You got it, Sanya! Bring it home!” I turned it into overdrive and opened up a lead to win the indoor relay title.

  Victorious moments like that, and we had quite a few, made everything seem worth it. From the outside we appeared to have it all together, but internally many of the girls were crumbling.

  Bev used tactics that she thought motivated us but eventually felt more like manipulation. Each week after practice, she ranked us with one to five stars.

  Five stars, you’re a soldier.

  One star, you’re a punk.

  Every week, girls walked up to the locker room door, hoping to be on top of the heap, and they were shattered when they weren’t.

  As a consistent five-star soldier, I never noticed the damage this kind of grouping caused. It divided our team. Bev encouraged us, the soldiers, to do whatever we could to inspire our teammates to work harder and perform better.

  We became menacing bullies to our teammates who weren’t meeting Bev’s standards.

  I knew I was completely under her spell and had sunk to a new low when I walked up to one of my teammates in the cafeteria and told her she was eating us out of a national championship. It was one of Bev’s favorite lines, and the moment it slipped from my lips, I knew it was wrong.

  But at seventeen years old, I was so immature and malleable that I didn’t stop. Like Bev, I wanted to be a champion, and her no-nonsense attitude seemed like the right way.

  Raasin and I were Bev’s favorites, and everyone knew it. We hung out in her office all day long. In December 2002, Bev was involved in a terrible car accident during Christmas break. She was thrown from an SUV and suffered severe spinal injuries that left her partially paralyzed. Bev coached the 2003 season from a hospital room, and Raasin and I were at her bedside almost every day after class.

  Nichole also had a good relationship with Bev, but it was different. Bev was good at getting in your head and making you believe you weren’t as good as you thought you were, that you needed her guidance to reach your full potential. She had the answers, the workouts, and the experience. It was her way or no way, and no one bought into that more than Nichole.

  Raasin and I, though, were her pawns. Always on a mission to get everyone in formation or else.

  By my sophomore year, I started to see the error of my ways. The girl who everyone bullied about eating too much had gained so much weight that she was about to lose her scholarship.

  I realized we might have been going about things the wrong way. Maybe we had made her so insecure, like so many others on the team, that we were driving her to overeat. I realized that I was as much a part of the problem as Bev was.

  I started to pull back. I started to stand up to Bev, and our dynamics changed drastically.

  In 2004, we were scheduled to host the National Championship meet at the Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin. We had one of the best teams in the country, and with home field advantage, we could already envision holding up the championship trophy.

  I had the fastest time in the nation in the 400; Raasin was favored to win the 400 hurdles; and Nichole was a top contender for the 100 hurdles. With the three of us leading the charge, we knew if we did our part, victory was ours.

  Well, everything that could go wrong did. We had the best time in the 4x100m relay, qualified easily for the finals, and were disqualified on the weirdest of technicalities. It was raining, and everyone else was using white tape as their markers on the track, but Bev gave us half-cut yellow tennis balls to use as our markers. We all thought it was legal but found out later it gave us an unfair advantage because our markings were less likely to move under the conditions.

  We were counting on those ten points, and like dominoes, we all just started crashing down.

  Raasin hit a hurdle in her race and finished fourth. I was third in the 400, and our team fell down—literally hit the track during the race—after we walked out in our never-before-seen, all-white full Nike bodysuits for the 4x400m relay. It was a nightmare, but there was one shining light. Nichole, my best friend, won the 100 hurdles title and broke the national record.

  As a standout in high school, she ran well in college but never won a national title. It was her senior year and her last chance. It was the best race of the night for the Lady Longhorns, and although I was super disappointed in my performance, I was so happy for Nichole. She had worked so hard and deserved to be a national champion. It was her moment.

  At the end of the meet after our team finished a disappointing third, Bev called Raasin, Nichole, and me over for a meeting. I just knew she was going to lay into Raasin and me, since we didn’t do what was expected of us. But Bev flipped the script. She manipulated the situation and did the unexpected. She found a way to take her anger out on Nichole. I’ll never forget her words. “And look at you, Nichole, walking around here like you did something. You ain’t do nothing. Who’d you beat? Lo-Lo Jones?” I was crushed. I couldn’t hold my tongue, which everyone did in Bev’s meetings, and I spoke up.

  “How could you say that? Nichole is the only one who did her part! That’s not cool, Bev. That’s not cool at all.” I got up and walked out of the room in disbelief that the leader of our team could be so cruel to the one person who deserved her praise.

  After the 2004 Olympics in Athens, I had the unique opportunity to forgo my collegiate eligibility at Texas and compete as a professional athlete with Nike as my sponsor. I was still planning to work with Bev as my coach. She insisted she would be able to train Raasin and me, along with her college team. During my first visit to the Nike campus in Portland, Oregon, as I was enjoying the best part of the trip—shopping in the employee store—I was actually looking for a gift for Bev when Mom called and told me that Bev had written her an email saying she did not want to continue being my coach. Bev wrote that she wanted to focus all her efforts on the Lady Longhorns.

  I was confused and hurt and had so many questions. I called Bev, against my mother’s will, and she answered my call as though she had no idea who was ringing her cell. “This is Beverly Kearney,” she said. This was a woman I had called daily for two years. Someone I confided in, trusted, and loved dearly. Had she already deleted my number? She sounded so cold and matter-of-fact. I could tell our relationship was over, whether or not I was ready for it.

  I was disappointed, but always knew my success in sport was not contingent on one person working with me or believing in me. I felt my success was already ordained, and all I had to do was keep working hard and believing in myself. I still had my core people supporting me. My family was always there, and Bruce Johnson was intent on working with me until the end of my career. All I needed now was a new coach.

  In Athens, I watched Jeremy Wariner win the 400-meter Olympic title while only just completing his freshman year at Baylor University. As a student of the sport, Dad knew Jeremy was coached by Clyde Hart, who had guided Michael Johnson to gold medals in 1996 and 2000, as well as to the world record.

  Coach Hart was universally respected as a master tactician and teacher of the 400. Of course, if I had to make a coaching change, I wanted him mentoring my budding career. There was just one problem: he had never coached an elite female to world-class or international success.

  After a phone call introduction, Dad and I drove the ninety minutes north on Interstate 35 to meet Coach Hart in Waco, where he was the longtime track and field coach at Baylor. I think something in me sparked Coach’s curiosity. He wanted to see if his proven philosophy would also apply in a female, and my reputation as a hard worker gave him confidence I would thrive in his training environment. We agreed to work together for one year and then evaluate the relationship. Coach
Hart likes to joke that after all thirteen years of my professional career, he’s still being evaluated on a trial basis. In reality, Coach Hart is one of my greatest teachers and the best mentor I could ask for in the sport of track and field.

  When I started my professional career under Coach Hart, training alongside his Baylor team, my eyes were opened to a new way of doing things. The men’s and women’s teams were combined; they encouraged each other and prayed every day before practice. They talked to other teams and really enjoyed the camaraderie of sports.

  I loved everything about my new environment except for one thing: after many of their team meetings they’d yell, “Beat the stinkin’ Longhorns!”

  I laughed. In my heart I always knew they might not beat the Longhorns in many events on the track, but in so many ways they were winning off the track. They showed genuine love for and support of one another. It was admirable, and I found it refreshing to be among peers who practiced in a structured but lighthearted environment marked by respect for all athletes.

  Although Bev and I never worked together again, I still consider my time at the University of Texas to be some of the best years of my life. I only spent two years in the track and field program before becoming a professional, but Bruce Johnson ended up being my strength coach and mentor and one of my very best friends. I met my future husband there, and Nichole, Raasin, and I are lifelong friends.

  The pressure to succeed can be intense, and I thank God for the amazing support I received from my parents, who were plugged into my progress throughout my college career. They bolstered me and allowed me to persevere in an atmosphere where many athletes are wounded.

  PUSH