The Fast Track

Published by Athletes Quarterly on April 1, 2015

How did you get started in track in field?
I was always the fastest kid, ever since I was six years old. I played baseball, football and basketball. I didn’t start running track until I was a junior in high school. The football coach said the school needed somebody to run the 400 meters. He was like, “Yeah, only real men run the 400!” So I signed up and I started winning, even though I hadn’t trained much for it. 

When did it become just track and field for you?
Really, that junior year of high school. I really loved baseball. That’s the sport I started with. It’s the sport my older brother always played. The Tidewater Tides played near us, so we grew up watching baseball a lot. But I just was good at track. It was the sport that I felt that if I did the work, the sky was the limit. My senior year, I won everything from the state championship, to nationals, junior nationals; I won all there was to win. I was the number one person in the world in my age group, and it was only my second year doing it. I was also getting some looks in football, but we didn’t have a good team. You need to have that passion. Since the team wasn’t good, it took the passion away a little bit.

How soon did you realize it could be a career?
Pretty quickly. I turned pro after my first semester of college at East Carolina. I ran at the Tyson Invitational in Arkansas, and I was the only collegiate athlete in the race. Everyone else was running for Nike or Puma or whatever. And I won the race at 18 years old. The guy from Nike came up to me and said, “Look, you just beat everyone that we are paying. How about we pay your college tuition and you turn pro and run for us.”