Over the years that I have been coaching hurdles, there have been a number of hurdle races,  performances and other connected with hurdling that have happened, which by their very nature were so unusual or extraordinary, I have decided to call them masterpieces. Here they are!  I am sure more will come and I'll add them as they do.

Erin In The Sky With Hurdles
1-2-3-4-5 At Appalachian State
Showdown In Charlotte
Another 1/100's Of A Second Championship Race!
Cade Liverman -#1 In America
The Art of Hurdling
Shattering The Record At The Volunteer Classic
#3 NC Top 25 All-Time List 300M Hurdles

Obviously one of the things that I have enjoyed doing while coaching is taking photographs of hurdlers in action. In 1998, while coaching hurdles for the A.C. Reynolds Middle School track team, I took a photograph of one of my middle school hurdlers, Erin Milam, practicing hurdling. Since it was a rather good shot of  her going over a hurdler from the side (Erin had superb hurdling form) I submitted it to a hurdles website which was requesting photos of hurdlers, and it ended up online in one their photo galleries. Three years later, in 2001,  I received a phone call from an advertising agency in California that wanted permission to use this photograph in an  advertisement that would go in major aerospace publications. The ad was one that at that time was promoting a consortium of companies that were building SBIRS, the Space Based Infrared System -an early warning space based defense system that was aimed at protecting America from missile attack. The ad company was also willing to pay Erin and myself both $500 for use of the photograph! Needless to say, we both immediately agreed that it was a great idea! So, in April 2001, Erin appeared, $500 richer, hurdling over some satellites, about 100 miles above Earth, in a two-page color spreads in Aviation Week and Defense Weekly!
 

In the summer of 2001, the Asheville Lightning Track and Field Team competed in the Junior Olympics State Championship meet  at Appalachian State University in Boone. That summer, I had five girls in the Midget Girls division (ages 11-12) that were running  the 80M hurdles, Courtney Walker, Corey Williams, Rebecca MacNair, Sophia Treakle and Lillian Williams (left to right in the photograph). All five girls made it to the finals and to the astonishment of everyone, myself included, they finished one thru five in the that race! This not only got them medals and ribbons, but all five, because of their top-five finish, got to advance to the Regional Championship Meet.

The order of finish was Corey Williams (1st), Courtney Walker (2nd), Lillian Williams (3rd), Sophia Treakle (4th) and Rebecca MacNair (5th). It was great seeing the smiling faces on the girls as the  crowd cheered for them after the race, and not to be left out, as I was walking in the stands to get to the finish line area to congratulate the girls, I got an standing ovation and high-fives from some of the other track coaches that were there. It was a great moment for us all. 
 

In the spring of 2003, I had the good fortune of coaching at Reynolds both Cade Liverman and Kris Fant, two of the greatest high school hurdlers ever to come out of the state of North Carolina. Both guys, best of friends, were virtually unbeatable that year in both the 110 and 300M hurdles, and were ranked first and second in the 110M hurdles in the state. As we got ready for the 4A Regional Championship meet, which was to be held  at Vance High School in Charlotte, a newspaper article appeared in The Charlotte Observer all about the coming showdown in the 110M hurdles at the meet, since the top six ranked hurdlers in the state would all be there, and only four could advance to the state meet. Cade and Kris were ranked #1 and 2, and they were the focus of attention, with Brandon Stokes of Butler High School,  another great hurdler and  ranked #3 in the state running fast enough to pull off an upset. The boy's 110 hurdles race was THE race of the meet...And sure enough, the day of the meet, the trash talking began from some of the Charlotte athletes, as if two guys from the mountains couldn't hang with the hurdlers from the big city... Needless to say, this just pissed Cade and Kris off and those guys got focused like I never saw them do before (and keep in mind these were really serious, "don't mess with me", athletes to begin with). It was high drama, and at that moment, I knew the outcome.... in spite of what some of the coaches and hurdlers in Charlotte  were predicting.. There wasn't a high school hurdler on the planet that could have beaten those two that day. And sure enough, the race was over at the first hurdle... Both Cade and Kris went side by side the whole race, coming off each hurdler with the same lead leg, running lock step the entire race. At the finish, Kris beat Cade by only 1/100th of a second and they finished with the  fastest times yet for the state in the 110's -13.86 and 13.87 seconds.  And the frosting on the cake was the  huge full color photograph of Cade and Kris that appeared the next day in the sports section of the Charlotte newspaper, both of them coming off the last hurdle in that great race.  Supremely confident, Kris then went on to win the state title, while Cade got silver.

And the following year, after Kris had graduated, Cade came back and also won the state championship in the 110M Hurdles, once again beating Stokes who returned that year.
 

One of the greatest hurdle races I ever saw was the 300M hurdles at the Conference Championship meet in 2005 at Watauga High School, in Boone North Carolina. I had two great 300M hurdlers that year, Julie Osborne and Sarah Owenby. Throughout the season they ended up going 1-2 in virtually every 300M hurdle race, with Sarah winning one meet and Julie the next.

In almost a repeat of Cade and Kris's finish in Charlotte two years before, Sarah beat Julie to the finish line in only 1/100th of  second! A great race for two great hurdlers, both good friends. Sarah won the gold medal with a time of 49.07 sec. and Julie ran 49.08 right behind her.

It's not often that an athlete can claim to be #1 in America, irregardless of the sport or competition level. But for a few days, Cade Liverman, by winning the 55M hurdles race at the Eastern State Challenge at Chapel Hill , earned that distinction. Cade had a perfect start, ran a flawless race and ending up setting the meet record in 7.34 seconds and on that day became the #1 ranked high school boy hurdler in America.  But, like everything else in life, this too passed. A few days later, a hurdler in Michigan ran a race that was 2/100th of a second faster and Cade got bumped to the #2 ranking in the country, a place where he stayed for the 2004 season. Still, for a few days in the winter of 2004 Cade stood on the top of the mountain and nothing can ever change that. He had an extraordinary high school career at AC Reynolds as a hurdler, with four state titles to his name, two in the 55M hurdles in the 2003 and 2004 indoor season, and both the 110 and 300M Hurdles in the 2004 outdoor season.

 

If this website has a logo, it is one that was designed by some former hurdlers of mine. In 2003, Liza Schillo, Meghan Stevens and Michelle Peterson approached me about doing a t-shirt for the girl hurdlers on the A.C. Reynolds Track team. Liza had come up with a really cool design of a girl hurdling (Meghan had added the spikes) that is shown to the left. It sounded like a fun  idea so I went ahead and had some shirts printed up with the  words "Reynolds Hurdlers" in bold letters printed on the front, Liza's little logo on the sleeve and a whole bunch of crazy sayings about life in the world of track and field that the girl's had come up with on the back, along with names of the hurdlers on the team. The shirt was a great hit and  there are probably a few of them still floating around. By now, they would collector's items I would think.

Chapter two in the evolution of this particular design was my decision to use it as a  logo on my cap and so I went ahead, found a place that did custom caps and stuck it on the front. The cap has turned out to be a conversation starter, and over the years, at various meets I have had a number of other hurdles coaches, including  Curtis Frye (the former head sprints coach for our Olympic team), ask me where they could get one! I also put in on some coaches shirts and it seems to fit that situation also.

However, the last landing place of this little hurdler is on a far more perennial location than a cap or a shirt -it now resides permanently on the inside ankle of my left leg, thanks to the artists at Empire Tattoos in downtown Asheville. Getting a hurdler design as a tattoo might seem a bit extreme but then again I seem to be a little over the edge in my passion for coaching hurdles (witness this website) so why not. Most people think it is a Chinese hieroglyph since it is turned sideways on my leg and that's ok. Those that ask what it is just give me an opportunity to talk about coaching hurdles!

Not sure where the next stop for this great little design will be... Maybe a billboard on  Interstate 40 coming into the mountains from the Piedmont, or perhaps even better, scratched out monumentally  in the Mohave Desert like those mysterious ancient mile-long figures found in the Nazca Desert in Peru which can only be seen from the air! One of these Nazca  carvings can be seen in the photo shown above. It is of a monkey and it stretches for many miles in the desert!

In 2004, I took a Hurdle Shuttle Relay team composed of Juliana Haile, Julie Osborne, Sarah Owenby and Vonda Harrison to the Volunteer Classic, a huge outdoor track meet at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. All four girls could  three-step, with Julie, Sarah and Vonda running the 100 hurdles in the mid 15 second range, and Juliana, a freshman, running in the mid 17's. To everyone's surprise, they won the meet just a few tenths of a second off the record! At that point, since all four girls were returning next year, THE mission was clear! Take down the meet record! And in 2005, they did. The record had stood for over 15 years and it was now Reynolds'. They shattered it by over four seconds running  1:05.04, a time that put them among the top ten girl's high school teams in the country. Juliana ran the first leg, Vonda the second, Sarah the third and Julie was the closer.

As a fascinating footnote to all of this, in 2007, a team from the Girl's Preparatory School in Tennessee, also won the Hurdle Shuttle Relay at this meet, in exactly the same time -1:05.04 seconds. So right now, both teams share the record. An improbable occurrence, to say the least. Magic on the track...

At the 3A State Meet, on Friday May 16th, 2008, Sophia Treakle, ran one of the most perfectly executed 300M hurdle races I have ever seen, and ended up not only with a state title and a state record but also with another unique distinction.

A really fast 300M hurdles race has to have a supremely fast start, as well as hitting the first hurdle with the desired lead leg, usually the "A" or dominant leg. Since she was concerned about this happening, she and I had spent time before the meet working on her run in to the first hurdle  With the help of two of my star A.C. Reynolds hurdlers Erin McKee and Whitney Stafford challenging her in practice runs, she had been able to consistently  touchdown off the first hurdle in 6.5 to 6.8 seconds. We knew that if she nailed the start that fast, then once the race got rolling, with her great conditioning, near flawless hurdling and fierce determination, she would not only be tough to beat but the record could fall. 

And in the finals, she roared out of the blocks, hit the first hurdle perfectly in 6.6 seconds and never looked back. This superior start had to have happened, since another former 300M hurdle champion was also running in the race, Manika Gamble of Jacksonville High School.  Manika, a senior, had beaten Sophia in the same race in 2006 running 44.63, when Sophia was a freshman, and it goes without saying that Manika more than likely had come to this race confident because of that fact, even though two years had passed and the two girls had not raced each other since that time.

Both hurdlers were together virtually side by side coming off the curve down the home stretch, with Sophia maintaining a slight lead. It was a classic, incredibly exciting finish! But at the 8th hurdle, the race was definitively settled once and for all. Sophia hit it instinctively, and flawlessly, while Manika faltering slightly. In a flash, Sophia soared across the finish line in an astonishing  time of 43.15 seconds, shattering the former state record of 43.70. The race was so fast that both girls had beaten the  record, with Manika coming in at 43.66. But it was Sophia's day, and the record and title were hers, having run a perfect race with no mistakes. The kind of race where records fall...

And later that day, I checked the NC Prep Track Top-25 List (www.ncpreptrack.com) and to my astonishment found out that her time was so fast it had moved her up on the All-Time NC Top 25 List in the Women's 300M Hurdles from #25 to #3, right behind the great former Olympic 400M hurdler Brenda Taylor, who had run for Watauga High School in the late 1990's.