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 Obviously
one of the things that I have enjoyed doing while coaching is taki ng 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 l ater, 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 T eam 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 Regiona l
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
champion 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 littl e 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.
 I
often get asked how so many of my hurdlers seem to get so
fast, even if they start out as the slowest ones on the team. Well, the
answer is really simple, and I am sure coaches all over the world would
agree...it's not just all talent and coaching but just as importantly
dedication and hard work by the athlete, especially in the off season.
Which brings us to the concept of "hills". About ten years ago,
one of the greatest hurdle coaches of all time, Curtis Frye, Head Coach
at the University of South Carolina, let me in on a secret. "If you
really want your hurdlers to get faster, have them run hills in the
fall. It's that simple" So I took his advice to heart and was astonished
to see that it really worked. So this is what my hurdlers in the fall do
before indoor season starts, providing of course they are not in some
fall sport.
From September to the start of indoor track, in mid-November, we work
out twice a week, Mondays and Thursday, doing extremely strenuous
plyometric drills followed by sprinting as fast as they can up a
shallow hill. The jumps are a variety of standard jumps ,
increasing the number of repetitions every week. These are followed by
sprinting up the hill, which you can see in the thumbnailed photo to the
right. They start out on the flat, run for 30 meters to get to top speed
and then drive up the hill, running as fast as they can for as
long as they can. .The core concept for choosing a shallow hill is to
allow them to continue to sprint, under pressure. If the hill is too
steep, then that will not happen. Essentially this is weight training on
the run. Each run is followed by three minutes recovery and back up
again. It is so strenuous, and in the interest of avoiding too much
shock and muscle trauma at first, the first session is only 3 hills,
adding one hill every week, working towards 8 or more as the goal.
Running the hill is easily three or four times more strenuous than
running the same distance on the flat. And in the fall of 2008, I had
the privilege of coaching the toughest bunch of athletes ever do my
hills workout -hurdlers
Hannah Sayles,
Lexi Harvin,
Hillary Roark,
Whitney Stafford and sprinter Lauren Harris. These girls were simply
amazing in their dedication and commitment, and were tough enough
to end up running 12 hills in the last three sessions, far more than had
ever been done by any group I have coached.
All in all, in just over two
months, they logged an astonishing 10,000 meters running at full speed
up that hill! Add to that over 2000 plyometric jumps, and also
2,000 meters running backward up another really steep hill and it
all adds up to a masterpiece of hard work and dedication. And so Whitney,
Hannah, Hillary, Lexi and Lauren are now permanently enshrined in my
hurdle mythology as the toughest hills group I've ever coached. Gonna be some big PR's for these girls next spring!!
 Sometimes
the strangest things can happen, right in the middle of what we consider
"ordinary" life. In 2007, two hurdlers on the A.C. Reynolds team pulled
an unexpected 1-2 finish in both the 110M and 300M Hurdles in the
Northwest Conference Championship meet. The two hurdlers were Joel
Wadopian, wh om I had coached since his freshman year, and who I expected
to win the 300M Hurdles, and Sean Kennedy, who only started hurdling his
senior year. Sean had taken to the hurdles like a duck to water and to
my amazement, he finished right behind Joel in both of the championship
races. And here is where it gets strange....at the time I did not know
it but both Joel and Sean shared the exact same birthday -January 21st!
The odds against two guys having the same birthday, and both running
110M Hurdles for the first time ever in their senior years and then
going 1-2 in both the 110 and 300M hurdle races at the same meet, are
extremely high I would think. All in all, one of those marvelous little
coincidences that leave you wondering.
That's Joel on the left in an
earlier meet, and Sean in the black shirt and white hat, eclipsed by
Joel's right arm, cheering him on in the stands. These were two great
athletes, and also great persons.
 Saturday
May 16th, 2009 was a day I shall never forget. It was the 4A West
Regional Championship meet, which this year was being held at Reynolds
High School. And as it is every year, everything indicated that it was
going to be a real dog fight in the 300M hurdles. Only the top 4
hurdlers advance to the State Meet and incoming times indicated
that at least ten girls had 300M Hurdle times of 48 seconds or faster...
A loaded field to say the least. Finishing in the top 4 going to be
tough. Personally for me as a coach it was especially problematic since
I would have three of my hurdlers, Brittany Carroll of Harding
University and my two stars from Reynolds, Erin McKee and Whitney
Stafford, on the track that day. All three would have to be in the
top four.... Not a lot of room for error.
Brittany, whom I have helped on
and off for a couple of years now, was a certainty to advance since she
had by far the fastest incoming time and while Erin and Whitney both had
strong 48 second races under their belts, so did the other incoming
hurdlers. The real challenge lay in front of them, more so than for
Brittany. However, both Erin and Whitney had proven to me time and time
again what great focused and dedicated athletes they both were, and if
anyone could do it, I felt they could. Part of their strength I believe
came from their friendship and mutual support, something I had seen in
years past with other great duos I have coached. Cade Liverman and Kris
Fant in particular, two guys that had stunned everyone at the 2003
Regional Championship with their unbelievable 13.86 & 13.87 1-2 finish in
the 110M hurdles final.
And so technical preparation
began in earnest the two weeks before the meet. Erin and Whitney raced
side by side over the first 5 hurdles repeatedly, challenging themselves
to get to the 5th as fast as they could and to feel how that part of the
race needed to be run. Brittany also came to Asheville the weekend
before the meet and joined in these race simulations. All three girls
clearly understood how critical that first part of the race is, that in
the 300M hurdles you want to coming off the 5th hurdle in front of
everyone, and to make them chase you. In the last few days of
workouts leading up to the meet, all three were touching down off the
hurdle in the 26-28 range consistently so I felt they were prepared.
 And
on race day the hard work paid off. All three girls advanced to the
finals with fast times -Brittany 45.38, Whitney 47.20 and Erin 47.89 (3
PRs), and when the gun went off in the finals, the race was over
at the 5th hurdle. All three came off it far ahead of the rest of
the field and never looked back. They ended up going 1-2-3, with
Brittany running 45.55, Whitney 47.11 and Erin 48.20. An happy ending to
a drama that had been rehearsed over and over again the previous
weeks. Great work by a talented trio of superstars, all with bright
college futures in the hurdles -Erin at Cornell, Whitney at UNCA and
Brittany at the University of Pittsburg.
 In
the fall of 2010, A. C. Reynolds Sophomore Matt Johnson, one of the
hurdlers doing my fall "Hills" workout, took things to a new level. This
program consists of bi-weekly workouts of multiple plyometric jumps
(tuck jumps, frog hops and so on), repeat runs at top speed up an
inclined 60-meter hill with little recovery, followed by runs backwards
up an even steeper hill with even less recovery. Each workout takes
about an hour and a half, and and the number of repetitions are
increased at each session. It is arguably one of the hardest track and
field workouts around, just ask anyone who has tried it. Think of it as
weight training on the run....Those who survive this intense program
come out faster and stronger as a result, and that makes for faster more
explosive hurdling. This off-season program was not something I dreamed
up but was given to me by one of the greatest hurdles coaches in the
world, Curtis Frye of the University of South Carolina, and it works!
This
year, because of good weather, we were able to get in more workouts than
usual before the start of indoor track. I had a great group of hurdlers
this year running the program. To their credit, all of them stayed with
most of the workouts. These included Mario Swann, Mandy Baird, Miranda
Norlin, Leslie Frempong, her 6th grade sister Anu (Junior Olympics age
group hurdler) and former middle school champion freshman Mariah
Richardson, as well as Matt. Matt however, was able to make every single
session of the workouts and at the end racked up bigger numbers than had
ever been done before, and that includes the hills workouts done by
former superstar hurdlers Cade Liverman, Sophia Treakle, Erin Mckee,
Julie Osborne, Whitney Stafford, Joel Wadopian and Liza Schillo! And
that is one scary awesome list!! At the last session, Matt was up to 13
runs on the hill, one more than had ever been done before. In addition
to this, over the course of the two-month program, he ran a total of 140
hills -going forwards and backwards, and did over 2000 of the
plyometric jumps, a staggering number by anyone's standards.
 
Sometimes little things
happen that are so improbable they cause us to step back in amazement,
wondering how and why. This was the case for me on a beautiful spring
day in March, 2012. The AC Reynolds Girl's Track Team had competed in a
meet at North
Buncombe High School, and Leslie Frempong, my star senior hurdler, won
her first ever 100M hurdles race. It was a happy occasion for us both,
since over the years, even with steady improvement through hours and
hours of hard work, Leslie had never finished first. Lot of 2nd, 3rd and
4th place finishes but never #1 But on that Tuesday she did it with near
perfect technique, beating out 23 other hurdlers, and running a
big personal best as well.
Little did we know that at the same time, at a middle school meet just a
few miles away,, Anu, her younger sister and a 7th grader on the
Reynolds Middle School team, had just won her first ever 55M hurdles
race as well. Also running a personal best as well. At practice the next
day we all laughed about the strangeness and perfectness of it all. Two
sisters, running at the same time on different tracks, and both coming
in first in the hurdles for the first time ever! Perfect timing to
say the least!
On April 24, 2013, at the Mountain Athletic Conference Championship, AC
Reynolds Junior Mariah Richardson did something quite remarkable. She
won the 100M hurdles race (16.10 seconds, f.a.t), an amazingly fast time
for a 4-step hurdler. Coaches who know hurdles recognize that running
the 100M hurdles using a 4-step pattern is invariably much slower than
someone using the desired 3-step pattern -the 4-step hurdler has to run
a minimum of 10 additional steps with their stride pattern greatly
shortened. This usually places limits on just how fast they can run the
race. It is exceedingly rare for a high school girl to run anywhere near
16:00 seconds using a 4-step pattern, most of the time their races are
run between 20 and 17 seconds. On the other hand, for elite high school
girl hurdlers running the desired 3-step pattern, running 16
seconds is relatively easy to achieve. In all of my years of
coaching hurdles and watching hurdle races, the fastest time I had ever
seen for someone 4-stepping the women's 100M hurdles was 16.21 seconds,
and that was just once in 20 years. Mariah, by running 16.10, in
my experience, may have reached "the limits of what is possible" in
4-stepping the 100M hurdles race. Quite extraordinary from my
perspective.
How did it happen? The answer lay not only in Mariah's
great athletic ability and determination, but also with whom she had to
run against in this meet -rising super-star hurdler for T.C.
Roberson, Kendall Soule, who runs the hurdles using the desired 3-step
pattern. Kendall however at the time of this meet was just beginning to
master the 3-step pattern ,and both girls were both running about the
same times -mid to low 16 seconds. So the stage was set for an exciting
race! Mariah had also begun to 3-step the hurdles last year, but
had struggled somewhat this year, and had settled for the 4-step pattern
in the short hurdles, focusing instead on the 300M hurdles. Prior
to the meet, both she and I realized that trying to work on 3-stepping
would be fruitless if she wanted to be competitive with Kendall -there
was not enough time to master that pattern. Instead we
decided to focus on increasing Mariah's turnover using her usual 4-step
pattern, hoping that if she ran the race of her life she might prevail.
. The strategy worked, and Mariah was able to keep up with
Kendall the whole race, and ending up winning by .06 seconds! A
great race and without both girls challenging each other, I am convinced
Mariah's incredible 16.10 seconds would never have happened. A perfect
example of how close competition always brings out the strongest
performances. No records are ever set, nor historic races run, without
close competition. Mariah and Kendall's race was no exception, and both
girls ran personal bests. And when the dust had settled, a masterpiece
of a race had been run, and the limits of what is possible
clearly approached!
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