A Kind of Grace (9 page)

There has been within me a driving force to be the best I could be, to run faster, jump higher, leap farther for as long as I can remember. When I started long jumping, nothing was better than the feeling of flying farther and farther down the pit and watching my coach's tape measure get longer and longer as he measured my jumps. When I first started leaping, I jumped 15 feet routinely. But with coaching and practice, I improved steadily. I calculated that I gained almost a foot in distance each year.

I got so motivated by my progress, I started to daydream about jumping farther and farther. When I was fourteen, my personal best was 17′ 1¾″. After practice one day, I sat down and plotted just how far I might go. I figured that if I was jumping 17 feet at age fourteen and I was adding a foot in distance each year, I should be jumping 18 feet at age fifteen. At sixteen, I would jump 19 or 20 feet. And by the time I was nineteen, I saw myself jumping 23, or maybe even 24 feet! Those projections became my targets.

It sounded crazy, but I was serious. Mr. Fennoy had taught me to believe in myself. I was young and enthusiastic, and I just didn't think there were any limits to what my body could do if I kept working hard. Although I learned differently as I got older, I never lost that youthful optimism and determination.

I began competing in the pentathlon at age fourteen. It wasn't something that was part of any grand plan. It was an afterthought. But in retrospect it made perfect sense. Mr. Fennoy had me competing in a slew of individual events—sprints, hurdles, middle distances and long jump—and said I might as well compete in the one that put them all together. The pentathlon consisted of five events: the 100-meter hurdles, the high jump, the long jump, the shot put and the 800 meters. I wasn't good at some of them and I didn't like others. But I didn't complain or refuse to try.

I could handle the long jump, shot put and 800 meters. And though my hurdling was ragged, I knew I could run fast. So I ran fast and hopped over them. It wasn't the proper technique, but it worked. I also didn't know if I could high-jump; but I knew I could jump high. After a three-step run up to the bar, I would plant my left foot, take a big jump and—while keeping my legs bent and my head up almost like a baby in the fetal position—hurl myself up over the bar. My rhythm was simple: one, two, three, launch, jump.

The pentathlon wasn't contested at high school meets in Illinois. So I only competed in it during summer AAU competitions. Athletes in multi-events compile points based on the results of each event. The points are awarded based on how the athlete performs in each event compared to an arbitrary standard established by the judges. The competitor with the highest total score after the last event wins.

I didn't know exactly what the running and jumping I was doing on the track could lead to until I watched Bruce Jenner win a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. His performance was inspiring. I hadn't yet made a connection between what I was doing and the “real” Olympic Games. After watching the Montreal Games on TV, I could relate my training with Mr. Fennoy at Lincoln Park to something bigger and better. I realized that athletics might take me somewhere. Also, a part of me was still hoping to be discovered and get on TV!

“They're doing the same things I do,” I told Al while sitting on the porch one day after the Olympics ended. “I'm going to try for the Olympic team. I want to be on TV.”

I announced my plans to Mr. Fennoy after our next practice. “You think I could get to the real Olympics?” I asked.

“Let's try and see,” he said.

My training for the individual events during the school year helped my performance in the pentathlon. Right off the bat, the results were encouraging. A year after I first tried the pentathlon, I qualified for the AAU Junior Olympics.

My Railers teammate Deborah Thurston also was a pentathlete. I usually finished ahead of her in competition. But by the summer of 1977, when I was fifteen, we both were among the best in the nation, on our way to the AAU Junior Olympics. The meet was held in Yakima, Washington, about as far from East St. Louis as you could go and still be in the continental United States.

To raise the $5,000 for the trip, we held sock hops, bake sales, car washes, and went door-to-door soliciting contributions. It was discouraging at times. A lot of people wanted to see us do well and happily put big bills in the envelope when Deborah and I knocked on their doors and explained why we needed a contribution. But others didn't. One man said we were wasting our time. As we stood there, shocked and insulted, he told us he didn't think athletics was important and didn't see how it could lead to anything worthwhile. We turned on our heels and walked away, grumbling about how mean people could be.

Despite it all, we raised enough money to go to Yakima. Mr. Fennoy had to attend another meet, so Coach Arlander Hampton went with us. At the St. Louis airport, we met Bill Cosby. We told him it was our first time flying and he just laughed. It was unreal. He talked to us for a long time. He was so nice to spend so much time with us. Seven years later, after the 1984 Olympics, I met him again and, to my surprise, he remembered that airport meeting. We've been good friends ever since.

In Yakima, we stayed at a hotel that had an indoor pool. It was the first time I'd seen one and I was dying to jump in. But our coaches never let us swim until after a meet was over. They said the chlorine might drain our bodies. Also, they wanted us to take care of the business at hand and remain focused. “First things first,” Mr. Fennoy always said.

Deborah was good in the high jump and 800 meters, but I was faster, and a better long jumper. I usually built up a lot of points in the long jump and 100-meter hurdles and was far ahead by the time we got to the 800, the last event and her best. So in the past I never really had to run hard in the 800. But in Yakima, I didn't hurdle well and my high jump was off. So although I beat her in long jump, we were close in points, because we ran close in the hurdles and put the shot about the same distance.

It came down to 800 meters, the event I dreaded. It's two laps around the track at a pretty fast pace and it always wore me out. Deborah was an expert distance runner. She was rail thin and seemed to have lungs made of steel and legs made of rubber. She just never got tired. On top of all that, I was already pretty worn out. We'd done all the events in one day with a break in the middle, instead of doing them over two days as we did at most meets. Coach Hampton knew that when he sat the two of us down during the break. He explained that by his calculations, Deborah would probably win. My best 800 time was around 2 minutes and 26 seconds. Deborah's was 2:19. He figured I had to run 2:19 to beat her, which I had never come close to doing before.

It was a challenge. But I wanted to win badly. It came down to me either running 2:26 like I usually did, or going for it. I was going for it. As we walked back to the track after lunch, I told Deborah, “I'm gonna beat you. I don't care what Coach says.” I meant every word.

After one lap, I felt good. Still no problem along the backstretch. As I made the final turn and headed for the finish line, I was in the lead, but Deborah was at my heels. I held on and finished first. She crossed the line right behind me. I knew I was under 2:20; I could feel it. In fact, I had run 2:19.7 exactly—my lifetime best. The gold medal was mine. Not only had I won, I scored a total of 3,613 points and set a national age group record. I was elated and felt like jumping for joy. But I also felt bad that my teammate had finished second, with 3,404 points. I knew she was disappointed. I had the urge to apologize for winning. But I caught myself before I did. There was nothing to apologize for, I realized. It was all a part of competition.

I felt a kind of high. I'd proven that I could win if I wanted it badly enough. I knew Deborah should have beaten me. The 800 was her specialty. But I'd won because I wanted it more than she did. That win showed me that I could not only compete with the best athletes in the country, I could
will
myself to win.
Sports Illustrated
ran my picture along with a summary of my performance and the record in its “Faces in the Crowd” section. Then the East St. Louis paper,
The Monitor,
ran a story about the
SI
story. I tried to keep it all in perspective.

8

Championship Seasons

O
ur practice sessions in junior and senior high were prime examples of Mr. Fennoy's philosophy of making maximum use of minimal resources. After school the boys and girls teams jogged to Lincoln Park's irregular-shaped track and makeshift long-jump pit. The track was a 36-inch-wide strip of black cinders sprinkled amid the rest of the dirt and grass. We called it the bridle path because that's what it looked like. We ran over, around and through the potholes, rocks, glass and tree limbs that littered the track. We dodged line drives hit into the outfield during baseball games being played while we ran. We also had to keep an eye on the discus throwers and shot putters working on the cement slab in the center of the field. Each day after school we ran around and around that track at the park. After practice, we jogged another two or three miles around the neighborhood to complete our workout.

In winter, when it was too cold to practice outside, we trained inside the Lincoln High building. Every afternoon after school and at 9:00 every Saturday morning, the team of twenty-five girls split into groups on the two floors and ran along the brown concrete corridors. When it was time for hurdling drills, Mr. Fennoy set up hurdles in the center of the hallway on the second floor, and put us through our paces. We sprinted and leaped past the doors to the math and science classrooms. We ran to the end of the hall, turned around and repeated the drill in the opposite direction.

On the first floor, we ran the 440 much like outside, the only variation being the scenery. Instead of ball players and motorists, we ran past the trophy case, lockers, bulletin boards and classrooms before circling through the auditorium at the end of the hall and heading back toward the trophy case at the other end. The hallways were about 110 meters long, so two trips through the auditorium were roughly equivalent to 440 yards. Mr. Fennoy stood along the hall eyeing his stopwatch as we passed, hollering out the time. We had to run ten of those 440s without stopping, each one in less than 63 seconds. I was also on the mile relay team. Those drills began as soon as the 440 work ended. Up and down, up and down. Again and again and again for an hour.

The running drills, exhausting as they were, eventually paid off. In 1977, between the ninth and tenth grade, I developed booster rockets and cut an astonishing four seconds off my 440 time. I surged to the front of the pack in practice heats. By the time we entered Lincoln High as tenth-graders, I was the fastest 440 runner on the team. The last was—at long last—first.

It was like an overnight miracle. One day I was a tortoise, the next, a hare. Some might attribute my transformation to the laws of heredity, the inevitable development of fast-twitch muscle fibers that were part of my genetic makeup as the daughter of a former sprint hurdler. But I think it was my reward for all those hours of work on the bridle path, the neighborhood sidewalks and the school-house corridors.

Our home track meets were held at Parsons Field, a stadium owned by the city school district that sat fifteen minutes away from my neighborhood and the high school. The Parsons Field track was by no means plush, but compared to the park's bridle path and the school's cement floors, its red cinders felt like cotton when we raced there.

The East St. Louis Relays were held there over a spring weekend each year. Everyone in the city anticipated them because of the athletic talent on display. All of the schools in the area competed—the three elementary schools, four junior high schools and the three high schools. Spectators crammed into the galvanized-steel-covered stadium, which looked just like the one in that famous scene with Glenn Close in the movie
The Natural.
The overflow spilled out into the adjacent uncovered stands, then down along the fence line, all around the track, and into the portable bleachers on the opposite side of the field.

The meet was held in late April, and the weather was always extreme, either searing heat or pouring rain. But the crowd was always huge and enthusiastic. Even in downpours, the fans sat and stood in the open air to watch the competition. Rivalries were intense and occasionally fights broke out between the Lincoln and Eastside factions. The aroma of cooking hot dogs, popping corn and spinning cotton candy wafted onto the field during those meets, testing my resolve not to eat junk food.

As we ran, particularly in sprint events, the cinders kicked up and created clouds of dust in our wake. By the end of the day, the dust and dirt pellets were in our afros and cornrows, under our fingernails and in our eyes and mouths. When we sweated, the heat baked the dirt into our pores. Afterward, I had to scrub hard in the shower to get rid of the gritty feeling. When it rained, our feet sank into the ground as we ran. By the end of the meet, our feet and ankles were covered by the stuff. And our shorts and jerseys and the backs of our legs were splattered with little reddish brown dots, marking the places where the muddy cinders landed after shooting off our spikes.

An announcer in the matchbox-sized press box on the roof kept everyone abreast of names, times, standings and records. Whenever I did something noteworthy, the crowd cheered and applauded. But above the cheers could be heard a baritoned roar: “Jaaaaaaaackieeeeeeee!” It was Daddy. He screamed out my name whenever I came to the starting blocks, as I rounded the turn for the finish and after I landed in the long-jump pit. It made me cringe with embarrassment. I know he was proud and excited; but his cheers drew more attention to me, which I hated. Preferring to be low-key, I wanted my performances to speak for themselves. But that was impossible with Daddy shouting out my name all afternoon. I asked my mother to tell him to stay home. But he hardly ever missed a meet or a basketball game.