A Kind of Grace (20 page)

His perfectionist tendencies became a real sore spot for some of the girls. Mr. Fennoy had warned me before I left East St. Louis, “Leave your ego at the door and submit to the criticism. It will be constructive.”

But some of my teammates didn't feel that way. All of us had been superstars in high school and some of the others thought they didn't need to be told how to run a race anymore, even if the advice was from a coach. To prove his point to headstrong athletes, Bobby started videotaping practices, just like the football coaches were doing. After an exhausting afternoon of drills, his athletes had to come to the office to review the film with him. That meant listening to more preaching and more tirades. His voice reverberated through the hallway outside his office.

Along with discipline and proper technique, Bobby stressed mental preparation. One of his favorite expressions is, “Those who know
why
will always beat those who know
how.
” Here's how he explained it: “I can be on the track with you all day. But when it's time for the competition, all I can do is sit in the stadium. That's why I want you to know not only how to run this way, but why you're running this way. You have to be able to cope with any situation that occurs during a race. If you listen and internalize what I'm teaching you, the other guys will have to beat you to win—because I'm giving you the tools to make sure you won't beat yourselves.”

Bobby ended up paying his own way to Spokane. The experience changed my life. After the first day of competition at the U.S. Championships, I was in fourth place and I was starting to regain confidence. I'd never been a great hurdler because my technique was ragged. Hurdlers should step smoothly over the obstacles, not hop over them, the way I did. I also didn't high-jump well. I kept my head up and my legs pulled up near my chest as I fell over the bar, instead of lying back and allowing my body to flop over. But my shot put was okay and I had run a good 200 meters. Bobby and I went back to the hotel. The long jump would be the first event of the second day of the competition.

As I put my track shoes away in my hotel room and started to unwind, there was a knock at the door. It was Bobby. He was still wearing the clothes he'd worn all day at the track. “Come out into the hall with me for a minute and bring your spikes and your tennis shoes,” he said.

I didn't know what he had in mind as I followed him out into the corridor. We walked all the way to the end of the hall, to the foyer near the elevators.

“I want to work on your approach in the long jump out here,” he said as he pointed up the hallway. “I want to see if we can make you more consistent on the runway.”

That was music to my ears. All season long I lacked consistency. Confidence on the runway was the problem, just as it had been in high school when Mr. Fennoy asked Mr. Ward to work with me before the state meet in my sophomore year.

The long jump is a three-step process. First, you need a strong run down the path. Then you need to hit the board—a strip of wood at the end of the runway—with your plant foot. It results in good trajectory in the air. Finally, you need proper form and good body control in the air, extending your legs and arms fully, to stay in the air as long as possible.

The key to a good run for me is rhythm. Runways vary in length but they average about 160 feet. After I pick the right starting point, I like to start off at moderate speed and at about 30 feet away from the board, accelerate as fast as I can, while generating as much power as possible by bringing my knees up as I run. Then I want to plant my foot as close to the board as I can without going past it and fouling. If any part of my foot is over the board when I take off, the jump is declared a foul and doesn't count.

If I know I'm running the right speed, I can settle into a rhythm down the runway and concentrate on my launch and my form in the air. If I'm insecure coming down the runway, I start slowing down at the end to look for the board, and that spells disaster. That had been my problem all year. At the end of the collegiate season one track and field writer had analyzed my jumping and the reasons why I struggled during the long-jump competition at the collegiate national championships. The writer said: “If she ever finds the board, she'll win.”

Bobby put a strip of tape on one end of the hallway, then pulled out his metal measuring tape, extended it to 127 feet, and put another tape strip at that spot, placing my shoes on each side of it, to mark where the eight-inch board would be. I put on my spikes and ran down the hallway just as fast as I would during competition, while Bobby timed me with his stopwatch. “Do it again,” he said after the first try. “This time move up a foot.”

Eventually, we figured out that I needed to run 127 feet in 4.64 seconds or better, or about 19 miles an hour. That speed and that time would give me a jump of 23 feet, if I could hold myself in the air for one second.

It was a good thing the hotel room doors opened toward the inside. Otherwise, I could have gotten seriously hurt if a door opened in front of me as I was flying down the hallway. We kept our ears opened to hear doors unlocking so that we could stop when someone came out of their rooms or got off the elevator. When they did, they shot puzzled looks at us. Several people heard the footsteps and stuck their heads out of the doors to see what was going on.

What was going on was the development of a drill that I would use for the rest of my career to train for the long jump. In practice, we work on getting the timing and speed right. Then, just before the competition begins, I place some kind of mark on the side of the runway—a track shoe, a piece of colored tape or a shiny metal stake—at the precise spot from which I want to start and another where I want to speed up. That way, I don't have to worry about hitting the board at the end, because I do it automatically. Bobby continues to time every run during competition and helps me adjust. Holding his thumb and index finger apart and pointing either left or right, he signals how far forward or back I need to move at the start to jump farther next time.

We worked for forty-five minutes in the hotel hallway that night. “You'll do fine tomorrow,” he assured me as we walked back down the corridor to my room after finishing. “Just try not to think so much during the run and stop putting pressure on yourself.”

“Okay,” I said, smiling. “Thanks for the help.”

“You have to stop thinking that you have to be the best long jumper in the heptathlon,” he said. “Remember, it's just one of the seven events. You can't take it so personally. It's making you tighten up and that's just adding to your problems.”

After just one day with me, Bobby had put his finger on both my technical and mental problem with the long jump. No one had ever picked up on how I felt about the event, or considered whether those feelings might be hampering my performance. I'm not even sure I had realized it myself. But as soon as Bobby said it, I knew he was absolutely right. I felt so much more secure with him than I had with my assigned coach. He'd locked into my mind-set. For the first time all season someone from the coaching staff was on the same wavelength with me.

Bobby also encouraged me, trying to boost my flagging confidence. “You have a lot of talent,” he said.

My face lit up. “You think so?”

“I've never seen an athlete as gifted as you,” Bobby said. “You just have to be patient. I'm willing to work with you if you're willing to work with me.”

“Sure! That would be great!” I said. His words gave me new life.

The one thing every athlete wants and needs is somebody who's as motivated and committed as she is. Someone who's willing to work hard along with her.

That was the wonderful thing about Mr. Fennoy. He recognized my talent and honed it. He could see how eager I was to improve and he helped me to do it by pushing me in practice. That's why I was so successful in high school. I had come to UCLA hoping to have the same kind of relationship with my coach, but instead, Bobby was taking on the role Mr. Fennoy had played. Like me, Bobby was always striving to be the best. He was as excited as I was by the challenge of helping me improve. I walked into my hotel room that night feeling like I'd finally found a kindred spirit.

I finished second at the U.S. Championships in the heptathlon, my best performance all season. The 5,827 points I scored in the seven events were more points than any UCLA athlete had ever amassed in the event, and would have been high enough to beat Patsy Walker at the college championships that year.

When he returned to UCLA, Bobby asked for and received permission to coach me full-time. Beginning in the fall of 1981, we spent a lot of time together. He was the first person I saw every morning and one of the last people I saw every night. During basketball season, I couldn't work out with the track team. But Bobby asked me to come out to the track at 6:00
A.M.
to work on technique before my first class at 8:00. I'd bring him breakfast and we'd work out. After basketball season was over, I'd finish classes and tutoring, pick up lunch for us and spend most of the afternoon at the track, then go back to my room or to study hall at night.

Spending so much time with Bobby made me increasingly comfortable with him. Each evening after practice he drove me from Westwood to my apartment in Culver City. During the twenty-minute drive, I found myself talking to him about things I wouldn't dare tell other people. All sorts of thoughts and emotions, from the goals I had set for myself in track and field, to my ups and downs with my boyfriend.

He opened up to me, too, telling me about his girlfriend problems. He was dating a woman at the time who didn't think track was important and was jealous of the fact that he spent so much time with other women—namely Florence, Jeanette, Alice and me. He said she hated it when girls from the team came home with him to have dinner or watch videotapes of practice. He was constantly arguing with her about it. It seemed we had similar problems. And, it seemed, the reasons were the same. Like me, his devotion to athletics superseded everything else in his life. Whenever he talked about ambition, he repeated the same line. “A person shouldn't let personal setbacks destroy his dreams,” he said.

I agreed with him.

Bobby said he knew I would become successful, but hoped I wouldn't be spoiled by it. “Your status is going to change,” he said. “Everyone will become your friend, you'll be showered with compliments. The key to remaining on top will be not letting any of the hoopla change you or your basic values.” I told him he didn't have to worry about that. If I was lucky enough to find success, my attitude wouldn't change.

The more time we spent together and talked about our professional and personal goals, the more it seemed that we were soul mates. Still, as far as I was concerned, the relationship was nothing more than that of athlete and coach. I considered Bobby compassionate and committed. But it was all business. It was the same kind of dedication and support Mr. Fennoy had given me in junior high and high school. If Bobby was sizing me up as a potential mate, he didn't send any overt signals.

I thought of him as an authority figure, just as I had Mr. Fennoy. The fact that he was eight years older than me also kept me from thinking of him as a potential boyfriend. He seemed too old for me. Even when we had those talks in the car or on the track, I called him “Mr. Kersee” and said “Yessir” when I answered him. It drove him crazy. He said it made him feel old.

Even after my feelings started to change toward him I wouldn't allow myself to think of him as a possible boyfriend while I was at UCLA. For one thing, I didn't know how he felt about me and I wanted to protect myself from rejection. Also, I didn't want to damage our on-track relationship. The last thing I wanted was for him to feel uncomfortable about coaching me because I had feelings for him that he didn't share. Most important, dating a coach was taboo in my book. It was like dating a professor. I also didn't want to start a scandal or engender bad feelings among team members by dating the coach. I knew it would cause trouble if the other athletes thought Bobby was favoring me because we were involved romantically. I also knew that relationships between coaches and athletes were considered unethical and that getting involved with Bobby could jeopardize his job. Therefore, I never brought up the subject with him or gave him the impression that I felt more for him than professional respect and admiration.

16

Back on Track

W
ith Bobby coaching me, I was happy to be competing in track and field again. I looked forward to practice each day. I felt like my old self.

I won the 1982 NCAA heptathlon competition as a sophomore, scoring 6,099 points and setting an NCAA record. I repeated as champion in 1983, with a total of 6,365 points, another NCAA record.

Having put my athletic career back on track and confronted my grief over my mother's death, I was ready to tackle my anger toward my father. Blaming him for Momma's death was wrong. Disrespecting him was wrong, too. He wasn't perfect in my eyes; but he was the only father I had. I'd already lost one parent. I didn't want to shut the other one out of my life permanently. So, while I was home for the summer after my sophomore year, I spent time with Daddy, talking about what we'd been through. We sat on the living room sofa at the house. He didn't apologize for anything he'd done. And I didn't excuse his behavior. Like two peace negotiators, we decided to focus on the things we agreed on. “What's past is over,” I said. “The bottom line is, we're family and we need to stick together.”

He agreed. “I support everything you're doing at UCLA and I'm proud of you. But I'm the parent and you can't tell me how to live my life,” he said.

Gradually, the gulf between us narrowed and we were able to peacefully coexist.

By 1983, by junior year, I was focused on the upcoming Olympics. My leg muscles were rock hard, thanks to Bobby's running drills. But my overall health was only fair. For about a year, I'd endured chronic respiratory problems. I had one cold and bronchial infection after another. The condition flared up whenever I trained hard. First came the shortness of breath—a couple of times, my chest tightened up and I started wheezing as I strained to catch my breath. But after resting for a few minutes, the trouble subsided and I was fine.