Each person could find an event or distance that suited them. Track didn’t require specialized equipment. But when the family moved to Birmingham, Alabama, shortly after Althea was born, DeWitt surveyed the chronically underserved youth sports community and decided track and field was the best way to reach the largest number of kids. Her dad, DeWitt Thomas, was an avid tennis player who named his daughter to honor Althea Gibson, the first Black tennis player to win any Grand Slam championship and, later, the first to win Wimbledon. Thomas sometimes jokes that she was supposed to be a tennis prodigy like Serena and Venus Williams, the superstar sisters born around the same time she was. You always try to help the next little girl.” “But you always come back and you always try to bring someone with you. “The way my dad raised us was that we needed to do everything we could to maximize our potential and where we could go,” Thomas says. For Thomas, track and field is about a few seconds of speed and a lifetime of learning. And at Vanderbilt, she saw an opportunity to build something special not despite the university’s mission but because it offered a blueprint. From her earliest jobs, she saw the sport’s potential to expand horizons. She learned from her dad that the sport is also about family and belonging. For Thomas, Vanderbilt’s director of track and field and cross country, the sport is also rooted in community. Track is a stage for soloists-think the singular excellence of Wilma Rudolph or Allyson Felix. That last 100 was where I lived.”Īnd she never assumed she got to the finish line on her own. But the moment I moved to 400 hurdles in the summer, it was no competition. Against them, the 300 hurdles would be a photo finish. “I would come across really fast sprinters in high school who could run a really good 200 meters compared to me. “I lived for outworking other people and having that grit,” Thomas says. She loved it even more during summers, when she ran the full 400 meters with a local track club. She had to bargain with a high school coach to get to run the 300-meter hurdles for the first time (the race is so punishing that it is often shortened at the high school level): She could run the hurdles, the coach said, if she ran the 1,500 meters first. Growing up, Althea Thomas didn’t just accept that challenge. The race demands a unique combination of attributes: a sprinter’s speed, a distance runner’s endurance, and resolve and technical skill unlike any other event. Add 10 obstacles, each two and a half feet high, at regular intervals around the track. Yet even in that world, the 400-meter hurdle event stands apart. From the explosive intensity of 100 meters to the toil of 10,000 meters, track and field tests the limits of individual excellence. NCAA Guide for the College-Bound Student-Athlete Prospective student-athlete questionnaire Student-athlete mental health and performance Vanderbilt University Athletics - Official Athletics Website Open Menu
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