A Kind of Grace

by Jackie Joyner-Kersee

  I seethed all weekend about the fact that I wasn't competing. What kind of coaches were these? Why have an athlete on the team if you don't enter her in one of the biggest competitions of the year? I could barely stand it, I was so frustrated. Jeanette Bolden was my roommate in Austin and she listened to me complain about it without saying a word. It was pretty funny when I think about it now. We roomed together regularly on the road and became great friends. But that week in Texas we were still strangers. Anyone listening to me carry on, unloading my feelings that way, would have thought I'd known her all my life. I can just imagine what she was saying about me to herself: “Boy, this girl sure can talk. I don't know how good she is, but she certainly thinks she's the best.”

  After losing a heptathlon competition early in the season to Patsy Walker, who'd been at UCLA but had transferred to the University of Houston, I asked my coach for help. He looked at me and said, matter-of-factly, “It doesn't matter what you do, there's no way you're going to beat Patsy Walker.”

  I was dumbstruck. And livid. He'd hit a raw nerve. First of all, I couldn't believe a coach would tell his own athlete something like that. He wanted me to give up before I'd even tried to fight back, which was completely contrary to my approach to athletics. I took the attitude that no matter who I faced in competition—world's best or world's worst—I was going to go out and give it everything I had. Every time I competed, I put my heart and soul into it. I was prepared to work as hard as necessary, to endure whatever it took, to win. Just as I couldn't stand those people back home telling me I wouldn't survive at UCLA, I wouldn't tolerate someone deciding that I couldn't measure up to another athlete.

  How did my coach know I couldn't beat her now with a little coaching help?

  “Because he doesn't have any faith in you,” said a little voice in my head. The realization infuriated me.

  I was so upset, I marched straight back to my dorm room and called Mr. Fennoy. I was ready to transfer right then and there. When I told him what my coach had said and how I'd been treated, I just knew he'd sympathize with me and help me find another program.

  “I know this is UCLA and these are supposed to be the best coaches in the country,” I told him. “But I don't think they know what they're doing. They're ignoring me. I'm not doing anything here. I'm not making any progress.”

  After a brief silence, he said, “Jackie, I think you need to calm down and remember why you went to UCLA. You went there for an education.”

  That was not what I wanted to hear. Now I was mad at Mr. Fennoy as well.

  “Yeah, but they don't have any faith in me and …” I tried to make him see my point of view. But he wasn't interested.

  “I told you that athletics is a means to an end, not the end itself. You've been given a scholarship to attend a fine university. Your top priority should be excelling in the classroom. Whatever happens with athletics is secondary to that.”

  I felt like I was hitting my head against a brick wall. No one understood how I felt. But I respected Mr. Fennoy so much, I told him I'd think about what he said. I decided to be patient and give it more time.

  For the rest of the season, I tried to think of track as secondary. But it was hard to swallow because that's not how I wanted to treat it. Basketball was fun. But competing and excelling at track and field was what I truly loved to do. I was considering making athletics my career. But even if I ultimately decided I couldn't make a living competing, I wanted to be the best I could be. I couldn't bear the thought of having the talent and not fully using it. That seemed like a sin to me. If God had given it to me, I should use it.

  As spring went on, I became more miserable. I didn't win a single long-jump or heptathlon competition. My attitude was sour. No one tried to find out what was bothering me. There were days when my coach asked, “What do you feel like working on?” and I would say “Nothing.” His reaction: “Okay, see you tomorrow.”

  I wasn't prepared for competitions or in shape. At the National Collegiate Championships, I didn't even qualify for the long-jump finals, and I finished third in the heptathlon, behind Patsy Walker and Nancy Kindig. It was dreadful. It may sound strange to nonathletes, my complaining about only being the third best collegian in the country, but I knew I was better than third. The trouble was, I couldn't improve without help.

  By the end of the season, I could see that things were never going to get better. Accepting third place when I knew I was capable of winning was killing me. It was demoralizing. I'd rather not compete at all if I couldn't give it my best effort.

  Being shunted aside by my own coaches was humiliating. It was bad enough that as a heptathlete I didn't get any respect from the rest of the track and field community. Our competitions were usually conducted outside the main track, off in some distant corner away from the other events. At some major national meets, like the U.S. Championships, they weren't even held at the same site as the other competitions. As a result, no one knew what our event was about or who we were.

  There was a definite hierarchy at track meets as far as spectators and the media were concerned: Sprints were considered most significant, distance races second, the male decathlon, then field events, and finally, the female multi-eventers. It made me feel like an alien. We didn't attract many spectators. There was never any hoopla surrounding the heptathlon competition. Our results, if they were mentioned at all in the stories about the meet, were confined to the last paragraphs.

  Most people knew that the men competed in the decathlon and that it was ten events. They could even tick off the names of several past winners: Rafer Johnson, Bob Mathias and Bill Toomey. Of course, everyone knew Bruce Jenner, probably the most famous decathlete of all. Typically, people's awareness of male decathletes derived from the media's declaration that the Olympic decathlon winner was “the world's greatest athlete.” That there was a female multi-eventer worthy of an equivalent title rarely occurred to anyone.

  The treatment I was getting now from the UCLA coaches added to those feelings of inferiority. But my irritation about being undercoached in the heptathlon was minor when compared to the disgust I felt over my dismal performance in the long jump. Back when I was twelve, I expected to be jumping 23 feet by the time I was in college. Here I was age nineteen, at the end of my freshman year, unable to get past 19 feet.

  I just couldn't understand how things had deteriorated to this point. I'd taken the long jump to heart. From the moment I took that first leap off my porch railing, I loved the event. Seeing the look of excitement in Mr. Ward's eye when I took that furtive leap after practice, I knew I had a knack for it. The long jump was a part of my identity. I cared about my long jumping the way Maya Angelou cares about her poetry and Whitney Houston cares about her voice.

  The U.S. Championships were the last event of the season. For most track athletes, the competition was held in Sacramento over a weekend. But the heptathlon competition was in Spokane, Washington, earlier in the week, which meant I had to go to the heptathlon and then join the rest of the team on the weekend in Sacramento for the long-jump competition. I assumed someone would go with me to Spokane since it was so far away. But my coach said he was traveling to Sacramento with the rest of the team. “You can meet us there when you're done in Spokane,” he said.

  That was the final straw. They didn't care enough about me to accompany me to a major national meet. It was clear to me now that they didn't consider me, my development or my competitions important. I told Jeanette I wouldn't be on the team next year.

  As I pulled out my trunk in the dorm room and stuffed my belongings inside, I decided to give up track altogether. When I returned in the fall I would play basketball and focus on my studies. But the thought of quitting track broke my heart. It was like having to cut off part of my body.

  15

  Bobby

  A week before the U.S. Championships, Bobby walked over to me on the track and asked me about the meet. “Who's going with you?” he asked.

  “No one,”
I answered.

  Bobby went into a tirade. “You mean to tell me your coach isn't going with you? That's outrageous!” he said. I hadn't expected that reaction.

  “If a UCLA athlete is competing anywhere for the school, one of the coaches should be there,” Bobby said. “I'm going to the athletic director right now and telling her that since your coach has decided he isn't going, I'm going. And if she won't pay my way, I'll pay for it out of my own pocket. But I won't have you competing up there by yourself. It's just not acceptable.”

  He stalked off. I wanted to shout. At last, someone was in my corner.

  Bobby was so passionate about coaching and so proud to be in a prestigious program. As a child, he wanted to be a football coach, like his idol, Vince Lombardi. Later, when his interest turned to track, he wanted to coach an Olympic team. But he first had to pay his dues at a big-name school and build his reputation by coaching individual Olympic athletes. His father, Manch, was a chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy who met his mother, Daphne, a citizen of Panama, while stationed in that country. Bobby was born there, but later his family moved to San Pedro, next door to Long Beach. Bobby went to college at Cal State–Long Beach and earned a degree in physical education and studied physiology at Cal State–Northridge.

  He'd been a hurdler of impeccable technique in high school and college. Unfortunately, his technical brilliance wasn't enough to compensate for his lack of talent, and he was never a standout.

  When I was on the track, I couldn't help but notice Bobby's overpowering desire to win and his respect for and pride in the Bruin tradition. All day long under the blazing heat on the track, his intensity never wilted. He was a tyrannical, whirling dervish. “Look, if you just want to perform halfway and act like it doesn't matter, get off the track now!” he shouted at Florence and Jeanette each time they started to slack off or balked about the repetitions. They were doubled over at the waist, gasping for air, dragging themselves back to the starting line, looking at Bobby as if he were a lunatic. But Bobby didn't let up with the drills or the dogma. “You're UCLA!” he said. “You better have some pride because believe me everyone is going to be coming after you. They want to be able to brag that they beat UCLA. They can lose to everyone else in the race, but as long as they beat you, they'll feel like world champions!”

  Jeanette and Florence's eyes would roll, their jaws would clinch and their muttering would start. Bobby was oblivious. He went on and on: “Do this, do that. No! Not like that! Do it again and do it right this time! Don't roll your eyes at me, just do it! Since you have enough energy to talk back, you can do two more laps!”

  Bobby was working as hard away from the track as they were on it. His office was cluttered with books on physiology and conditioning he'd read or was reading in search of ways to help his athletes improve. Armed with that knowledge, he stood on the grassy infield, his index finger pressed to his lips, his clipboard tucked under his armpit, studying the athletes as they sprinted down the track and completed hurdle drills every day, searching for flaws in technique. Bobby believes the key to perfect performance is perfect execution. He says flawless technique can compensate for less than superior athleticism. According to him, a misplaced hind leg while clearing a hurdle or improper arm movement through the turn adds the fractions of a second that mean the difference between gold and silver and turn a world-record performance into just a very nice run.

  When Bobby detected a flaw, he was like a bulldog with a raw steak. He wouldn't let go until he'd obliterated it. While the others continued to go through their paces, he'd call the athlete over, get right in her face and explain what was wrong. If she didn't get it, he'd drop his clipboard and mimic the wrong movement, then mimic the right movement. He looked like Marcel Marceau, the famous French mime, out there. Or he'd treat the athlete like a mannequin, grabbing a leg or arm and placing it in the wrong position, then repositioning it the way he wanted it to be. Then it was back to the track to apply the lesson just learned. He wanted the motions repeated over and over and over.

  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 reas
ons 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.