RUNNING WITH A PURPOSE
CAROL LAYFAYETTE-BOYD MAKING HER MARK IN MASTERS ATHLETICS
Carol LaFayette-Boyd got a late start in track and field, but she’s in no hurry to reach the finish line.
The 75-year-old Reginan hit the ground running at age 50 and has been going strong ever since, setting numerous records along the way. She hopes to break a few more prior to hanging up her cleats, which won’t be any time soon.
“I’m going until I’m 100; that’s my goal,” says LaFayette-Boyd, who has encountered several triple-digit athletes in her travels. “I met this 104-year-old guy in Italy and (another who was) 101 in Budapest. A gal from India was 98 when she was here in 2012.
“She was in Vancouver last year so she must have been 102. You see these people who are 100 and they’re still going.”
LaFayette-Boyd is determined to join them, which is old news to long-time training partner Selina Coward.
“She’s been telling me that for 20 years,” Coward says with a laugh. “There’s no way I would put it past her. Carol is the real deal. She’s a genuine champion on and off the track."
She has the hardware to prove it. LaFayette-Boyd set five world records in the 75-79 age group at this year’s Saskatchewan track and field championships in Regina: Long jump (3.85 metres), high jump (1.23m), 100m (15.15 seconds), 200m (32.83) and triple jump (8.19m).
Those were in addition to the five world records she set previously in the 65-plus age group, followed by four more in the 70-plus division. Three of them hadn’t yet been broken as of this spring, along with the five new ones last month.
Not bad for a great grandmother of two.
“When I first met her in 1996, I looked at her and thought, ‘I’m going to train with his old lady?’ But she very quickly showed me she’s no old lady," says Coward, who’s 12 years younger. “It’s going to take an absolutely superb athlete to break those records. It’s a pretty hard act to follow.”
Coward should know. She used to set the pace in training sessions but has been slowed in recent years by a serious back injury and multiple surgeries.
However, LaFayette-Boyd won’t leave her behind.
“This year Carol is definitely dragging me around the track, to put it nicely,” says Coward. “She is incredibly encouraging and there are times when I have not wanted to train because the pain has been there.
“She’s just, ‘Come on, let’s go! Let’s do this a little bit at a time.’ She’s just the best training partner anyone could ever want or need.”
Coward describes LaFayette-Boyd as “kind and gentle and giving” off the track but a fierce competitor on it.
She has set 47 Canadian records in her career (some more than once) and still holds 30 of them (16 outdoor, 14 indoor).
Carol is the real deal. She’s a genuine champion on and off the track. —Selina Coward
LaFayette-Boyd has also won a combined 13 gold medals at the world masters athletics championships, winning three in Italy (2007), four in Kamloops (2010), four in Sacramento (2012) and five in Budapest (2014).
She added four gold medals at the World Masters Games in Edmonton in 2005.
What's her secret?
Maybe it's the hair. LaFayette-Boyd decided a while ago to trim her locks in favour of a more aerodynamic 'do.
She's convinced cutting her hair helped her performance — with one side effect.
“People call me sir and women check the bathroom when I'm coming out,” she says with a laugh — and not a hint of regret. “I feel it cut off a half a second in my races. I swear it does.”
LaFayette-Boyd should add to her collection of medals at the Canadian masters championships, beginning Aug. 11 in Toronto.
The event is being held in conjunction with the North and Central America and Caribbean regional championships.
A strong showing could put LaFayette-Boyd in line for one of the few accolades that has eluded her: The world masters athlete-of-theyear award.
“You're always anxious when you turn into a new age group,” says LaFayette-Boyd, one of the youngest competitors in the 75-79 field — a distinct advantage for a masters athlete.
“This is my year! As you get older, there aren't as many competitors, but you're still beating the best.”
This is my year! As you get older, there aren’t as many competitors, but you’re still beating the best. — Carol LaFayette-Boyd
I don’t know what it is about Carol that gives her that self-confidence but also the confidence that she spreads to everybody else, including me as a coach. She’s just very, very special. — Carla Nicholls
LaFayette-Boyd has been a frontrunner since high school at Sheldon-Williams Collegiate, but she left track and field behind to focus on a career in psychiatric nursing.
She unexpectedly rediscovered a love for running in 1989 when she took part in a friendly race at a family reunion, finishing second behind a cousin who was more than 12 years younger.
“My son came up to me after,” she recalls with a smile. “He said, ‘Mom, you beat all those young people.’ ”
Without realizing it, LaFayette-Boyd planted a seed that day. It sprouted a couple of years later when she learned that the Canadian Masters Games were coming to Regina.
“I saw that and thought, ‘Wow, I can go to that,’ ” she says. “If I made a fool of myself I wouldn’t have wasted any money because I didn’t have to pay for any travel.”
LaFayette-Boyd contacted her former high school teacher, Wilma Downing, who helped her get in touch with local track coach Mike Zimmerman. After putting LaFayette-Boyd through a workout, it was decided that she could enter the 100 and 200 metres in her age group.
She won both races — with a little help from her sister-in-law, whose screams of encouragement were audible from the track.
After winning the 200m, LaFayette-Boyd defeated the Canadian record holder in the 100m despite a sharp pain in her side and badly swollen ankles.
“I took the grandchildren and my grandnieces to the beach after and my ankles were still hard as rocks,” she says. “I thought I was done for life because it was about two weeks before they settled down. I blame my sister-inlaw for that, screaming at me.”
LaFayette-Boyd quietly started to train in 1990, thinking it was little more than a good way to maintain her health. She initially ran a mile and thought perhaps someday she’d work her way up to a marathon.
As it turned out, she was more of a sprinter. After getting a taste of success at the Canadian Masters Games, LaFayette-Boyd thought to herself: “I can do this!”
In the years that followed, LaFayetteBoyd collected enough medals, trophies and plaques to fill her entire living room. Among the most prestigious honours are four Bob Adams Foundation awards for excellence, three Sask Sport awards as masters athlete of the year and one Canadian masters female athlete-of-the-year award.
LaFayette-Boyd was inducted into the Canadian Masters Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012, followed by the Regina Sports Hall of Fame in 2014. She also received an award of excellence from the Daughters of Africa International, an organization that promotes women’s empowerment.
“Women in general, sometimes they don’t have a lot of self-esteem,” notes Carla Nicholls, who coaches LaFayette-Boyd with the Excel Athletika track club. “They’re nervous to go into a gym or they’re nervous to go onto the track. Carol has no problem training right next to the university students or the high school students.
“She’s so friendly and welcoming that they all feel like one big happy family or team. I don’t know what it is about Carol that gives her that self-confidence but also the confidence that she spreads to everybody else, including me as a coach. She’s just very, very special.”
Although technically retired, LaFayetteBoyd stays busy through several volunteer initiatives, including her role as the provincial director for masters track and field. She’s also a board member with the Bob Adams Foundation and the Saskatchewan African Canadian Heritage Museum.
The latter is a byproduct of her passion for black heritage. She has traced her own genealogy all the way back to the birth in 1847 of her great grandfather, Edward LaFayette, a descendent of freed slaves in Virginia.
Through exhaustive research, she’s attempting to go back another 100 years to James Armistead Lafayette, an African American slave who was a spy for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. History records that his intelligence reports were instrumental in defeating the British at the Battle of Yorktown.
Armistead was granted freedom in 1787 and gave himself a new name in honour of his commanding officer, General Marquis de Lafayette.
“I know James is mine,” Carol says proudly. “You just have to look at his picture (to see the family resemblance).”
LaFayette-Boyd’s Canadian roots were planted in 1906 when her grandfather (on her dad’s side) moved to Regina from Iowa. Her mother’s family arrived from Oklahoma four years later.
Carol’s father, Karl, eventually relocated to a farm near McGee, which is where he and wife Rose raised their eight children (four girls, four boys).
Karl LaFayette moved the family to nearby Rosetown in 1950 and eventually returned to Regina in 1956 after his wife’s passing.
“We were the only black family that we knew of in the city,” says Carol, who was 14 at the time.
“I was in track and basketball. I would go to events and there wasn’t one other black kid in the six high schools in Regina.”
Despite that fact, she doesn’t recall any trouble fitting in.
“I found out a few years ago that Wilma Downing told those kids I was coming and that they better be nice to me — and they were,” Carol says with a laugh. “I remember (as a nurse) the times I was called a black bitch and the ‘N’ word but I can’t remember anybody calling me that except mentally ill people."
LaFayette-Boyd witnessed a harsh racial environment while living in the U.S. for six years with her first husband, Lester Dodd, an American who served in the U.S. Air Force. She spent time in Virginia, Illinois and North Dakota, but always looked forward to coming home to Canada.
“I felt like getting out of the car and kissing the ground,” she says. “Even though nobody ever really did anything, you could tell when you don’t want to mess with people. I’d never live there again. When Barack Obama got elected, that changed things for me. I knew in my heart this stuff was finished but it just got worse.”
LaFayette-Boyd is saddened by the current racial tension in the U.S., incited by numerous policerelated shootings.
“It’s just unbelievable,” she says. “Fear does so much to people. But I can understand that fear.”
LaFayette-Boyd experienced her share while working with the criminally insane at the old psychiatric hospital in Weyburn and the Monroe Wing at the Regina General Hospital.
There were times when she feared for her life but quickly learned to never show it.
That became useful as she transitioned into social work, earning her degree at the University of Regina. She remained in that field for 33 years, most of which were spent training and supervising other social workers. She concluded her career at the Paul Dojack Youth Centre, retiring in 2005.
“I was blessed,” she says. “That (type of work) was my place to be.”
LaFayette-Boyd felt a responsibility to the children under her care as well as their parents. She once visited the home of an abused boy who had been thrown against a wall. LaFayette-Boyd and another social worker she was training went to the house, where the family was sitting around drinking and didn’t want to let them in.
After some negotiation with the grandmother, they were finally able to retrieve the child.
“We took him to the hospital and he had these cigarette burns on his body,” she recalls. “The worker said to me, ‘Carol, how can you stand this?’ I said, ‘The person who did it, this (child) is her back when she was his age.’ I tried to help them understand to treat them with dignity and respect. You can’t be blaming and shaming people because you don’t know what they’ve been through.”
Another time, LaFayette-Boyd was forced to take away the children of a mentally ill mother who had hit her son with a bat. That woman tried to attack Carol after a court hearing and at one point told her that the next time they saw each other, she was as good as dead.
“I don’t think I went downtown for a while,” she says.
The same woman called LaFayette’s office some time later and sounded like a completely different person.
“I answered the phone and she says, ‘Oh, Carol, you’re like a sister to me.’ I’m thinking, ‘You want to kill your sister?’ ” she says with a laugh. “Her daughter was going to a church I was attending for a while. Her mom came to church with her. It turned out really well.”
Along with many triumphs, LaFayette-Boyd has encountered a great deal of tragedy. Her daughter, Jackie, died suddenly of cancer in 2013 and her son, Lester, passed away from a suspected heart attack in 2014. Her second husband, Lem Boyd, followed in 2015 after a brief bout with pancreatic cancer.
That was three deaths in three years.
LaFayette-Boyd says her “faith” got her through a difficult period and continues to be a source of strength.
“To her these are obstacles that you have to deal with; you just take them in stride,” notes Coward. “It’s staggering how she is such an epitome of strength. She’s a phenomenal lady.”
Those qualities are also apparent on the track.
LaFayette-Boyd trains three times a week for two hours per session, embracing a healthy lifestyle while setting the pace for athletes one-third her age.
“She’s committed, she loves life and this is something she wants to do,” says Nicholls, a Canadian Olympic coach. “I always think, ‘Maybe I pushed her too much this time,’ but she rises to everything that I put in front of her. She never says to me: ‘Carla, I’m 75 years old’ or ‘I can’t do that.’ It’s the attitude that she brings to the track every single day that absolutely makes her a world champion.”
It’s staggering how she is such an epitome of strength. She’s a phenomenal lady. — Selina Coward