Stuck in the starting blocks
With no meets because of the coronavirus, Ridge Point runner faces a tall hurdle
Ter’ria Howard only logged a few sprints before a pair of police officers closed the track at Heights High School.
It was the Friday before Easter but this is the new normal COVID-19 creates. Two training sites in Howard’s rotation have been shut down as a safety measure.
She can work around switching places to train. Having no meets to race in, however, is impossible to hurdle.
Howard is dealing with the coronavirus’ impact on track and field at the amateur level. The senior who attends Ridge Point High School has several offers to run at the collegiate level — Oregon State, Miami (Ohio) and Miami (Fla.), Prairie View A&M and Eastern Michigan among them — but the offers are short on the financial aid she needs.
Howard traveled an unconventional route through high school to what she hoped was a chance at a lasting impression and something closer to a fully paid-for education at a high-level program.
The sprinter came into high school as a 200-meter champion from McAdams Junior High School in Dickinson before moving to Sienna Plantation. She missed most of her freshman season at Ridge Point, suffering a pelvic avulsion fracture to her right hip. She did rehab and competed at Ridge Point as a sophomore and for part of her junior season before leaving the program in the middle of the 2019 outdoor season. Howard and her stepfather Anthony Allen favored coaching outside the high school realm and planned for her to compete unattached during the 2019-2020 season.
“She ran personal bests indoors and we were hoping that we would have a strong outdoor season but because of the situation, there are no competitions and nothing to do,” said Eric Francis, a professional track and field coach of 24 years who’s worked with Howard for a year-and-a-half. He heads Elite Performance Track Club. “She hasn’t had a chance to put anything together.”
At February’s FasTrak Collegiate and Conference Last Chance Qualifier in Houston, Howard set a personal record in the 60-meter dash — an NCAA-sanctioned event for indoor track and field — with a time of 7.94 seconds. She finished fourth in the finals but ahead of two collegiate runners. The University Interscholastic League does not feature indoor track and field.
Howard also set a PR in the 200meter dash indoors at 26.15 during preliminaries of January’s Carl Lewis High School Invitational. Her last outdoor PR in the 200 was last July at the USATF Region 12 Championship at 25.76.
NCAA Division I schools generally prefer high school girls running the 200-meter dash at 24-flat to 25.54. For Division II, 26.2 to 28.5 is the scale.
Howard’s last PR in the 100-meter dash was at 12.67 outdoors last June at the Track Houston Championships. Division I schools generally prefer incoming girls in the 11.9 to 12.34 range with Division II around 12.5 to 13.4.
Howard wasn’t a finished product, especially considering the injury, which brought mixed results and times during her Ridge Point stay. The injury can take four to six weeks to recover from but has some lasting effects, such as weight gain.
“It was really hard,” Howard said. “I’m still having the effects of it right now, trying to lose the weight. When I started back working out, it was hard because I kind of babied the side I got injured on. I was scared to put too much pressure on it. I was afraid that I would injure it again. My weight went up and it was harder for me to carry myself through the race.”
Howard says she’s run 23.9 and 24-flat in the 200 and 7.5 in the 60meter dash during training. That is during training, though. College coaches want consistency, too, not just the best times. Howard planned for March’s Prairie View Relays to be her first meet of the outdoor season.
Then, came the coronavirus shutdown.
“It’s like everything you look forward to as a little kid seeing other seniors do, it was just taken away and that’s kind of heartbreaking,” Howard said. “I don’t get my last senior walk or my graduation and everything.”
Howard’s path as an unattached runner in high school is the one less traveled. UIL rule prevents her from competing in meets under its umbrella. During the outdoor season, options are not plentiful for where she could run.
AAU participation during the summer is a factor in recruiting for sports like softball, basketball and baseball and it plays a part in track and field, too. Summer had been a key part of the season for Howard, whose club team is the Mainland Jaguars, and college coaches still unearth talent during this window considering the current recruiting period lasts until August.
Even if this summer is a window of opportunity for meets, Allen suggests asking athletes to compete after a months-long layoff is difficult no matter how much they’ve trained.
Howard and other track and field athletes who hinged hopes on the outdoor season are having to be recruited off faith.
Her offers are mostly invites to walk on with a chance to earn financial aid down the road. She’s had no academic issues getting into schools. The family has some financial aid outside what they hoped from athletics. Loans are an option, but naturally not preferred for this family. Howard does have programs like Neosho County Community College offering to pay most costs.
Howard has Olympic dreams like most athletes in this sport. She, like most her age, wants to compete in at the highest collegiate level sooner rather than later. It likely requires a perceived step back to take two forward or betting on herself as a walk-on.
“I understand you’re getting a free package because we’re not able to run,” Allen said. “You might end up getting somebody that can probably go in there and win the whole conference and you get them free for a year.”
This is somewhat customary in track and field, which is an equivalency sport. There are no restrictions on how many athletes can be on scholarship in these sports, but there is a limit on the number of scholarships a team can have. So, track and field coaches often offer half scholarships to provide some kind of aid to most of everyone on the roster. Coaches tend to save full scholarships for the top runners.
The situation is more complicated after the NCAA allowed an extension of eligibility and relaxed scholarship limits to allow seniors in spring sports to return for the 2020-21 period. Each institution must decide how much financial aid, if any, to grant seniors if they decide to stay. There’s a trickledown effect to how much would be left for new recruits.
But as Francis says “If you’re good enough, they’ll find the money.”