Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
There’s no place like Kansas for high school dropout
Sprinter from Pahokee finds motivation to stay on right track
Two years ago Jatoria McGirt was a struggling high school dropout from Pahokee who could run like the wind but was going nowhere fast.
“There are a lot of bad vibes and negative voices out there,” McGirt said of her hometown on the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee. “And you can get caught up in that.”
But with the help of a local pastor, and the embrace of a small-town community 1,500 miles away in Kansas, McGirt escaped her uncertain Florida future to become the first of her family to attend college.
“I found a lot of love out here,” said McGirt, 20, from her home on the campus of Cloud County Community College in Concordia, Kan. “There are just great people here, always smiling.”
McGirt’s improbable journey from the sugar cane muck lands of Palm Beach County to the prairies of northcentral Kansas begins in Pahokee, where she was raised by her grandmother in public housing.
The towns of Pahokee and Belle Glade have sent more than two dozen players to the National Football League in recent years. Like many youngsters there, McGirt grew up playing football
in the streets.
But there was no future in football for a girl.
So McGirt began running track for amateur clubs. And she excelled, coaches said.
Yet her environment and family issues posed a challenge, McGirt said. The man she knew as her father went to prison on a drug charge. Her uncle was found dead in a canal. Her neighborhood was rife with crime and violence, she recalled.
After her single mother moved the family out of Pahokee to Royal Palm Beach, McGirt lost interest in school, dropped out of Palm Beach Central High in Wellington and stayed home to help with three younger siblings.
McGirt’s life seemed to stall.
That’s when Palm Beach County pastor Randall King stepped in.
King, a former high school track coach who runs a Greenacres-based organization that works to keep troubled teens from dropping out of school, said he recognized both McGirt’s athletic abilities and her potential.
King had a cousin who did well at Cloud, and he said he thought a change of scene far from Pahokee could work for McGirt as well.
“I put her on a plane,” said King, who paid for her initial expenses through his nonprofit Talented Teen Club. “She trusted me. I told her not to come back to Florida until she had a bachelor’s degree and she was able to hold off the wolves of her community.”
McGirt arrived in Concordia in the summer of 2015 and moved into a campus dorm room. She attended classes while not officially enrolled.
But before she could even think of pulling on a T-Birds jersey and running in the competitive world of Kansas track, she had to pass high school equivalency tests.
That proved to be no easy task.
“When she arrived here she was shy, quiet and academically had very little knowledge of history, or the Constitution, for example,” said Debbie Kearn, director of adult education at Cloud.
“A lot of the vocabulary was foreign to her. So she had a bigger struggle than most people do.”
While she plowed through the science, math and language arts parts of the GED, the social studies portion seemed a mountain too steep. Kearn said that McGirt took the official practice test 17 times and the actual social studies exam nine times before she finally passed.
The breakthrough came after McGirt made a trip home over the December break and was reminded of what she had left behind.
“I was happy to see my family, but I actually didn’t want to go back,” McGirt said. “In Pahokee there are a lot of people who gave up. I didn’t want to be another statistic out of there.
“I love where I’m from, but that visit reminded me of where I don’t want to be.”
When McGirt returned to campus in January, she brought with her “a stronger motivation and renewed faith to succeed and rise above her background,” Kearn said. “She wanted to show her siblings that with lots of hard work, determination and faith they too may succeed.”
Kearn said that she has never had a student who worked harder.
Ted Schmitz, who coaches women’s track at Cloud, has been McGirt’s mentor in her new life.
“The adversity she had to face to get here is unique,” Schmitz said. “But she made a commitment and stayed with it. Her perseverance stands out.”
McGirt also got tutoring help from Cody Schmitz, the coach’s son. On many weekends he drove home from Lawrence, 170 miles away, where he is studying journalism at the University of Kansas.
“Right off the bat I saw that she was as smart as anyone I knew,” said Cody Schmitz, 21. “She wanted to learn but didn’t have the background, the foundation. So we had to take it back to square one.”
As McGirt learned, Schmitz said he did, too. “She helped me value my education,” said Schmitz, who is graduating this spring.
After McGirt passed her final test to officially enroll as a college freshman, the track team gave her a party. The celebration was held on campus, but many in the community who had come to know her through the Schmitz family attended as well.
And then McGirt took off running.
Last weekend McGirt placed third in the 100-meter dash, missing a win by thousandths of a second, and finished sixth in the 200 meters in the regional meet of the women’s National Junior College Athletic Association. She has qualified to compete in both events in the national meet that begins Thursday in Hutchinson, Kan.
“Jatoria has potential beyond the community college level,” Schmitz said. “It’s still early, but with consistent training she’s going to improve a great deal.”
Schmitz, Cloud women’s track coach for 36 years, expects McGirt to continue to improve as a sprinter and to go on to a four-year college. Athletic recruiters from big schools have already taken notice, the coach said.
“I have seen many runners over the years who were good,” Schmitz said. “But I think she has that chance of being very special. The sky is the limit.”
Equally as impressive as her fast start as a sprinter has been McGirt’s progress in the classroom. So far she is earning A’s and B’s.
“It seems everything is happening real quick, and basically I am trying to get comfortable where I’m at now,” McGirt said.