Preparing athletes for life

Dr. Janice Davis II

Many Olympic dreams don’t end with gold medals at the top of podiums. But since its inception, the NSAF has chronicled the progress of rising track & field stars at the Youth, high school and Junior-age levels and, through its Travel Grant program, helped these athletes get to competitions – whether it be NSAF’s Select Meets, U.S. Youth or Junior meets, or the Foundation’s own indoor and outdoor nationals.

But the NSAF’s commitment is not only to opening the doors of the world to student-athletes, but remaining connected as support for whatever the next steps turn out to be. Janice Davis II had those Olympic dreams, but when that door closed, she continued to push through to a new podium. Eleven years later, she is now Dr. Janice Davis II, MD, MPH, Clinical Fellow Pediatric Anesthesiologist at one of the world’s top medical centers, Boston Children’s Hospital. 

Davis’s sprinting accomplishments certainly portended a golden future. She first forged her speed as a youngster racing with her friends in the streets of Natchez, Miss. and began summer track at age six. Over the next 3-5 years, she started winning ribbons and medals and by age nine was topping Junior Olympic podiums. 

Success continued through middle school and she won the first two of 10 Class 5A state sprint titles as a 9th-grader in the spring of 2000. Then when Davis unexpectedly finished 3rd in the U.S. Junior Women’s 400m, she was invited to compete in a Team USA dual meet in Canada, where she won that same event. “I was the youngest athlete on the team at 15,” she remembers. “My mom was super nervous!” 

At the J.O. meet in California later that summer, Davis saw some U.S. Junior team members and said to herself, “I’m going to wear that uniform someday.” She finished the summer with spectacular PRs of 23.80 and 52.92 for 200m and 400m – 1st and 2nd nationally among freshmen in those two events.

Davis’s sophomore year of 2001 was even better, this time peaking with a victory in the U.S. Junior 200 (23.38w, plus 3rd in the 100). Suddenly she was competing at the 2001 IAAF World Youth Championships in Hungary – where she faced some injury-related adversity – unable to finish her 100m heat. “I think I would have medaled if I hadn’t gotten injured,” she says.

Still, Davis was on the radar of everyone in the track world, including the NSAF – which wanted to help her on her quest to make her first World Junior team the next year, taking the next step from the Youth level. She and her family received travel grants to compete in the NSAF’s 2002 and 2003 Adidas Outdoor Championships and the 2003 USATF Juniors. These experiences were invaluable.

“Meets and trips to nationals were great exposure, allowed for family bonding and I wouldn’t have had the opportunities without the NSAF,” she says. “Track afforded me the chance to see different cultures around the world. There was a lot of education in that which you can’t find in textbooks.”

Even while still striving toward Olympic dreams, Davis was plotting her future beyond the oval. Both her academic and athletic accomplishments got her into Stanford, where the years were filled with All-American and All-PAC-10 honors, both individually and in relays. Davis’s next goal on the track was the 2008 Olympic Trials and what lay beyond. But a severe back injury waylaid those plans. It was there that the lessons learned, her support team and her ability to deal with adversity really kicked into overdrive, enabling her to move on to the next chapter.

She earned a Master of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta (2009-10), then took on the Medical University of South Carolina (2012-16), where graduated as Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) with flying colors. Next was an Anesthesiology Residency at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas (2016-20), and now she is a Clinical Fellow Pediatric Anesthesiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital. 

“Because of the way I trained and pushed myself in track, medical school actually wasn’t that difficult for me,” Davis says. “You really learn time and stress management, and you pull from sports when it comes to handling adversity.

“You have to be coachable and receptive to criticism,” she adds. “You learn to control your emotions, think clearly and compartmentalize when you have to.”

All along, Davis stayed connected with the NSAF COO Joy Kamani, knowing they were standing with her whatever roads she continued to choose. Her NSAF affections are tied in with memories of her late mother, Janice Davis, who passed in 2014. 

“She and Ms. Kamani would chat on the phone quite a bit,” she recalls. “Ms. Kamani has kept up with me and my progress on social media. I’m all about building positive relationships.

“My mom was my rock and the visionary for what transpired. She told me I was going to become a doctor. I definitely took a circuitous route, but she knew what she was talking about.”

Empowering champions

Marquise Goodwin

Marquise Goodwin was the youngest member of Team NSAF’s second Caribbean Scholastic Invitational (CSI) squad in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2007, having just completed his sophomore year at Rowlett (Texas) High School. He was already the NSAF’s Nike Outdoor Nationals long jump champion and arguably the country’s most electrifying jumper/sprinter and football player, still years away from the national record-setting Olympian and NFL star he was to become. 

Goodwin won the CSI long jump and ran leadoff on the winning 4×100. Then he did something that no one expected.

“At the end of the meet, Puerto Rico’s meet administrator Victor Lopez was thanking the crowd in Spanish,” NSAF Executive Director Jim Spier recalls. “Marquise went over to him and asked for the microphone, then proceeded to thank the crowd in English. He said, ‘We know you could have been doing other things today, but we appreciate you coming out and supporting us.’

“We were stunned and thought it was incredible to see him spontaneously do that. The public expression of gratitude for others really seemed beyond his years. I turned to Joy and said, ‘We have to bring him next year.’”

Says NSAF COO Joy Kamani, “We select kids for these events because of what they’ve done, who they are and what we know they can become. To watch them grow up and become leaders right in front of your eyes, like Marquise did, is very special.”

That was only the beginning. In 2008, Goodwin – having added the NSAF’s Nike Indoor Nationals long jump title to his resume that past winter as a junior – returned with Team NSAF to Puerto Rico as a team leader. He is the only student athlete to represent the NSAF twice in Caribbean events.

“Those meets and those trips were special to me in many ways,” says Goodwin. “I appreciate that the NSAF invited me not just once, but twice, and I was motivated not just to compete as well as I could, but help lead the team as well.”

“Later, when I made U.S. World and Olympic teams, I knew what to expect and how to handle myself at major competitions and on international trips. And I could share that with others, too.”

Goodwin’s first U.S. national team berth was only a week after that second CSI trip. He soared 25 feet to win the U.S. Junior title and punch his ticket to the 2008 IAAF World Championships. Just two weeks later in Barcelona, Goodwin leapt 25-4.75 to claim the gold medal and top the podium. 

“I had many more things I wanted to achieve, and still want to achieve,” says Goodwin, “but winning the World Junior gold in the Olympic stadium is something I’ll never forget.”

Incredibly, Goodwin still had another year of high school – and he made the best of it. He dominated the prep scene in Texas and nationally, and took to a new stage at the 2009 USA Championships in Eugene – that’s the senior championships, for Olympians, other pros and collegians. He rose to the occasion in dramatic fashion, breaking the 20-year-old national high school long jump record with a 26-10 – a mark which still stands today – and came within two inches of making the Team USA for the senior IAAF World Championships.

Goodwin went on to win his 2nd USA Junior title and then won a silver medal at the Pan American Juniors that summer in Trinidad & Tobago.

More than a decade later, Goodwin has continued to grow and achieve, both in track & field and football – and add to his legacy as part of the NSAF Alumni family. On the track at the University of Texas, he won two NCAA long jump titles, plus the USA Champs in 2011 and 2012 – the latter of which was also the Olympic Trials. He went on to finish 10th in the London Olympics.

On the gridiron, he was a triple threat for the Longhorns as a receiver, rusher and kick returner, catching 120 passes and scoring 10 touchdowns. He started in the 2010 BCS Championship and in the 2012 Alamo Bowl, scored two touchdowns and won the game’s MVP Award. Goodwin was then selected by the Buffalo Bills in the 2013 NFL Draft and played seven seasons with the Bills and San Francisco 49ers. 

This past April, Goodwin was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles, but in July decided to sit out the season due to COVID-19. He and his wife – hurdles star Morgan Snow – had just welcomed a daughter into the world in February after losing three boys in childbirth over three years. Honoring the couple’s strength and resilience, and ultimate joy when their daughter was born, ESPN did an E60 Personal Journey Father’s Day special on the family.

“The lessons I learned in high school and with the NSAF continue to be a part of what uplifts me and my family to this day,” says Goodwin. “Any athletes who are invited to be a part of Team NSAF should take advantage of it and can benefit as I have.”

Promoting opportunity and equity

Boys’ Relay Team

From the beginning, the NSAF’s mission has been to provide opportunities for student athletes to get the most out of their ability.  The best-known examples of these opportunities are the Indoor and Outdoor national meets.  The travel grants provided to athletes to attend USATF Junior events, however, has proven to be pivotal in the careers of many high potential athletes.  In June of 2002, sprinters Willie Hordge, Ivory Williams and Ashton Collins found out what lengths the NSAF will go to provide these life-changing opportunities, and what the payoff can be. 

Willie Hordge, 2002’s fastest high school 100m runner in the country (10.21), was in the medical tent at that June’s NSAF’s Adidas Outdoor Championships. The Forrest Brook HS (Texas) junior had just run the second fastest prelim time, but had a nagging hamstring injury and NSAF Medical Director Rob Jones was advising him not to compete in the final later that day.

NSAF COO and fellow Texan Joy Kamani had joined them, but her mind was racing ahead to the following week’s USATF Junior Championships at Stanford – which was also the qualifier for the IAAF World Junior Championships in Jamaica. The NSAF has become known over the years for its massive Indoor and Outdoor Nationals, now with more than 12,000 competitors combined. 

But the cornerstone of the NSAF mission, something co-founders Jim Spier and Mike Brynes were zeroed in on even before the Foundation was formally established, was informing athletes of USATF Junior meets and helping those who needed help getting there through their Travel Grant program. The belief is that Team USA Youth and Junior experiences can help develop athletes for the Senior level. More than 300 NSAF alums have become Team USA Olympians since 1984.

Kamani knew Hordge, already a veteran of the 2001 World Youth Championships (winning 100m and medley relay silvers), could help get Team USA on the podium in both the 100m and 4x100m relay. The selections for U.S. Youth teams back then were made by committee, so Willie hadn’t competed in a Junior meet and a Trials meet before.

“I didn’t know anything about those Junior meets,” says Hordge now. “I was a football guy, but I was getting more serious about summer track. I really wanted to do it, as long as my hamstring healed, and Ms. Kamani said they would help us.”

By the time those Adidas Championships had concluded, Kamani had also enrolled Ivory Williams and Ashton Collins – two more outstanding prep sprinters who starred in Raleigh – in the idea of going to Juniors. There was just one problem: Just four days’ time to help the athletes get entered, ticketed and housed for the next weekend’s meet.

But Kamani, Spier and the late NSAF coach and board member Cedric Walker were veterans at this sort of thing. After all, potential Team USA medalists don’t always manifest themselves until season’s end. Kamani and Spier knew the talented trio had great potential to make waves in Kingston.

Between Sunday and Thursday of that week, arrangements were successfully made (not without a few harrowing moments) and the trio arrived in San Francisco the day before the meet and transported to a nearby hotel.

Kamani’s and Spier’s intuition was on point. Hordge (2nd 100), Williams (4th 100, 3rd 200) and Collins (3rd 400) all made the team and were in a position to do great things in Kingston. But no one had any idea just HOW great. “We didn’t want to let down Ms. Kamani,” Hordge says, “It would have been a waste of money if we didn’t perform at the level at which we were capable.”

The next month in Kingston, Hordge took the bronze in the 100m, while Williams and Collins waited for relay duty. Due to injury to another sprinter, Collins would be running both the 4×4 and 4×1, while the trio was joined by 200m bronze medalist Wes Felix – a USC freshman. The quartet – Collins-Felix-Williams-Hordge – advanced first in qualifying for the final with a fast 39.18.

The final started equally promising and when Hordge took the baton on the anchor, he exploded down the track like his hair was on fire. He was being chased by 100m gold medalist Darrell Brown of Trinidad & Tobago, and a 15-year-old youngster named Usain Bolt – the Jamaican anchor who several years later would become history’s greatest sprinter.

But no one could beat the motivated Texan. He crossed the finish line with a huge smile on his face and baton thrust in the air, then turned to see the result: A World Record 38.92!! And with Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago in silver and bronze.

“It was the record that almost wasn’t,” Spier likes to say.

“The crazy thing is, I’d heard about Bolt, but I wasn’t thinking so much about him,” remembers Hordge. “I was worried about Darrell Brown!” And with good reason: While the 15-year-old Bolt had won the 200m, he was not yet an acclaimed 100m man and Brown had just beaten Hordge in the 100. 

And just in case anyone thought the result was a fluke, Hordge, Carlos Moore and both Collins brothers (Ashton and Aaron) duplicated the feat at the 2003 Pan American Juniors in Barbados, again beating Bolt on the anchor for the gold in 39.29.

While he didn’t go on to have the type of Olympic track career that Bolt did, Hordge had his own kind of success. His track and football achievements at Buffalo State (Class of 2009), which included an NCAA D3 100/200 double in 2007, earned him a spot in that university’s Hall of Fame in 2016. He played two years in the NFL and is now studying for his doctorate in physical therapy at Texas State University. He still stays in touch with Williams and said he even caught up with Bolt a few years back.

Hordge will never forget the NSAF and his adventures in track & field in 2002. “They can really help you a lot if you have some talent,” he says. “They get it done for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to travel to events like that. I never would have had those experiences if it hadn’t been for the NSAF.”

Supporting programs, changing lives

St. Stephens Indian School

Billy Brost is not without a sense of humor in describing some of what he had to work with when he took over as head track & field coach at St. Stephens Indian School (Riverton, Wyo.) in 2015-16. “I did inventory and the uniforms looked like they were from the ’80s,” he says with a grin. “We had shot puts that had been run over by lawn mowers – chunks were missing – and batons were twisted like pretzels. Desperate is an understatement.”

Coach Brost started looking up grants and fundraisers for track teams and came across the NSAF’s Tony Wells Team/Club Development Grant. He didn’t have high expectations at first, but “we got it right away, the first thing I did is bought some new shot puts, batons and starting blocks. We’ve been piecemealing everything together ever since in these five years I’ve been a head coach.”

St. Stephens also had only two student-athletes from which to start a team before his first season of 2016. Full of energy and motivation, Coach Brost convinced nearly three-quarters of the school’s students to run, jump and throw for the Eagles. “We went from three kids to 77,” he says proudly, “And we’ve never had less than 55 in the years since.” 

And it hasn’t just been the quantity of student-athletes participating in the program; the quality is improving, too. “We hadn’t had anybody qualify for our Class 1A state meet in four years, but we got three to state that first year,” says Coach Brost.  “Every year we send more than the year before. In 2019, we had seven individuals qualify for state, and out of those seven, four of them were freshmen. The goal now is to compete for a team trophy.”

He’s also become pretty proficient at grant proposals, too, earning three more Tony Wells Grants. He declined the one St. Stephens won this year, though, as the WHSAA cancelled spring sports due to COVID-19. The Northern Arapaho Business Council has yet to allow tribal students on the reservation to return to its four schools, Brost said, so sports programs for these schools were closed this fall, too, and classes have remained online.

“It’s been a battle for our student-athletes,” says Coach Brost. “We use sports as a vehicle to lead success in the classroom. We take extra time with our students to begin with here in the Reservation and when we don’t have that daily interaction with them and can give them a hug or a fist-bump or sit down and talk with them and see how their life is going, it’s a struggle. Kids don’t get what they need from Zoom and our kids are suffering.

“But we are not going to risk the health of our students and our elders. We want our kids to be safe and our community to be safe.”

A big component of the NSAF’s Tony Wells (and Cedric Walker) Development Grants is a community service project, which must be proposed and then completed before the full funding is dispersed. Eagles’ team members at first dutifully completed their community service, but now it’s actually one of the things they most look forward to each spring.

“I’m a big believer in giving back, a big service project guy,” says Coach Brost, “so when I saw that part of requirement of the grant was that our program do community service, I was like yeah, that’s going to show these kids that money doesn’t fall out of sky into our laps.

“I want my young people to understand that you do for others when you have the capability of doing that. It’s not just about winning races, earning medals and going to state, it’s about representing the community and giving of yourself when you can. And hopefully that trickles down to younger people. The first couple years the kids raised an eyebrow, but now they expect it and like to do it.

“It’s just been a phenomenal process for kids in the program and the entire community has embraced what we try and do through the service projects.”

Coach Brost and his school feel very blessed to have been awarded the Tony Wells Grant multiple times. “It helps allow me to teach, motivate and succeed. We thank our lucky stars and we will always be grateful.”