"It's going to get so much better for her in college," McCabe says. She's at Kentucky to make sure that she doesn't fall short again. Only the top three qualified for the World Championships in London. championships in Sacramento in June, the two-time Gatorade National Girls Athlete of the Year ran the fastest 400-meter hurdle race of her career (53.82 seconds), but came across the finish line in sixth place. "It was pretty much the same that you saw in high school," Willie says of her early track career. There was more daylight between her and second place than Bolt had between him and the field in Beijing. She won her first race-a 100-meter event at a New Jersey youth track meet when she was six, according to her dad, Willie, a former sprinter (Sydney's mother, Mary, was also a runner). Sydney was only 14 years old.īut that kind of performance wasn't anything new. It was the ninth-fastest time in the U.S. With that performance she broke the national high school freshman record. Three months and many practices later, she avoided stutter-steps and lowered her leaps to clock in at 55.63. Her time, 1:01.4, was a school record and fast enough to make plenty of D-I rosters. It was April 2014, and it was the first time Sydney ran the 400-meter hurdles for Union Catholic High School in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. "There was no form whatsoever," Mike McCabe, who coached Sydney in high school, remembers. Sydney stutter-stepped into a hurdle, then soared over another by a foot or two before landing off balance. Sydney's doing that by tackling a new event-the 100-meter hurdles-as she sprints her way to becoming the new face of track and field. "Right now, I'm just getting ready for the 2020 Olympics," she says. What's happening is this: As Allyson Felix enters the twilight of her career and Usain Bolt puts an end to his, Sydney is steadily on the come up, poised to make more fire emoji-worthy moments at UK and beyond. "He just looked, like, really famous and then I saw his profile and I was like," she leans back and shakes her head, "'What is happening?'" Johnson commented," she tells B/R Mag, not quite remembering his name. Sydney was hyped, even if she didn't know exactly who he was. When SportsCenter shared video of Sydney's record-breaking relay split on Instagram, Jordan reacted with four fire emojis. Jordan, of Creed and Fruitvale Station fame, gave her props this summer. The spotlight is still surreal for Sydney, even after actor Michael B. "Oh, I know about the track phenom," one Uber driver in the basketball-crazed town said. " What was it like to run in Rio?" and " How high are those hurdles you're jumping?" The Lexington locals are familiar with her resume too. Sydney's popularity heading into the school year garnered the attention of classmates who came to campus with questions for the newcomer. She's running.Īt 16, Sydney became the youngest track and field athlete to make the U.S. While UK's men's basketball team has brought in recruits-turned-NBA-All-Stars like John Wall and Karl-Anthony Towns under the tutelage of coach John Calipari, the highest-profile recruit to land on campus this year isn't hooping. That's why she's here, in Lexington, with her UK team-Snapchatting and dancing on a sunny Saturday morning in September, one week before track practice begins. And while many teen track and field runners on the rise with credentials less impressive than Sydney's have gone pro in recent years, the New Jersey native decided to pass up what could have been seven figures annually as a pro. She lit up social media when she ran a national high school record 49.85-second 400-meter relay split in June. Olympic team since 1980 (she turned 17 during the Rio Games). In 2016, at the age of 16, she became the youngest track and field athlete to make the U.S. If you've followed Sydney for the last two years, you know she's good at creating moments-history-making moments.
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