In Murray’S Case, Not All Giant Leaps Come On The Track

It was serious. It was stupid. It was another of those “situations” Demetrius Murray seemed to not just find, but stubbornly seek out.

It was at school. It was another student, he claimed, who had brought a “fake gun,” a Halloween toy. But it was Murray who grabbed it.

“I pointed it at the teacher,” he remembered, “and she freaks out and calls the principal on me.”

Paul Apostle, then the principal at Truman Middle School in Tacoma, did the obvious and proper thing. He expelled Demetrius Murray, banishing him to Meeker Middle School all the way on the other side of Commencement Bay, in Browns Point.

Even before that, there had been a burglary charge, and assault. More stupidity. More stubbornness. More situations.

Now the situation is this: Demetrius Murray, recently graduated from Washington State University, is one giant leap from becoming the Cougars’ first NCAA champion of the new millenium - though, let’s face it, Murray has already made a giant leap, and perhaps you are only allowed one of those per lifetime.

Murray is one of nine Cougars entered in the NCAA Track and Field Championships beginning today in Durham, N.C. A year ago, he was a surprise runner-up in the triple jump when he bounced 54 feet - and, frankly, a finish that high would be a bit of surprise again, seeing as he has only the 14th best mark in the field.

“But he wasn’t ranked that high last year,” noted his coach, Rick Sloan.

And Murray has certainly shown a propensity for achievement under duress.

Until the last month, the 2000 track season had been, in Murray’s words, “a bitter disappointment” after the NCAA success of ‘99. His body - on the skinny side given the pounding the triple jump inflicts - was betraying him, and when he did jump he couldn’t find the takeoff board with GPS. His outdoor best was a middling 51-1 going into the last round at the Modesto Relays, which up to that point “had been horrible.”

But on his final attempt Murray stretched out to 53-3-1/2, the mark which earned him entry into today’s meet. And 10 days ago in Eugene, Murray recovered on his final attempt again to jump 52-10 and win his first Pacific-10 Conference title.

Whether he can manufacture that kind of last-gasp magic again this weekend is not beside the point - neither for him nor for a Cougar athletic program currently scraping for every last smidgen of self-respect.

But Murray already goes into the win column in a much broader, and possibly more relevant, sense.

In addition to the tsunami of losses which has drowned the Cougs in competition these past two years, there have been a startling number of personnel casualties - done in by academics, conflicts with the coach or the law. Just yesterday, the school announced that three more prominent athletes - including the best basketball player, and one of the best football players - are now personae non passing grada.

Had you dug back far enough in his dossier, you might have predicted a similar fate for Murray, leaving out the college part. In the seventh or eighth grade, he was hardly college material.

Mostly, he was a kid in search of a dead end.

“I got into a little trouble - maybe more than a little,” he admitted. “I know it was hard for my mother to control me at an early age. We didn’t have much, and I wanted more and didn’t really care how I got it.”

Sandra Murray’s husband - Demetrius’ father - had walked out on the family early on (“I can’t remember the last time I spoke with him,” Murray said). There is a man now he calls his stepfather - Carl Robinson - but in his adolescent years, Murray didn’t have a male voice to listen to and wasn’t paying much attention to the “good woman who really cared about me.

“Then I made the JV basketball team my freshman year at Foss,” he said, “and sports became the discipline I needed.”

He remembers getting dunked on in practice by Lorenzo Rollins, who would go on to star at Gonzaga, and then being lured out to the track team as a junior “to improve my hops” and winding up as the upset winner of the state championship in the triple jump. His grades soared, too - to a 3.8 GPA.

And about the time he was ready to go off to WSU, he found out he was going to be a father.

Shaya Yvonne Murray will be 4 years old in 20 days. She lives in Olympia with her mother, with whom Murray is no longer together.

“It is,” Murray said, “the hardest thing in the world.”

Responsibility, he means.

“Trying to pay child support, making sure it’s on time, the conflicts about money and other issues - it’s a definite stress. I take my hat off to her mom, because I haven’t been there as much as I want to be. And I don’t want (Shaya) to grow up like I did, without a father. That’s what I’m doing here - trying to make a future.

“I couldn’t just come to college and party and goof off. I had to set goals and accomplish them, because of Shaya. My child is going to feel love and grow up just fine.”

There has been sacrifice to make sure of that, and there will be more. Murray once envisioned himself in the NBA; he now thinks about “going to the next level, the Olympics,” and yet he knows the cost.

“I feel sad about that, because I think I’m right on the edge and I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it happen. Will my body treat me right? Will I be able to live and support my child and still be able to pursue it. I don’t want to give it up, because I think I could do great things with kids and be a positive influence just by pursuing that dream.”

But sometimes there are responsibilities to be met before you can dream.

Demetrius Murray has already met one. He has disciplined himself to make a difference - for himself and his daughter, yes, but also for his school. He is an antidote for the bellyaching that is too often done about all that works against the Cougs in their Pullman circumstance.

It is a situation. Demetrius Murray made the most of it.