Ready for next hurdles

If, as the logo suggests, track athletes had wings on their feet, Tasheen Garry would fly.

The Central Valley graduate completed his high school career with a personal best 38.53-second performance in the 300 hurdles at the state track and field championships in Pasco — an effort that earned him a third-place finish.

“It was a pretty good year,” the 5-foot-6 speedster said. “I was really happy with the 300 hurdles. That was the best I’ve run in my three years in high school. I finished third, but I didn’t care about that.”

That personal best time was slowed slightly by a steady wind during the championships.

“Wind slows you up a little bit,” Garry said. “It depends on which direction the wind is blowing. In Pasco it was blowing down the home stretch so you were running into the wind at the finish, which is a little hard.”

Being a senior and a state-meet veteran helped.

“This year I was a lot more relaxed about it all,” he said. “I wasn’t tight at all. I just focused on my race. I was able to enjoy the meet and just go out and do what I had to do.”

Now Garry will take hurdling to the next level.

“I’m going to go ahead and go to Spokane Community College for two years and run track,” he said. “I can get some classes out of the way and then transfer to Eastern, probably.”

Moving up means several things in hurdling terms. First, it means racing against better competition. Second, for Garry, it means a longer race. In college, the intermediate hurdles is a 400 meter race — 100 meters longer than in high school.

In actual terms, that means running two turns instead of one.

“I don’t really like running turns,” Garry admitted. “I’m not very good running curves. I’m better running straight.”

College also means he can spend more time improving his turn-running technique. He will begin track workouts in the fall and hurdles-specific training in November.

“If the weather is decent, we’ll start working outdoors,” SCC hurdles coach Linda Lanker said. “After that, we’ll be working on hurdles indoors over the winter.”

Lanker said SCC will take advantage of Garry’s straight-line running.

“He’s going to run the 100 and the 4x100 relay,” she said. “We’ll still use him in the sprints. But we’re also going to have him run the 800, at least in practice. We need to overdistance him to get him ready for the 400 hurdles. Running 400 meters and going over hurdles is like running an 800. It takes the same kind of stamina.”

Garry will also continue to practice over high hurdles — not the easiest event for a 5-6 runner. Especially in college, where the high hurdles are 3 inches higher than in high school.

“It would be better if I could suddenly grow 3 inches,” Garry laughed.

But, Lanker insists, high hurdling is important.

“They had Tasheen running the high hurdles in high school, and that was great,” she said. “The thing is, running the high hurdles forces you to improve your technique. You have to really learn how to get your leg down coming over the hurdle because you only have three steps to the next one.”

Lanker said she’s delighted at the prospect of working with Garry.

“I had a chance to work with him a little bit when I was coaching at Valley Christian,” she said. “We worked out at Central Valley, so I worked with him a little bit when he was just beginning to run the hurdles.

“The thing about him is he has great technique already. And the best thing about him is that he has a huge heart.” self end