Texas coach Beverly Kearney (© Kirby Lee)
University of Texas women’s head coach Beverly Kearney may have won a lot through her coaching career but it was off the track that the former sprinter won her most important battle. Bob Ramsak tells the fascinating story of the woman who survived a tragic car crash just over two and half years ago.
In 1981, Beverly Kearney accepted an assistant coaching position at Indiana State University merely to fulfill a requirement for her master’s degree. 24 years after that necessary diversion, Kearney is among the most successful and respected coaches in the world. And it all happened rather accidentally for the current head women’s coach at the University of Texas in Austin.
“It just happened,” Kearney said, explaining that it was never her intention to pursue a career in coaching. “I had to have a graduate assistantship to get my master’s, so I began coaching. One thing just lead to another.”
In those ensuing two-and-a-half decades, her achievements and accolades have been staggering, nearly unparalleled at the NCAA level. Kearney’s pupils have collected nine Olympic medals since the 1992 Games, her teams have won five NCAA Championship titles, she has coached 28 individual NCAA champions, collected 15 NCAA relay titles, and 20 collegiate conference team championships. Yet her long list of honours pales in comparison to her remarkable recovery from another very real accident that nearly took her life the morning after Christmas 2002.
“They thought I would be paralyzed,” Kearney said of the aftermath of a tragic automobile accident that claimed the lives of two close friends. Yet guided by her sheer determination - some would describe it as stubbornness - Kearney not only proved her doctors wrong, but became an even stronger inspiration to others, both on and off the track.
Before she set out on her unplanned coaching career, Kearney was a standout sprinter, earning recognition for her own achievements on the track. The Brandon, Florida native began her athletic career at Florida’s Hillsborough Community College where she earned National Junior College All-America honours in the short sprints. She then moved on to Auburn University where she claimed two AIAW - at the time, the women’s NCAA equivalent - All-America honours, was selected as the university’s Athlete of the Year and was the team’s MVP her senior season. In 1980, Kearney qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 200 metres, clocking a personal best 23.69. The following year she completed her degree in Social Work, ended her competitive career, and moved on to Indiana State.
While completing her master’s degree in adapted physical education, she became so good in her sideline as an assistant coach that she guided several athletes to appearances at the NCAA Championships. After finishing her studies, she accepted a head coaching position at the University of Toledo, where during her two-year tenure, her athletes broke 25 school records. With her coaching career gaining momentum, visibility and respect, there would be no turning back for Kearney. She moved on to the University of Tennessee, where she was the top assistant coach for the women’s squad from 1984 to 1986. There, six of her athletes captured NCAA titles, 12 collected All-America honours, and her 4x400m relay squad set a World indoor record at the 1986 NCAA championships.
In 1988, she began a five-year stint at the University of Florida where she continued to add to her now rapidly-growing list of achievements. Kearney led the Gators to three first-place finishes in the Southeastern Conference, and ended her Florida career with first and second-place finishes at the NCAA indoor and outdoor meets, respectively in 1992. Her 1992 indoor title was a milestone in the NCAA ranks as Kearney became the first female African-American coach to lead a team to the national championship. She was named the 1992 NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Coach of the Year for her efforts. That year, Lavonna Martin, a former star at the University of Tennessee during Kearney’s tenure there, captured the silver medal in the 100 metre Hurdles at the Olympic Games in Barcelona.
The following year she began her tenure as women’s head coach at the University of Texas, embarking on what she would soon turn into a track dynasty. Now in her 13th year at Texas, Kearney has already collected four national teams titles for the Longhorns, while guiding 28 athletes to 38 national titles. At the 1996 Olympic Games, her former pupils took center stage: Deon Hemmings of Jamaica took the gold in the 400 metre Hurdles; Texas alum Carlette Guidry won a gold medal in the 4x100m relay; and Michelle Freeman, another Jamaican who Kearney coached at Florida, took a bronze in the one-lap relay.
In 2000, two more from the ‘Kearney School’ struck Olympic glory: Nanceen Perry, a bronze medallist in the 4x100m relay, and Jamaican Sandie Richards, a silver medallist in the 4x400m relay.
But it all very nearly came to a tragic end for Kearney early on the morning of 26 December 2002. On Florida’s Interstate 10, just east of Jacksonville, a car driven by Freeman veered out of control before flipping several times. The accident took the life of Freeman’s mother, Muriel Wallace, and their close friend Ilrey (Oliver) Sparks, a University of Texas academic counselor and a 1984 Olympian for Jamaica.
“All I remember was waking up on the side of the road and I was barely breathing,” Kearney said, “I barely had a pulse.” She sustained serious spinal cord and back injuries that required three surgeries.
“I couldn't move, literally,” Kearney recalled. “I couldn't move myself. I could remember being in the hospital and not being able to roll over.”
Lying in her hospital bed in a condition that might require several years of rehabilitation, Kearney made a startling promise.
“I was looking up at the wall in my room and I saw a picture of the Texas Relays. And I said I'm going to stand at Texas Relays. So I started telling everyone, ‘I’m going to stand at Texas Relays,’ and they were looking at me like, ‘hmmm, yeah, you might want to try rolling over first.’”
Propelled by her relentless perseverance, Kearney began her long road back. Utilizing the medical expertise available to her at the university, she did much of the exhaustive rehabilitation process on her own. Just three months later, she rolled into practice on her wheelchair.
“It was unbelievable,” Kearney said of her first day back on the track. “All I kept thinking about was when I was in the hospital and not even being able to move my own legs. People had to move my legs for me.” Her athletes described her return as the most joyous day of their lives. But keeping true to her promise, she did her practice appearance one better at the 2003 Texas Relays just a month later. In front of a near-capacity crowd, Kearney stepped out of her wheelchair and took her first steps since the December accident.
“I missed it all,” Kearney said, admitting that she barely noticed the crowd’s enthusiastic reception. “I set a goal in my heart and was so focused on it, that I missed the moment sharing it with others.”
Her condition has improved dramatically since; now, she requires just a single cane to assist with her mobility. But even that is something she soon hopes will be a necessity of the past. “I’m down to just one cane, and hopefully I’ll be able to get rid of that too.”
Here experiences and struggle inspired the documentary, The Road Back: The Bev Kearney Story. Kearney said it wasn’t easy watching herself as the film’s subject.
“It was hard to watch it, because you don’t see yourself as heroic or strong. For me, the journey still continues. The most touching component to me, as someone who’s been inspired by others, is to hear that you’ve inspired them.”
Obviously, the accident has changed her outlook on life, both on and off the track.
“I think that when you literally died, it gives you a different perspective of stress. Now I stop myself from stressing. You don’t worry about things the way you used to. And you learn that the impossible is possible. It gives me more motivation to motivate, to help others achieve things they know in their heart.”
Kearney said that she primarily looks at what is inside an athlete to see what their true potential as athletes can be. “I look for an inner motivation. Then I help empower them to believe in themselves. Once you establish that, you have a partnership.”
“My coaching philosophy,” she continues, “has always been different, and after the accident it’s been accepted as being different. I utilize the physical component to back up what I see initially. I coach the person first, and the event second.”
Most recently, her brightest international successes continued at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, where her charges Sanya Richards and Moushaumi Robinson helped the US squad to a gold medal in the 4x400m relay.
“She’s had a terrific career so far,” Kearney said of Richards, who now trains with Clyde Hart. “She’s one of the most motivated athletes I’ve ever seen. She ran five quarters in Athens. For a 19-year-old, that’s so impressive.”
Richards, who set several US junior and NCAA records while under Kearney’s watchful eye, had nothing but the fondest of memories of working with her former coach.
“What I heard before I came here was that Bev was all about business,” Richards said in The Road Back. “But what a lot of people don’t see is the side of her that’s just nurturing and so caring. I always feel like I’m one of her daughters. She loves us all as if we were her daughters.”
Freeman too echoed Richards’ sentiments. “My mother passed away,” in the accident, she said, “but I got a second mom. Bev Kearney is like my second mom. She's there with me through thick and thin.”
While flattered, Kearney agrees with the characterizations.
“First and foremost I have to coach from a position of love. You have to have a love for people, feel it in your heart. When I think of my mother, I think of love. That bonds relationships that last, even after they’re done competing.”
Kearney has a difficult time picking one performance or accomplishment by her athletes that stands out as a favourite. There are better ways, she believes of remembering her athletes’ feats.
“It’s really hard to say that ‘that was it, that was the best,’ after so many Olympic medallists and national champions. But I can remember their faces. When you see someone win an Olympic medal or break a World record, you remember the expressions on their face, and you want to see it over and over again. I don’t know where half the medals are, but I still see their faces after they accomplished what they set out to do.”
Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 2 - 2005
