“It’s just practice,” Bree said.
“Not for Jannie,” I said.
“Let’s take it to seventy-five percent, ladies,” Greene said when they were lined up shoulder to shoulder. “Three, two, one, go.”
The older girls took off in short, choppy strides that soon opened into longer bounds and a less frenzied rhythm. Jannie seemed to come up to speed effortlessly but lagged a few feet behind the nineteen-year-old and was two yards behind the all-American trio entering the backstretch.
Jannie stayed right there until she’d rounded the near turn, picked up her pace slightly coming down the stretch,
and finished just off the shoulder of the nineteen-year-old. She was four paces off the older girls, who were breathing hard. Two of them looked at Jannie and nodded.
No smile from my daughter, just a nod back.
The second quarter mile, at 85 percent, finished much the same way. Then Greene called for 90 percent effort.
Something about the way Jannie rolled her shoulders back and down let me know that it had become serious now, and even though there were fewer than fifteen people scattered across the bleachers watching, I couldn’t help but stand.
For the first time, Jannie adopted that same chopping fast gait off the line and stayed right with the elite bunch as they rounded the first turn. The older girls picked up the pace down the backstretch. Jannie stayed just off the shoulders of the all-Americans. The nineteen-year-old faded.
My daughter made her move coming into the second turn. She accelerated right by the three and was leading as they entered the stretch.
Even without binoculars, you could see the disbelief on the faces of the older girls, followed by the grit and determination that had gotten them close to the pinnacle of their sport. They poured it on, and two of them ran Jannie down and passed her before the finish. But my girl was a stride behind them and a stride ahead of one of the national-class athletes coming across the line.
Chapter
76
“That was a race!” Ali said.
“Jannie made it a race,” Pinkie said, smiling. “Oh my God, she’s good.”
“Dr. Cross?” a man said, coming across the grandstand toward us. Clad in unmarked gray sweats and a blue hoodie, he was in his fifties, a welterweight redhead with a rooster’s confident manner. “I’m Ted McDonald. To be honest, I came here to watch one of the other girls, but I’d very much like to talk to you about Jannie.”
“What about Jannie?” Nana Mama asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
McDonald glanced at the track where Greene and another, older woman in warm-ups were talking to the girls. “I’m a track coach, and a scout of sorts. I’d like to share something with you and Jannie, but let’s do it after Coach Greene and Coach Fall have had a chance to talk with you. Would that work out?”
“Before we leave Durham today, you mean?”
“I know a great place for a lunch that will help Jannie nutritionally recover from that workout,” McDonald said. “My treat?”
I glanced at Bree and Nana Mama, shrugged, said, “Sure. Why not.”
“Great, I’ll find you in the parking lot,” he said. He smiled and handed me a card that read Ted McDonald, Extreme Performance Systems. Austin, Toronto, Palo Alto.
McDonald shook my hand, went back up into the bleachers, and put his hood up. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I started to Google him and his company. Before I could get the names typed in on my phone, up came Coach Greene and the older woman in sweats, Duke’s head coach, Andrea Fall.
After introductions and handshakes, Coach Fall said, “I was skeptical after the invitational and more so after Coach Greene’s descriptions of Jannie’s running in the two-hundred, but now I’m a believer. How are her grades?”
“Outstanding,” Nana Mama said. “She’s a worker.”
“That makes things a lot easier,” Coach Fall said. “I’d like to formally offer your daughter a full-ride scholarship to Duke when she’s ready to attend.”
“What?” I said, dumbfounded.
“Jannie can’t officially answer my offer until February of her senior year, but I wanted it on the table as the first of what I assume will be many offers,” Coach Fall said.
“She’s that good?” Bree asked in wonder.