Four Long Beach State athletes have traveled to Austin this week for the NCAA Track & Field Championships, but one of them has traveled much further than that. Redshirt junior Raleigh Adams has barely run during his four-year career at the school due to multiple injuries. Still, a confluence of opportunity and inspired performances have put him in the school record books and hoping for a big week in Texas.<\/p>\n
It might be seen as a surprise that an athlete who has missed over two full seasons with injuries would currently hold a national top 10 time in the 110 hurdles, but LBSU coaches don\u2019t see it that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not shocking, it\u2019s just that it\u2019s about time,\u201d said associate head coach LaTanya Sheffield. \u201cWhat\u2019s happening for Raleigh right now is absolutely fate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfulfilled Promise<\/strong><\/p>\n Adams grew up in Northern California, the son of a hurdles coach. As a kid, Adams gravitated to the sport but showed no interest in entering the family business of hurdling for his first several years, preferring to sprint without the jumping. Then, as a fifth grader, all that changed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were working out and my dad had a hurdler on his team who was really good, he was a senior and I was in fifth grade,\u201d remembered Adams. \u201cI was talking trash to him and he told me I couldn\u2019t hurdle, ever since that day I wanted to make sure to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t easy. His father brought home hurdles from school and worked him out in the backyard but Adams\u2019 slight stature delayed his career. He wasn\u2019t even five feet tall when he began high school and wasn\u2019t allowed to hurdle for his high school team until his junior year when he finally reached 5-foot-7.<\/p>\n He showed enough promise in the event that Sheffield and Long Beach State head coach Andy Sythe brought him South on scholarship.\u00a0What occurred over the next three years was one injury after another. First, his freshman year, he tore one hamstring. The next year, he tore the other hamstring. The year after, he had a hyperextension. The result was a supremely talented athlete who missed the entire 2017 season, then came back and set an indoor school record in 2018, and then missed the entire outdoor season in the spring.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mom and dad were like, \u2018Maybe this isn\u2019t for you,\u2019\u201d Adams said with a laugh. He said the tears in his hamstrings felt like being stabbed with a knife and the recovery from the injuries was just as painful. So was keeping up his fitness as he rehabbed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve come a long way on this journey,\u201d said Sheffield. \u201cHe was vomiting every day at the end of practice.\u201d<\/p>\n For the 2019 season, Sheffield and Sythe made the decision to take the stress off. She took him out of the 110-meter hurdles altogether in favor of the 400-meter hurdles, a longer race but one with lower hurdles. Adams, a bright personality on the team, kept a good sense of humor. When Sheffield suggested a particularly difficult workout he\u2019d joke that she was scaring his hamstrings. He managed to remain a leader on the team despite not competing much, running just three races before the start of the postseason.<\/p>\n \u201cRaleigh is just one of those exceptional individuals,\u201d said Sythe. \u201cFriendly, happy, life is good, type of guy. His personality unites and excites people. But it was his personality, not his performances.\u201d<\/p>\n Preparation Meets Opportunity<\/strong><\/p>\n Adams said he had more or less made his peace with the end of his track and field career. Although it\u2019s his redshirt junior season, he treated it like a senior campaign, preparing to graduate in the Fall and move on with his life.<\/p>\n \u201cI wore my senior shirt, I did our senior presentation for the team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Then a teammate broke his foot, leaving Long Beach State without a 110-meter hurdler going into the conference championships, where the team title would be decided by a few points. Adams told Sheffield he wanted to give it a go.<\/p>\n At first, she was hesitant; there was a reason she\u2019d taken him out of the event. Adams isn\u2019t even six feet tall and the 110-hurdles stand at three and a half feet. It\u2019s hard for anyone to sprint while clearing them, much less someone who\u2019s torn both hamstrings.<\/p>\n \u201cHis knee has to come all the way up to his chest, and that leaves the hamstring very vulnerable,\u201d said Sheffield. \u201cMentally, it\u2019s very difficult to know that you\u2019re putting yourself in that position, and I had to know he could overcome that. But he made up his mind, he said, \u2018I can do it,\u2019 and I said, \u2018OK, go do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Adams went out and ran a 14.16 in the Big West Conference prelims, advancing him to the Finals. In the championship race he ran a 13.83, the fastest time run by a Long Beach State athlete in more than two decades. His silver medal performance helped earn Long Beach a Big West team championship.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s exceeded all expectations,\u2019\u201d said Sythe.<\/p>\n In the two weeks since Adams got faster competing at the NCAA Prelims in Sacramento. His time of 13.59 broke a 47-year-old school record and established him as the best LBSU athlete ever in the exact event that had tortured him throughout his career. It also punched his ticket to the NCAA Finals.<\/p>\n \u201cYou couldn\u2019t write a story like that and have it be believable,\u201d said Sythe. “\u201cThere isn\u2019t a person on this team who isn\u2019t on the Raleigh bandwagon right now.”<\/p>\n There are only four other athletes still competing who have run a faster time than Adams\u2019 season best, and he has a very realistic shot to advance out of Wednesday evening\u2019s prelims round to the championship race on Friday. The last month has changed everything for Adams who is now planning on delaying graduation, spreading his classes out over two semesters next year to allow him to compete in his redshirt senior season.<\/p>\n \u201cI always wanted this as my college experience but it just took time,\u201d Adams said. \u201cSometimes things don\u2019t happen when we want them to, then there\u2019s that one opportunity and boom, it all makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Sheffield said that Adams has handled his entire journey with style and class, helping her coach and keeping the mood light while he was injured and pushing himself over the last month to mark his name in the school\u2019s history books.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had some tough times and some tough days,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is a Cinderella story. He was cleaning the floors, he had some wicked stepsisters in his head at times. But he\u2019s made it to the ball!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cYou couldn\u2019t write a story like that and have it be believable.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":16384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-instagram","tag-lbsu-athletics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}