The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

THE old adage better late than never aptly fits female 400 metres hurdles specialist Katrina Seymour.

After a brief at a junior college didn’t work out and being diagnosed by doctors with a heart murmur that should have prevented her from competing again, Seymour has defied the odds.

She now has her bags packed and is getting ready to return to the United States on January 4 - three days before her 23rd birthday - to continue her education on a full athletic scholarship to East Tennessee State on the Bucs track and field team as one of the 22 student-athletes announced recently by director of track and field George Watts to join the ETSU programme this year.

“I’m excited. I’m just looking forward to the experience because I never ran in college. I never had the indoor or outdoor experience, so I’m just ready to expect the unexpected,” said Seymour in an interview with The Tribune over the Christmas holiday. 

Although she attended Essex Country Junior College in New Jersey for one semester, Seymour didn’t make it on the track, but she’s delighted that she has been given another chance to display her skills. And as she prepares to leave, she has some lofty goals she wants to attain.

“I want to qualify for the (NCAA) Nationals and run fast every meet,” Seymour said. “The coach is interested in me running fast, breaking their records, going to nationals and doing something awesome there.”

Seymour credited coaches Shaun and Mabeline Miller for sticking with her when it seemed as if everywhere she turned, there was a stumbling block. She recalled how May Miller assisted her in getting her paralegal associate degree and now she has the opportunity to pursue her degree in criminal justice and law enforcement as she fulfills her ultimate goal of getting into “law.”

On the athletic side, Seymour will be going to ETSU with a personal best of 57.24 seconds that she ran at the 2011 Central American and Caribbean Championships in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, but she’s hoping that she can drop that down to about 54. She also has a trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August to wear the aquamarine, gold and black uniform as a representative of Team Bahamas at the 2016 Olympic Games - the first for the country. She will have to run at least 56.2 in order to book her ticket.

“I am going to make it big. I’m going to be the first Bahamian female quarter-miler to make it to the Olympics and medal,” she said. “I’m just interested in running fast and winning as many races as I can. I already missed the last Olympics because of a situation, so I don’t want to make it again. I just need to be more focused, more disciplined and improve on my eating habits.”

Those are not the only adjustments that Seymour has had to make in her career. She remembered when she competed for Club Monica with coach Dianne Woodside as a 400m runner. While watching her former coach - who also ran the hurdles - work out with her team-mates, Seymour asked Woodside jokingly if “she can try the hurdles. She just laughed and said ‘you can try tomorrow.’”

As it turned out, Seymour took up Woodside’s offer and once she got started in 2011, she broke the Bahamas junior national record in the 400m hurdles in her first event and as they say, the rest was history.

“I don’t have no regrets at all. Sometimes when I fall, I used to say why am I doing this, but I just love it,” she stated. “The 400 is still a part of my résumé. But to run a good 400, I have to run an awesome 400m hurdles.”

She has done a PR of 54.89 in the one lap race that was done in 2009 in Clermont, Florida, and even though she looks forward to running a leg on the exciting 4 x 400m relay whenever the opportunity presents itself, Seymour said her main focus is on running the 400m hurdles. She even had some advice for those Bahamians who are still at home waiting on their chance to achieve their goals of getting off to school.

“Situations happen in life. Sometimes things may go unplanned and we get discouraged and we feel like the whole world is against us and the weight is so heavy. I want to encourage those out there that once you still have life, you can do anything and you can be anyone you want to be in this life. Just go out there and make it happen.”

A lot of her success has been attributed to coaches Woodside and Shaun and May Miller, especially the Millers, who believed in her when nobody else did.

“I remind myself a lot of the movie “Seabiscuit” where there was a race horse that wasn’t anymore good to the owner. The owner wanted to kill the horse, but someone else came along and wanted to buy the horse. They teamed up together and got the horse, took care of it and they trained it. The moral of the story is that the horse eventually went into the race as an underdog and it came out victorious, winning every race. It was a legend horse.

“Coach Miller and Mrs Miller took me in after I went there with a heart murmur and they worked with me. I remember at the beginning of every season, coach Miller used to tell me ‘Katrina, there’s no time to play this season. You don’t have anymore excuses, no more feeling sorry for yourself or about what anybody has to say about you.’ I just appreciate them so much.”

In 2012 when she enrolled at Essex Community College, Seymour said she was diagnosed with the heart murmur. That eventually forced her to return home after there were some concerns from the athletic coaches. But despite what she encountered, Seymour said she continued to press on and she persevered and has been given a clean bill of health.

“It’s awesome. I’m running faster than I did before,” she said. “Do I look like someone with a heart problem? It was undetectable after I did my last test.”

The former CI Gibson Rattlers standout, who went on to compete for the Comets at Queen’s College where she graduated in 2011, is the daughter of Bernadette Bodie from Exuma and George Seymour from Cat Island. She also has an adopted mother, Palmist Monique Curry, who played an influential part in her spiritual life after she joined the fellowship at First Baptist Church.

She also has five siblings, inclusive of two sisters and three brothers. Surprisingly, she’s the only athletic member of the family and by going off to school, she also intends to make them proud. While she had her chance to eat her ham and turkey on Christmas Day, Seymour said it was a busy one because the Millers held practice early that morning for their track club. She did, however, avoid going to Bay Street because she’s not much of a night person and so she cheered for her favourite group - Boxing Day champions Valley Boys - from home.

“I’m just excited for the experience. I’m going in with no idea what to expect, but I’m looking forward to great things for myself,” she said. “I’m ready to go to war. I want to go out there and leave my imprint and open the door for other Bahamian athletes to be able to get a scholarship.”