My sister, Joy,was aptly named.
My sister, Joy, was aptly named. I’m fifteen years her junior, so I looked up to her from a very young age. There was Dance with Joy - a dance class she started in our elementary school years for my sister, Merry, our friends, and me. Then there were her Joyful Notes - notecards she made of three modern dancers mid-pose. Her talent was limitless, and her joy for life was contagious.
Joy was the reason I came back to track after college. She believed I had more “left” - that I should see what I was capable of. In 2000, she introduced me to the coach who made all the difference for my career - Edrick Floreal, then the assistant track and field coach at Stanford University.
Sundays with the Jackrabbits
At the time, Joy’s daughters, Sunny and Windy, were young and we were all very close. I would spend many Sundays watching Windy while Joy was coaching her Jackrabbits Track Club with Sunny and her friends. Windy is about seven years younger than Sunny.
When Sunny started high school, I was in the prime of my athletic career. Fortunately, I lived close, and every chance I had I would help coach her in the long jump. I loved coaching Sunny. She was talented and determined, and she took in everything we worked on. It was a special time for us - one-on-one time with one of my favorite people in the world, trying to help her get better with the knowledge and experience I had gained along the way.
Learning to adapt
When Windy started high school, I was a new mom and had been out of the sport for about five years. Coaching Windy was a different experience than coaching her sister, and it taught me just how important it is to adapt as a coach. Both girls were so talented - in such different ways.
Windy was strong-willed, which reminded me a lot of myself, and it pushed me to grow as a coach. Together we found the rhythm and the communication style that worked best for us. Coaching Windy became more about the mental skills, while coaching Sunny stayed relatively centered on the technical aspects. Both Sunny and Windy were integral in helping me lay my foundation of coaching.