Mods ... sorry, I should have placed this in Track and Field thread originally ...
Published: 01:00 AM, Wed Jun 09, 2010
Campbell's Adoniss Jones has taken long, hard road to nationalsBy Kevin Minogue
Staff writer
In an empty field in Buies Creek, adjacent to a parking lot and an office building, three tattered pieces of rubber synthetic mark the training ground for the Campbell track team.
While the team awaits the completion of a new track, they make do with these several strips of tartan - two of them pitch black, the other a faded maroon - that have been laid together to form a makeshift track.
These segments' path through the patch of grass is not a constant one, with the bends and meanders of an aging surface easily visible.
The incongruent pieces don't always fit together snugly through the course of the strip, leaving inch-wide chasms that make this improvised track look more like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle than a practice surface.
None of those competing in the 110-meter hurdles at Thursday's Division I NCAA Track & Field Championship could imagine training on a surface like this every day, save for one.
Seeded 24th in a 24-man field, Campbell's Adoniss Jones will not have practiced clearing the race's 10 successive hurdles since his last competition, the NCAA East Regional, almost two weeks ago.
That's because the Campbell strip only has room for five.
But on Thursday, Jones is out to prove that practice materials don't make perfect.
"It doesn't matter what you have," Jones says. "It's not the tools that make the craftsman. It's the craftsman that makes the tools and does the job."
Before construction of a new $1.2 million dollar facility forced the team to use an improvised practice strip, Camels' coach Jim Patchell had difficulty attracting recruits with Campbell's substandard facilities.
So before showing prospects Campbell's previous track, a lopsided and heavily-worn rubber oval, Patchell would ask the high schoolers in attendance one question.
"Ever seen Rocky IV?"
Patchell would then go on to explain how Rocky Balboa, using only the amenities available in his Philadelphia basement and the Siberian outdoors, knocked out Russian foe Ivan Drago, who trained in a world-class facility in the movie.
Then Patchell would point to the antiquated Campbell track.
"This," he would say, "is the basement in Philadelphia."To Jones, though, it must have looked like Drago's gym.
Tracks were few and far between in Jones' hometown of Toco, located in northeastern Trinidad and Tobago, so he practiced in an open grass field.
Hurdles? They were in short supply, too. If one broke, Jones simply gathered some bricks, propped the obstacle back up and leaped over it again.
Hurdling coaches were rarest of all, so Jones taught himself the basics by studying online videos of U.S. Olympic gold medalist Allen Johnson and other hurdling greats.
Jones' homegrown methods initially brought him huge success, lifting him to a National Junior Championship in the 110-meter hurdles at home in Trinidad, where he also set the the National Junior record in the event.
However, books and the Internet, Jones soon found, were no match for proper coaching.
"It got to the point where I would read and I would realize that I was floating (over hurdles), but I couldn't find a way to reduce it," Jones said.
So in 2006, he e-mailed Patchell, hoping to travel almost 2000 miles to learn how to run 110 meters a few tenths of a second quicker.
But Patchell didn't reply, believing that Jones' high school times weren't fast enough to merit a scholarship.
Then, almost a year after Jones' initial e-mail, one of Jones' coaches urged Patchell to reconsider.
"I know he hasn't run outstanding times, but he's got some talent," the coach, Trevor James, said. "I think you ought to take a chance on him."
Three years later, both Jones and Patchell are glad he did.Since his arrival in the 2007-08 season, Jones has has been central to the Camels' success, winning the Atlantic Sun Championship in the 110-meter hurdles in each of his three years at Campbell.
Now a junior, Jones has also qualified for the event in the NCAA East Regional all three seasons, including this spring's May 29 event.
After viewing the times of the previous two heats, Jones took his place in the last heat of the East Regional finals knowing he would need to break his own Campbell record to place in the top 12 and move on to Nationals.
Jones burst out to an uncharacteristically fast start in the race to take the lead going into the sixth hurdle, but his trail leg clipped hurdle seven, allowing much of the heat to pass him.
But Jones pushed for the tape and finished sixth in his heat in a personal best time of 13.88 to place 12th overall, becoming the first Camel to make Nationals since Sam Tilly in 2007.
Despite a near-costly slip-up at Regionals, Jones said he's not going to let it bother him in Thursday's race in Eugene, Oregon.
He's just going to do things his way.
"It doesn't matter who I compete against. I just go out there and give it my best shot," Jones said. "Knowing that I'm going against the top 24 in the country, I'm just going to go there and run. Somebody has to win."
