Midtown athletes find success in summer track season
August 26, 2022
Senior Kyron Parker and sophomores Danayja Harper and Grace Lisbon all earned spots in the Junior Olympics for track this summer.
Parker, Harper and Lisbon all competed at the Georgia High School Association State Championship for Class 5A. Once the school season was complete, all three pursued summer track.
Parker, who runs the 300m hurdles, the 200m flat and the 400m flat for ATL Zoom, feels he had a good summer track season.
“I made a lot more progress than I did last season, and I ended up going to the Junior Olympics,” Parker said. “It was an achievement because I’ve never been at that level. I’ve only made State for school.”
Allen Rossum, Parker’s coach at ATL Zoom, thinks Parker has improved from past seasons both physically and mentally.
“[Parker] had a number of improvements, not only just his conditioning, but also his technique, his posture and everything changed about how he was running, which helped him to improve his speed,” Rossum said. “But more importantly, I think his mindset changed how he viewed training. It wasn’t a chore to come out there, and he was trying to achieve a purpose.”
Harper, who runs the 400m and 100m hurdles, as well as the 4x400m and 4×100 relays for Track Georgia, finds that the summer track season is more challenging than the school season and as a result, helps prepare her for the school season.
“I feel like [summer track] definitely humbles me because [there’s] way more competition in summer track,” Harper said. “So when I get to school track, I don’t have any nerves or anything like that.”
Harper qualified for the Junior Olympics after a strong track season this summer. She competed in the 400m hurdles, where she finished 8th among 15 and 16 year old girls in the nation, with a time of 1:04.78.
“[The Junior Olympics] just felt like it was where I needed to be at that time,” Harper said. “I didn’t have any nerves because I just felt like I had been preparing myself for this the whole year. It was just time for me to go there and show what I was capable of doing.”
Harper’s coach at Track Georgia, Dennis Crump, believes that Harper’s hunger pushed her far after not being able to place last year.
“Last year at the junior Olympics, she was favored to be top eight, but she false started. She left too early and she got disqualified and it put a determination inside of her that she wanted to come back the next year and work harder,” Crump said. “So she got stronger, she got leaner and she really honed in on her specialty, which was hurdles. She improved by five seconds from the previous year in her hurdles.”
Lisbon, who qualified for the Junior Olympics in the High Jump with Atlanta Lightspeed Track Club, felt knowing she was good enough to be there was a special feeling.
“Last year, I didn’t even make it to the championship meet, but this year just making it past, it felt unreal, especially since this was my first year during High Jump and that was the event I qualified in,” Lisbon said.
Lisbon was dealing with a hip injury in the later part of the summer track season, resulting in her absence at the Junior Olympics, despite qualifying for them.
“[The injury] kind of impacted her to the point where she wasn’t really able to go higher. She didn’t get a chance to really push herself to her highest height,” Marvin Shannon, head coach of Atlanta Lightspeed Track Club, said. “She kind of nursed the injury a little bit, made sure she got herself back to the point where she could still jump, but she couldn’t really push herself this year.”
Nevertheless, Lisbon had a successful season and was able to improve. She believes her enhanced skill set will carry over into the school season.
“I got a new technique in high jump and I feel like this year I’m going to be able to break the school record because of what I learned during summer track,” Lisbon said.
Harper believes that the transition between the school track seasons will be easier, making the season more successful.
“I feel like [summer track] keeps me in shape because I tend to get comfortable with not doing anything very quickly, so it really keeps me on my toes,” Harper said. “Now the off season training isn’t as hard as it would be because I’m already in shape. So I really don’t have to do as much and put as much stress on my body as I would, if I didn’t train the whole summer.”
