By Hunter Jacobson |
There was no cake for Tina Francisco's 19th birthday. There was no party and there were no presents. Francisco traded in her birthday hat for track spikes and a chance to compete against some of the fastest runners in the world at the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Track & Field Championships in Portland on March 18. She lined up at the starting block, put her fingers on the white chalk line and waited for the gun to sound. Now, she's being considered to represent her native Guam at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Francisco, a freshman biology major at the University of Portland, represented Guam in the 400-meter race. She was the youngest of the 19 athletes competing in her event.
“Sitting there, already I was just shaking and sweating,” Francisco said of the seemingly endless wait for the start of the race.
Francisco admitted that she had nearly forgotten that the day of the race was also her birthday.
“I just remember going in being really, really focused,” Francisco said. “(I focused on) controlling my breathing and making sure I didn’t deplete my adrenaline before the actual race.”
She kept her concentration the way she would before any other race, she put her headphones on and drowned out the distractions. But this wasn’t any other race.
While most of her competitors had been training for this event for years, Francisco didn’t know that she would be running track at UP until just before the 2015-16 school year, let alone know that she would be going to Worlds.
An email from her high school track coach took Francisco from a college track athlete, to a track athlete with a chance to do what few 19 year olds get to do. She had a chance to represent her country doing what she loves — running. Shortly after, her spot in Worlds was set.
Guam has a population of only 165,000. It’s small, but running there is anything but.
“Running is a very important sport in Guam,” Francisco said. “(There’s) 5K’s all the time, you see marathons, and track in Guam is such a friendly sport.”
Over the years Francisco has represented her middle school, high school and the University of Portland, but now she finds herself representing something much bigger.
With her ticket to Worlds punched, Francisco would only have one month to prepare for the 400-meter race.
“I was definitely caught off guard,” Francisco said. “I just went in with the shape that I’m in now, just seeing what I could do.”
This trip to worlds came as a surprise to Francisco’s coaches as well, who would now have just a month to get one of their athletes ready for a competition that they didn’t have on their schedule to start the season. Not only was time short, but indoor season for UP track was over and they had transitioned to training for the outdoor season. Francisco would run indoors at Worlds, so she had to juggle her indoor and outdoor training in the month before the event.
“In the outdoor season she’s a 400-meter hurdler, which is a different training than what she was doing for the 400,” sprints coach Chad Colwell said. “So we had to alter back and forth from 400 hurdle training to 400 training.”
With her short month of preparation in the books it was time.
In the tunnel at the Convention Center, Francisco saw a sign that asked one simple question. ‘Ready to see the world?’ Ready or not, she was about to take the track as a representative of Guam, lined up next to runners from all over the world, with a crowd of 4,000 people looking on.
Once she was on the track her job was simple: run. That was her sole focus and she was never distracted by any thoughts on the track.
“I can’t remember what I was feeling while I was running,” Francisco said. “All I know is I couldn’t have run any faster otherwise I would have.”
She did run fast, finishing the 400-meter race in 1:00.08, which was enough to set a Guam national record in that event. Still, Francisco still felt like she left with unfinished business.
“To be honest it wasn’t my best race,” she said. “I was actually hoping to run a faster time (and) break 59:00.”
Out of all of the athletes who finished the race, Francisco had the slowest time. But because of her national record, she is being considered to represent Guam at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. One male and one female will run for Guam in Rio this summer and Francisco is one of only a few women being considered for the spot.
“They’re going to be looking at times that I run,” Francisco said. “So this season that I’m in right now is important because the times that I run are what is going to be considered.”
The uncertainty surrounding a trip to the Olympics could be unnerving to some, but Francisco sees it as an opportunity to make herself better.
“My next step would be training as if I were going,” Francisco said. “So I’m gonna continue to train every day and go hard.”
If she is chosen for the Olympics she will find herself in a familiar spot — with very little time to prepare for a big event. If she is chosen, she has the full support of the UP track & field.
“If she gets selected in June then her race will be in early August,” Colwell said. “So then we have to modify training, keep her healthy, and then work on training all the way through August.”
Francisco and her coaches plan on investing a lot of time into the training process, but in the end they all know that for a 19-year-old at the Olympics it’s about more than just numbers.
“To represent your country at the Olympics is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Colwell said. “That is way more significant than the time or the performance than she will have there, she’ll always get to be an Olympian from that point forward.”
Francisco couldn’t help but smile as she imagined receiving the news that she would be representing Guam at the Olympics. After breaking the Guam national record, she has her eyes set on bigger things for the Olympic stage.
“Records are only meant to be broken,” she said. “Breaking a record isn’t what you want to do, you want to run your fastest time and break your own PR.”
Hunter Jacobson is a sports reporter for The Beacon and can be reached at jacobsoh19@up.edu or on Twitter @huntre23.
