When I was in the tenth grade in high school, I was a sprinter on the Memphis Tech High School track team. Back then, tenth grade was the first year of high school, so I was a real rookie on the track team.

I had been running:
- The one hundred yard dash.
- I was also running on the sprint relay teams.
- In addition, I was doing the long jump and the high jump.

One day in a practice track meet, the coach suddenly decided to try me in the two hundred and twenty yard dash. I had never run this event before, so the coach called me aside to get me ready to run the race. He told me that he had noticed in the sprint relay events that I was running “the curve” well… and so he thought I would do well in the two-twenty. “In fact,” he said, “I am expecting you to win this event.”

He said: “Now, J…