Georganne Moline, right, talks with Sharrieffa Barksdale, left, and other Olympians at the Maximum Velocity Track & Field Academy at Centre College. (Larry Vaught Photo)
When hurdler Georganne Moline made the 2012 USA Olympic team, the first person she met was Sharrieffa Barksdale, a 1984 Olympian who is now a manager with USA Track and Field to help athletes on their Olympic journey.
Like Moline, Barksdale was also a 400-meter hurdler.
“That was just a common denominator between us,” said Moline. “Whatever teams I made, she was always there to support me.”
That’s why when Barksdale asked her to come to Centre College to work as a clinician at the 12th annual Maximum Velocity Track & Field Academy along with a bevy of other Olympians, she said yes.
“She reached out and asked me if I wanted to come to Kentucky and I said I would love to give back to the sport that gave me so much,” said Moline, a University of Arizona graduate from Montana.
The 2024 Olympics in Paris are less than two months away and Moline said that can be “tough” on athletes like her.
“What I found for me is that there’s this part of excitement about the Olympics but also the sadness because I want to get back out there representing my country,” Moline, who has a personal best of 53.14 seconds in the 400 hurdles, said. “I’m still trying to find that place in the middle where I’m still really excited because I know how it changed my life and I’m excited for all my friends and everyone making their very first team or second or third team.
“But there’s also this really hard aspect to it too. So it brings out a lot of emotions.”
This week Moline has had a chance to inspire 167 campers of various ages at Centre College by sharing not only her techniques but her life lessons.
“I really want just to be that relatable aspect or be that relatable piece?” she said when the camp started Wednesday. “For me, I was never the number one athlete coming out of high school or even college. I was always the underdog. I had never seen a weight room until college and then I ended up being like the strongest pound for pound on my entire team.
“I want to be able to bring that it doesn’t matter when you start. You don’t have to be the greatest at such a young age for you to make it really big. So being able to do that but also show them the importance of some of the basic small details of a warm up and how a warm up really changed my career when I learned how to actually like perfect a warm up.
“Just being able to really get in there and understand mechanics and really pay attention to the small details because the small details are actually the really big things in the end that makes those big differences.”
The youngsters at the track camp reacted in a big way when Moline and the other Olympic clinicians were introduced to them. Moline said she was kind of the same way when she made the Olympic team.
“I think when I first made the Olympics, that was when I had realized, ‘Wow, I am one of these people.’ So I think it’s really turned into more of like a great reunion here to see your friends. We’re all on the same level. We’ve all had different experiences, but it’s more like I respect every single one of them,” Moline said.
“I think it’s more respect and it’s just so great to see them because I know a lot of their struggles. I’ve sat with them while they were having injuries and while I had injuries and we were crying together.”
Moline thinks fans and/or media cannot understand it is not always a life of only high moments for even an Olympic athlete.
“I think there’s so many more lows and then they turned into highs. I had to pull out the 2016 Olympics because I injured my back,” she said. “It was only weeks before the Trials and it’s like, ‘Why do they have to happen then?’ But it ended up being one of the greatest blessings to me,” Moline said. “Only small things are highlighted, but behind the scenes you’re pushing yourself mentally, physically past anything you can possibly even comprehend.
“I look back and I’m like,’ How did I even do that? How did I make it through mentally and physically?’ I have no idea but somehow I did and it’s really shaped who I am today.”
