Getting senior Carly Clemons on the track wasn’t an easy process but once there it turned her athletic life around.
“In seventh grade the track coach asked me if I’d be interested in coming out and I said, ‘No thanks.’ But by eighth grade I decided I’d give it a try. ‘It’s just one season so it won’t be that bad’ I thought. But I ended up being in the top three in every meet we went to, and I realized ‘Hey, I’m not that bad’ and I developed a real passion for running,” said Carly who also plays basketball for the Lady Tigers. “Running just makes me happier than basketball where we’ve had some struggles over the past few years. Track is something where you can always get better and have fun,” said Carly who also runs cross country.
COVID wiped out track her freshman year, but her sophomore year brought some excitement and memories.
“I qualified for state my sophomore year and ran a :64 in the 400-meter sprint and that’s the proudest moment of my track time at Cushing. Our 4X100 relay team also got sixth that year which was exciting,” said Clemons who is also a football team manager and part of the new girls powerlifting program.
As a senior, Carly has been tasked with a leadership role that’s a little unusual according to her coach Kalie Vernon.
“We’ve broken the team into sprinters and distance runners and Carly’s group of sprinters also has some boys in it,” said Vernon.
Carly acknowledges that sometimes the guys try to take some short cuts which she discourages.
“Sometimes they’ll come out and I’ll have to get on them about doing their warmup laps and stretches before practice but they’re usually pretty good about listening,” she chuckled.
Last year Carly qualified for state in the 100-meter sprint and the relays and is ready to take it even further this year running in the 200 and 400m sprints and 4X100 and 4X200 relays.
“Of course, my first big goal is to qualify for state again and I’ll be really sad if for some reason I don’t. But once I get there, I want to run another :64 in the 400 and get to the podium.”
Carly will continue her sprinting and studies next year at UCO.
Leading her team and always striving to improve are areas where Carly Clemons shows that character counts.
