Everything Monique Henderson has accomplished so far at UCLA may
soon be no more than a scintillating opening act. Her Olympic gold
medal. The blazing anchor leg she ran to clinch the NCAA team title
last June. The way she silenced her legion of critics a year ago by
zooming to the top of UCLA’s all-time list in the 400 meters
and re-emerging as a force on the international scene. All that
could be the prelude to the next few months for Henderson.
That’s when the senior plans to make her assault on the NCAA
record in the 400 meters, qualify for the World Championships in
Finland, and establish herself as one of the greatest collegiate
quarter-milers of all time. “By the end of the summer, I want
to leave my mark on women’s collegiate track,”
Henderson said. Don’t bet against her. Henderson, an
eight-time All-American, boasts the third-fastest time in the world
this year in the 400 meters ““ 50.91 seconds. That’s
less than one second slower than former Alabama sprinter Pauline
Davis’ collegiate-record time of 50.18 seconds that she ran
at the NCAA Championships in 1987. Davis, a two-time Olympic gold
medalist for the Bahamas, is convinced that the way Henderson has
run the past two years, her record is living on borrowed time.
“If she runs the way she is capable at NCAAs, she’ll
get the record,” Davis said. “But she can’t think
about chasing the record. She has to stay relaxed, and it will
come.”
A slow start There was a time when few would have believed
Henderson ever would be within striking distance of the collegiate
record. Two years ago, a few weeks removed from a discouraging
seventh-place finish in the 400 meters at the NCAA Championships,
Henderson’s fading star seemed to burn out on U.S. track and
field’s biggest stage. She finished dead last in the
semifinals of the U.S. National Championships in a pedestrian 54.31
seconds ““ nearly four seconds slower than her fastest time in
high school. “That was a blow to my spirit,” Henderson
said. Worse yet, it compelled some within track and field circles
to dismiss her as just another burnout talent in a sport already
overrun with young phenoms who didn’t pan out. Publications
that had anointed Henderson as the sport’s next superstar
when she was winning four consecutive state titles at Morse High
School in San Diego speculated that she was washed up by the age of
20. Henderson’s peers wondered if she would ever live up to
her press clippings, and opposing coaches used her failures as a
way of swaying top recruits away from UCLA. “From the
articles I read and things I heard, I could tell a lot of people
were doubting me,” Henderson said. “People started to
cast me aside and say I was done, and I couldn’t blame
them.” It was a storm of criticism the prideful Henderson was
unprepared to cope with at the time, having never experienced
adversity in the sport before. A media darling since the fifth
grade, when she smashed the world record for her age group in the
400 meters, Henderson had been running under 51 seconds since she
was 17 years old, and lost only one meaningful race in high school.
But publicly, Henderson kept her poise as always, adamantly denying
that the criticism had any effect on her. To her closest friends,
however, she admitted it hurt her deeply. Her pride wounded and her
confidence shattered, she leaned on her two most trustworthy
confidantes ““ her father, Adam Henderson, and Jeanette
Bolden, her coach at UCLA. “I told her if you don’t
have a lot of confidence in yourself, that’s fine,”
Bolden said. “I have enough confidence in you for both of us.
You’re still Monique Henderson. Talent doesn’t just
disappear.” Still uncertain, Henderson took a few weeks off
and returned home to San Diego to contemplate her future in the
sport. The first few days, she continued to sulk. But gradually,
after a series of long conversations with her father, her
determination and enthusiasm for track and field returned.
Henderson immediately began getting in shape again, running hills
in the neighborhood or working out at a local park. By the time she
returned to UCLA to begin her junior year in the fall of 2004,
Henderson no longer dwelled on the failures of her first two
seasons. “I learned to use the downs and the losses as
motivation,” she said. To say the least, it has been
effective. An improved attitude and a few extra hours in the weight
room each week produced improved results almost immediately. First
came a world-leading mark in the 400 meters at the USC-UCLA dual
meet in April of 2004. Then four Pac-10 titles and a new
lifetime-best time at the West Regionals in Northridge one month
later. And finally, the fastest split in collegiate history on the
anchor leg of UCLA’s 4×400-meter relay at the NCAA
Championships last June. But the culmination of Henderson’s
season, of course, was her performance at the Olympic Games last
August. Four years earlier, as the youngest member of the U.S.
relay pool in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, she
wasn’t given the chance to make her Olympic debut. But U.S.
coaches had more faith in her at the 2004 Games in Athens, Greece,
and she turned in the fastest leg for the U.S. 4×400-meter relay in
the semifinals and finals, helping the team win a gold medal.
“I succeeded on the world’s stage with the best women
in the world in the highest-pressure situation any athlete can
face,” she said. “There’s nothing that should
make me nervous or frighten me at this point.”
Chasing the record It has been eight months since Henderson
stood atop the medal podium in Athens, and besides her well-coifed
hair and the gold chain around her neck, she hardly resembles the
sprinter who struggled so terribly earlier in her career. Her scowl
has vanished. Her swagger is back. And each time she bursts out of
the blocks, glides around a turn or powers down a straightway, she
runs with a purpose. “She feels that she has a lot more to
achieve in college,” Bolden said. “Because she did not
succeed her first two years here, she feels like she has something
to prove. She’s probably going to feel that way for a long
time.” And there lies the inspiration for Henderson’s
quest to break the collegiate record this season. The incentive for
Henderson to train hard and stay focused each week isn’t to
beat her top collegiate competitors. Now that Olympic relay
teammates DeeDee Trotter and Sanya Richards have opted to run
professionally, she can probably do that at less than full
strength. Instead, what Henderson is working for this year is to be
able to challenge Davis’ record and consistently run under 50
seconds in the 400 meters because that is what it may take to earn
a trip to the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland.
“It’s a goal that I have for this year,”
Henderson said. “Whether it happens at the end of the
collegiate season, or in the regular outdoor season, who knows? But
it’s definitely a set goal.” The idea that the
collegiate record could be within her reach had already entered her
mind last summer, when she met Davis for the first time at the U.S.
Olympic Trials in Sacramento. Davis, who coaches Monique Hennigan,
another U.S. 400-meter star, approached Henderson while the Bruin
senior was waiting for drug testing and introduced herself.
Henderson smiled graciously. “I know who you are,”
Henderson said. Since that brief encounter, Henderson has only
grown more determined. She has worked on her speed to become a more
versatile sprinter, posting top times in the 100 and 200 meters.
But her forte remains the 400 meters. Her season-best this year in
that race came in late April, the earliest that she has ever run
below 51 seconds. “She may even be a little ahead of
schedule,” Bolden conceded. Henderson isn’t the first
sprinter to take aim at Davis’ record over the last 18 years.
Davis thought former Auburn All-American Juliet Campbell would best
her time at the NCAA Championships in 1993, and she is certain
Trotter and Richards would have done it next month had they both
stayed in college. But since they’re both gone, it’s up
to Henderson, Davis says. And so far, Henderson seems to be up to
the challenge. Only Richards and Hennigan have run faster than her
so far this year, and no other collegiate athlete has consistently
run under 52 seconds. Her most ardent supporter may be Davis.
Though she and Henderson have not spoken since last summer, Davis
said she is hoping the young sprinter will call her in a few weeks
to tell her the record has finally been broken. “A record is
not meant to sit there for a lifetime,” Davis said.
“I’d be very happy if she did it. It’s
time.”