SPENCER — Alabama assistant track coach Carryl Smith is rumored to be 31 years old, but on the phone she could pass for LaTasha Pharr’s sister.
Smith, who coaches hurdles, jumps and sprints for the Crimson Tide, and 17-year-old North Rowan track phenom Pharr use the same slang. They talk at the same pace, with the same accent. They even share the same laugh.
“Tasha,” says Smith enthusiastically, “is one of the greatest people I ever met. She’s genuine, smart and funny. She’s sincere. She has a personality that you want to coach.”
And maybe that special chemistry between athlete and coach explains why Pharr visited Texas, Tennessee, Miami and UNC, but chose Alabama as the place to continue her track career. The Tide offered a full athletic scholarship and Pharr committed last week during the NCAA’s early signing period.
“When I told people it was going to be Alabama, I got funny reactions,” said Pharr. “Some people were shocked, because they aren’t a power like LSU or Texas.”
Alabama has been a middle-of-the-road track school in the strong Southeastern Conference, but Smith firmly believes that Pharr can change that.
“Tasha is the kind of athlete you need to move up,” said Smith. “She puts you at another level. When you sign a big name like her, it helps you recruit. That’s one of the things that excited her about coming here. She wants to be a difference-maker for our program.”
“My mom and coaches (primarily Robert Steele and Brian Mills) said go where you’re comfortable,” said Pharr. “Alabama is the place that made me feel at home. Tuscaloosa seems like a long way off, but like I told my mom, it’s just an hour by plane.It’s not like it’s California.”
Mills and Steele were not among those surprised by Pharr’s choice. They knew how she and Smith hit it off right away at a camp for elite Juniors at Denton, Texas.
“Tasha could have gone to any school,” said Steele. “Texas called the very first day they were allowed to call. “But so did Coach Smith. Tasha’s happy with her choice and if she’s happy, we’re happy.”
Meanwhile, Smith is way past happy. She’s turning cartwheels in her office.
“Tasha has exciting range,” she said. “She’s so flexible. She can do two, three or even four events and that makes her special. She has the ability to triple jump 48 feet. That’s something only a handful of American women have ever done.”
Pharr’s best events are the 100 hurdles and the triple jump, but she’s also accomplished in the long jump and may run relays.
“I want to do everything,” gushes Pharr. “I want NCAA titles and Olympic medals. Everything.”
Steele, Mills and Smith all think Pharr can reach her sky-high goals.
“She’s had great coaches in high school and in AAU,” said Smith. “But she’s always played volleyball and basketball. She’s never been on a full-time track regimen like we’ll put her on. She’ll be running from September to July and she’ll get even better.”
“With the right training and good health, Tasha will be world class,” agreed Steele. “Even 2004 may not be too early.”
“Women in track peak from 28 to 34,” said Smith, noting that A.L. Brown’s Melissa Morrison won a bronze medal this summer 11 years after graduating high school. “Tasha has 2004 and she has 2008 and she has far beyond that.”
Pharr, by the way, knows Morrison, who is the cousin of Pharr’s close friend, Shonte Pinkston.
“I went up to Melissa at a meet in Idaho and got my picture made with her,” Pharr said.
Soon, fans may want their pictures made with Pharr. In fact, she’s already been mobbed at least once by autograph hounds — when she represented the USA in Norway last summer.
“They treated me like I was Marion Jones,” said Pharr. “They said, ‘Will you sign, will you sign? I said, ‘Oh, OK.’ I was all lit up. I was smiling so big, it was hard to write.”
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Pharr’s success story began when a family friend saw her turning flips off the porch. “You need to get that girl in track,” he said.
So JohnnieMae Hairston, Pharr’s mom, hauled her hyper 8-year-old YFL cheerleader over to join Steele and the Rowan Express AAU team.
“I didn’t want to go at first,” said Pharr. “I told my mom, ‘Oh, who wants to go running.’ ”
By age 9, Pharr did. Especially after she won the first of her state AAU titles.
“I grew to like it and then to love it,” said Pharr. “The older I got the better it got. I haven’t regretted a minute. Track made great things happen for me.”
By age 13, Pharr was serious about her career. She said no to the mall, the dances, the movies and the potential boyfriends.
“Sorry,” she’d say, “I’ve got a track meet on Saturday.”
“She blossomed,” said Steele. “She took on a focus very early. It was like she saw what she wanted to do with her life and track was the avenue to get there. She worked hard. She made sacrifices.”
“It was a big factor that her family supported her,” added Mills. “Her brother, her sister, her grandma. Every mile that Tasha rode on that bus with us, her mom rode, too.”
Steele took Pharr to her first national meet after she finished eighth grade.
“She wasn’t ready to win. because she was still nervous,” Steele remembers. “But it prepared her for what was to come.”
What was to come were national records in the triple jump and 100 hurdles. Countless state titles. Acclaim as one of the elite track teens in the nation. Pharr’s prep career crested this fall when she was selected as as part of the USA Junior National Team, which competed in Chile.
“When Iput on that USA jacket, it was a special feeling,” she says. “I wear it almost every day. Ask anybody. I guess I like having people looking at my back.”
For a change, the competition didn’t look at her back in Chile, but Pharr proved her toughness down there. She suffered a partial tear of the medial collateral ligament in her right knee in a drill prior to her 100-meter hurdle heat, but did not withdraw.
“I taped it up and I ran,” she said. “You work too hard for something like that not to run. That’s what I was there to do.”
Her time was more than a second off her best (13.59 seconds), but she made her point.
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It’s Friday afternoon at North and the sleek 5-foot-8, 135-pound Pharr proves she’s not just a track robot. She’s munching — believe it or not — on a cheeseburger all the way, a cinnamon roll almost as big as she is and a glass of tea mixed with Lemonade.
“It’s all they had in the cafeteria,” she giggles when grilled about breaking training.
“Ihad a Snickers bar second period, too,” she confesses. “People stereotype me like I’m a lettuce-eater, but it’s not like that. You can eat this stuff. Just not too much. Besides, I’ll get serious about indoor track real soon.”
Steele and Mills, on the other hand, are always serious about track. Not for the glory or the trophies that fill North’s showcases, but because every year their amazingly successful programs direct kids toward a brighter future.
“Every time a child gets a chance at an education through athletics,” said Steele, “it is a blessing.”
“It’s why we do what we do,” adds Mills. “Hopefully, Tasha’s success will inspire some more kids to be just as dedicated.”
But in less than a year, Steele and Mills must pass their prize pupil on to a new coach. From all indications, Smith is the lady for the job.
“She had what for lunch!” chuckles Smith in that voice and laugh and even words that are identical to Pharr’s. “Well, you tell her that’s OK. She can eat whatever stuff she wants. Just not too much. And you tell Tasha something else. You tell her, ‘Roll Tide!’ ”
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