When elite 800-meter runner Maggie Vessey moved back to Santa Cruz at the beginning of the year, she did it to save money and enjoy the comforts of home. So imagine her reaction when her neighbors banded together and went door-to-door to raise money to send Vessey, who has been without a major sponsor for two and a half years, to this weekend’s United States Track and Field Olympic Trials.
“Sometimes you can get so caught up in what you’re doing when there’s a big event,” the Soquel High alumna said, “and when people take the trouble of making a special effort to get you there, it just touches my heart.”
Santa Cruz County has three athletes to rally around at the 2016 trials, which begin Friday on the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore. In addition to Vessey, high jumper Elizabeth Patterson of Santa Cruz and javelin thrower Nick Howe of Aptos will be chasing a ticket to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Vessey and Patterson will both compete Friday in qualifying rounds. Howe’s quest begins Saturday. By Monday night, all three should know if they’ve made Team USA. The women’s high jump final is Sunday and the women’s 800 and men’s javelin finals are Monday.
Each has a unique situation and none of them are shoo-ins. Though at this meet, where the top three from each event qualify for a spot in Rio — as long as they have met the Olympic standard — no one is.
Patterson’s pursuit
“The intensity of the meet is hard to describe,” John Rembao, Patterson’s coach, wrote in an email Thursday. “It is like the NBA final game, except there is only one chance to make the team, so anything can happen. I wish it were the best of seven, and I know she would make the team.
“It comes down to one day. She has to be ‘on’ on Sunday because it is the only day that matters.”
Patterson, a 28-year-old Texas native and graduate of the University of Arizona, has one ace in the hole, however. She enters the meet as one of just four competitors who have met the Olympic standard after clearing 1.93 meters (6.33 feet) to take second behind the sport’s rising star, Vashti Cunningham, at a meet in Japan in May. So, if she can finish in the top three, she’ll have no more bars to clear until she gets to Brazil.
Howe, on the other hand, has made achieving the Olympic standard in javelin his goal of the meet.
Howe’s trial
“The only person I need to go out there to satisfy and prove to is myself,” he said. “If I can go out and throw the Olympic standard, I’m going to be happy, even if it means I finish eighth.”
So far, only one American, 2012 Olympian Cyrus Hostetler, has surpassed the 83-meter (272.31 feet) standard. Howe’s best is 78.41, set in 2013.
Then again, few if any of the others have trying to pass the bar exam while training for the trials. Howe has.
Howe graduated magna cum laude from the UC Hastings College of the Law in the fall and will take the bar exam at the end of the month. He said most days while he was in school he would leave his house in northern San Jose at 7 a.m. and not return until 9:30 p.m.
Also married, he said of the two undertakings: “It doesn’t give me much time to mess around, but it’s an enjoyable process.”
Howe, 26, did not qualify for the trials in 2012 despite setting the school record at UC San Diego and winning two NCAA titles. After graduation from UCSD, he decided to give himself another year of competing. Then he hit his PR in 2013, and that gave him the impetus to make one more run at the Olympics.
He said he realizes he’s a longshot, especially because he is just getting over an injury, but he isn’t out of the running.
“I took an extra year to get through law school. The thought is, I can always do school. My brain is not going to go as fast as my body is,” said Howe, whose mother and father, Cynthia and Ralph of Aptos, and two of his brothers, Nemo and Nash, will be in the stands rooting him on. “It’s really only a short window that you can try to make the Olympic team.”
Vessey realizes that truth, which is why it was such a blow when she was tripped during the USATF Nationals a year ago on the same track that she’ll be running on Friday.
Vessey’s redemption
Her fall when she was making her move to the front of the pack down the final stretch created a domino effect. She was hoping to qualify for the world championships and use that opportunity to lure in a sponsor to help ease her path to the Olympics. Instead, she willed herself across the finish line in last place. No sponsors called, despite her winning six of her seven remaining events in the season, and she had to make the tough decision to move home.
As she returns to the scene of the crime, though, she said she’s put last year to use and put it behind her.
“I definitely left that in the past. I tried to leave it in the past as quickly as possible,” she said. “But anytime you don’t get an outcome you want, you try to learn from it.”
The takeaway from 2015, she said, was that she needs to be more aware of her surroundings and take charge when the time comes.
“It’s going to be fast, and there are going to be a lot of girls,” she said. “It may not play out the way I anticipate. I have to be ready to adjust. I’m going to be playing it less safe, be more active than reactive.”
Those are tactics, though, that the 34-year-old hopes she doesn’t have to deploy until the final. She would like nothing more than a low-key qualifying race Friday, especially with less than 24 hours to recover before the semifinals are run Saturday. The semifinals at last year’ nationals were brutal — the fastest ever in a USATF championship — and Vessey had to run the 39th fastest time in the world just to reach the final.
That time of 2 minutes, 0.05 seconds qualified Vessey for the Olympic Trials and is tied for the seventh-fastest qualifying time. Her coach, Greg Brock, also coach of the Santa Cruz High distance program, said that in addition to Vessey, Alysia Montano, Ajee Wilson and Brenda Martinez enter as favorites, though no one has stood out this year.
“Even for them, it’s still a crapshoot,” he said. “You train for the Olympic team but maybe you hold some in reserve because it’s so close to the Olympics. You don’t want to peak for this,” he said.
He added: “It will be really interesting to see if we have fireworks on the Fourth of July.”
Vessey will be dressing the part if there are. Known for designing her own racing kits, she has several new eye-catching numbers ready to go for this weekend. Among them are a one-shoulder floral outfit and, of course, something patriotic for Independence Day.
A national magazine recently approached her to do a piece on her new outfits. To photograph them, the Fleet Feet in Aptos allowed her to take over its store and at least one of its mannequins. Vessey said that’s just another example of the local love she feels every day.
“It’s so nice when you have that community support behind you,” she said. “Now I’m just going to go make that team.”
