IT’S ONE THING to hear your coaches say you’re in shape for something big. It’s another thing to do it. Says Jacious Sears, atop the world list this season with her searing 10.77 at the Tom Jones Memorial, “I was shocked. My coaches tell me in practice, ‘You’re going to run a good time, you’re going to run a good time, just execute, just execute.’ I think they were more prepared to see that time on the board than me, if anything.”
Sears crushed her old PR, the 10.96 she ran last season to win the SEC. “You know, my coaches always say your best race is so easy. And that race, it probably felt the easiest out of all of my races I ran in the past. It felt really good.
“When I saw the time on the board, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, look at God.’ It was a blessing.”
She immediately headed to her coaches, Vol head Duane Ross and assistant Ron Garner, who after the standard congratulations started talking: “Critique, critique… He [Ross] told me what I needed to fix, which is good, though. There’s always room for improvement, which I love.”
What’s to fix? “I could have improved the end of my race by keeping the stride rate up.”
Improvement has always been the name of the game for Sears, now 22, and she has done plenty since she transferred to Tennessee from Miami at the end of the ’22 season. Prior to that she had bests of just 11.28 and 23.36. An ACC Indoor champion for the Hurricanes, she had never made it to an NCAA Championship.
She says moving to Knoxville was motivated primarily by her desire to work with Ross. “When I was in high school, I remember watching [10.95 performer] Kayla White. I’m still a big fan. I mean, I trained with her last year, and I’m still a big fan. Seeing that she was coached by Coach Ross, seeing her progression, it was all so inspiring. And then seeing Cambrea [Sturgis, 10.87 PR] when she was a freshman, seeing how much she progressed, and the next year, she progressed even more.
“Definitely coach Ross was the biggest reason, the No. 1 reason why I came to Tennessee… Moving from Miami to Knoxville, I knew it was going to be a big difference in environment, which I needed. Knoxville is more peaceful and it’s slower. And even the environment on campus as well is different. The sports, they get more…
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