One 'perfect race' not enough for BRHS' Brown

• By ROBIN FAMBROUGH
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jul 10, 2009

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Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of summer features about local high-school athletes.

Kamaria Brown can close her eyes and remember how it felt to come out the blocks and sprint that first curve.

She held a comfortable pace on the backstretch. With 200 meters left, the 16-year-old went into an all-out sprint.

At 100 meters, Brown pushed even harder and then at the 50-meter mark she put everything she had left into winning the Class 5A 400 meters for Baton Rouge High.

“That was the perfect race,” Brown said. “Everything about it felt right. There are always things you can improve on. That’s what I’m working on.”

With one “perfect” race under her belt, the summer mission for the BRHS junior-to-be is simple: run another one.

That may be easier said than done. Yet it’s the goal Brown has as she prepares to compete for the KY Track Club at the AAU Junior Olympics set for Aug. 3 in Des Moines, Iowa.

“I have to tell Kamaria to slow down,” Baton Rouge High coach Zack Winfield said. “She gets in a hurry and sometimes she’ll start a race too fast.

“You need to build toward the best finish you can have. If you go out too fast, you’ll slow down at the end, when you should be going your fastest.”

Skeptics who don’t know track may see Brown as one of those overnight success stories. She led the Bulldogs to the Class 5A team title at the State Farm/Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s State Track Meet by sweeping the 200 and 400 meters and anchoring two winning relays.

There were nights during her freshman year when Brown wanted to be on the track. Injuries to both hamstrings limited her training. Transferring from Glen Oaks to BRHS at midterm made her ineligible to compete for the first time in her track career that started at age 6.

“I don’t like to sit and watch, and that’s all I could really do,” Brown said. “That was definitely the hardest part for me.

“I give coach Winfield a lot of credit. He knew I wanted to run so bad, and he also knew I had been injured.