Florida Catholic | Olympian feat: 1 school, 5 athletes

Olympian feat: 1 school, 5 athletes

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC MIAMI BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 08.14.08

Click on a hyperlink for an athlete in this article for additional information on the individual athlete.

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The Florida Catholic will keep track of the appearances and accomplishments of St. Thomas Aquinas High School’s athletes and post updates online. Check NBC’s Olympics Web site to find out where the events will be shown. All events are being broadcast live on the NBC Olympics Web site. All times are Beijing time, 12 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, which applies in most of Florida.

FORT LAUDERDALE | One school, five Olympic athletes and one Olympic coach — that Olympian feat belongs to St. Thomas Aquinas High School here.

Four of the Archdiocese of Miami school’s alumni, and one incoming junior, are in Beijing participating in the games of the 23rd Olympiad. Two of them, soccer player India Trotter and sprinter Sanya Richards, represent the United States.

The three others represent their respective nations: swimmers Bradley Ally and Vlad Polyakov are swimming for Barbados and Kazakhstan, respectively, and sprinter Kirsten Niewendam will be running for Suriname.

St. Thomas’ former head swimming coach, Alex Pusseldi, is also in Beijing, coaching Kuwait’s team.

Is it something in the water at St. Thomas that attracts these athletes?

“Having a great education program and a great athletic tradition,” said soccer coach Carlos Girón, who coached Trotter for two years when she played for St. Thomas.

He said he is not surprised to see her in Beijing. “That was her goal in life.”

Men’s swimming coach Marty Grady remembers Ally, who attended St. Thomas from 2001–2005.

“His mother and father moved from Barbados to the United States to give their son a shot of training for an Olympic medal. They basically sacrificed everything” said Grady, who was assistant coach of the men’s swimming and diving team at St. Thomas when both Ally and Polyakov were there, and Pusseldi was head coach.

“Bradley broke the national record in the 200–yard individual medley his senior year,” Grady said. “I think St. Thomas prepared him well for college academics and life.”

Polyakov also moved to the U.S., at age 15, to pursue his Olympic dream, and attended St. Thomas from 2000–2002.

“At that time I was a full–time assistant coach at the Coral Springs Swim Club and I recommended St. Thomas to Vlad,” Grady said. “St. Thomas helped Vlad learn English and learn about American culture. He was an honor roll student with English as a second language. Both Bradley and Vlad have great memories at St. Thomas.”

Grady said both Ally and Polyakov are “great people” who were attracted to St. Thomas “because of our reputation as a great academic school and a great place to grow as a human being.”

Grady also noted that many of the Olympians competing in Beijing are athletes from other countries who come to train in the U.S.

“In Europe they don’t give college scholarships (for athletics). In America, they do,” Grady said. “This is a way for them to train with our best coaches and our best swimmers.”

Track and field coach Dave Shepherd, who has been at St. Thomas for 30 years, remembers Richards as someone “who worked harder than anybody I’ve ever seen. Yet she was destined to go to the Olympics because she had so much talent.”

As a freshman, she beat a junior at St. Thomas who had just set the state record in the 100 meters. He also remembers one race where Richards flinched before the starter’s gun went off. Figuring she would be disqualified, she didn’t move off the block. But when she realized nobody had called it, she took off — about two or three yards behind the others.

Running into a stiff headwind, she still “runs everybody down and sets a state record,” Shepherd recalled.

Richards holds the records for the long jump, 200–meter, 400–meter and 4–by–100–meter relay at St. Thomas, a school that won state titles in track and field for eight consecutive years.

“We’ve always had a great tradition here with track and field,” said Shepherd, who cannot explain it other than to say “they seem to come out.”

His first year, he remembers, he had 30 boys come out for track and field. That number increased to 80 the next year, then 100, and as many as 200 girls in one year.

“When you get that kind of numbers and great coaching — we’ve had a lot of great coaches help us out — that’s going to equal success,” said Shepherd, who in fact coached Richards’ high school coach, John Guarino, when he was a student at St. Thomas.

“The St. Thomas Aquinas family is exceptionally proud of its past and present students as they achieve in their lives,” said Msgr. Vincent T. Kelly, St. Thomas’ supervising principal. “Participation in an international event such as the Olympic Games brings credit and pride to the individual, family, school and entire community. May the preparation that these and other students have received at St. Thomas be a strength in their future.”

“Our prayers are with all Olympians as they pursue their goals. May they return to us safely,” said Tina Jones, St. Thomas’ principal.

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