Tiffany McWilliams isn’t your average college student. Today she might have less difficulty waking up at 5:30 a.m. than watching television.
Preliminaries for the 1,500-meter run start today in Athens. If not for an injury last spring, McWilliams, a three-time NCAA and seven-time Southeastern Conference champion, would be there.
“I want to watch the 1,500, but I think it will probably be difficult. I watched the Olympic trials in the 1,500 and preliminaries weren’t that hard to watch but it was pretty difficult to watch the finals. I knew I could have been there-it was more like I should have been pushing the other runners there.”
McWilliams said she was disappointed in the times turned in that day.
“It kind of bothered me that the girls weren’t actually going out to get the A standard for the Olympics,” McWilliams said. “The A standard is a 4:05 and you automatically qualify.”
McWilliams set an NCAA record in 2003 in the outdoor 1,500 with a 4:06.75 to win her first national championship.
She followed that by winning the indoor mile earlier this year with a 4:32.24. As the outdoor season came to the SEC championships, McWilliams caught a bad break.
It was actually a stress fracture in her left foot.
“We tried to make it better by giving it orthodics and doing a few other things but I think it made my left leg so tight it was hard to run on,” McWilliams said.
But McWilliams wanted to keep competing and produced results that pleased her and head track coach Al Schmidt.
“Heck, she won the SEC Championship by 10 seconds in the 1,500,” Schmidt recalled.
The tandem then had a decision to make: defend her national title or sit out the NCAA to rest and rehab the injury to improve the likelihood of a trip to Athens.
At the time the pair were also debating whether she should sign a professional contract with an athletic equiptment manufacturer. Athletes lose their NCAA eligibility when they sign a pro contract.
“When nationals came up, my coach gave me the option of skipping nationals, but I didn’t want to do that,” McWilliams said. “If I did sign a contract, I wanted to end my college career at least trying to win another national, and also I didn’t really think it would be fair for the other girls that were at the nationals for the NCAA champion from the last year not to be in the race.
“I would feel more like I had won the national championship if I had beaten the champion from the year before.”
It didn’t matter what the other girls felt like. McWilliams repeated her title in the 1,500 with a 4:11.59.
After that, McWilliams tried to get her injury healthy enough to compete at the Olympic trials.
“Olympic trials came up so quickly. I really hadn’t done any mileage or workouts since SEC because I would stay off my foot by getting in the pool and trying to run in the pool,” McWilliams explained. “We didn’t want to go to nationals unless we could actually be competitive. It wouldn’t be fair for the other girls there for me to just show up and not be able to put anything out on the track.”
Schmidt said the pair made a decision for the long term.
“We just couldn’t keep it going long enough to make the Olympic team and she’s got such a long career ahead of her and we didn’t want to risk having surgery, so we just pulled the plug,” he said.
That solved one big decision for McWilliams and Schmidt. The next question was whether to turn pro or not.
McWilliams signed with Stellar Athletics, a European firm that primarily represents soccer players. Then she signed a five-year deal with Adidas but instead of leaving campus returned for her senior year of classes.
“There were three female track and field athletes that came out early with a year left on their eligibility. If you are going to do that, you’ve got to be very good,” Schmidt said. “Once she came out, Adidas, Nike, Reebok and others were waiting for her decision.”
McWilliams explained: “When I did decide to sign, Adidas offered a coaching stipend so (Schmidt) would get a certain amount. Nike came back and did that also, but I talked to the guys that are my agents and wanted to make sure that my team was taken care of as well because I wouldn’t be where I am now without my coaching and the team. Adidas said, ‘We’ll give you a very good contract.’ I think our team is very well taken care of.”
Athletic director Larry Templeton said the university has made an “across the board” switch to Adidas footwear, while Russell Athletic still provides most of the clothing.
McWilliams would not specify the amount of money the contract guarantees but smiled when asked about her new ride, an ’04 Expedition.
“I actually got a good deal on it,” said McWilliams. “I had a ’95 Cavalier and had paid so many expenses on getting it fixed so many times. Three weeks after I signed my contract, it started acting up. It would make a clicking sound and it wouldn’t go over 30, especially up hills.”
Like most pro contracts, McWilliams’ is loaded with incentives and bonuses for specific achievements.
“Say I run certain times or have a picture or article in Runner’s World or ESPN The Magazine I get a little bit more money. If I break the American record I get a little bit more money. They are really specific with the meets. If I don’t do good, they can also take money away,” she said.
McWilliams said she never trained specifically for track before coming to Mississippi State and added that her decision to keep Schmidt as her coach was based on the results.
“I wouldn’t be running what I am if it hadn’t been for (Schmidt) and his training. I decided he would still be my coach because he got me where I am now and it’s working and I like Starkville.”
Schmidt, while cloaked in Adidas shoes, socks, shorts, T-shirt and hat, provided insight into McWilliams’ regimen: “She goes twice a day, six days a week. It’s stuff that would bring most humans to their knees. Track and field’s easy, especially in her event area: you put yourself in as much pain as you possibly can endure–intensity and volume. Other sports use our sport to punish their athletes. We do it for fun, I guess. It takes us 11 months out of the year to get her ready for four minutes and six seconds.”
McWilliams plans on getting a bachelor’s degree in educational psychology and then getting a master’s degree in the same field when she’s not competing at national and international contests.
“Four years is a long way away. So every morning when I wake up I am not going to think about the Olympics in 2008,” McWilliams said. “There’s a lot of good races between now and then.”
And that plan is fine with Schmidt, too.
“People say athletes like this come around once in a lifetime. I am glad it’s my lifetime,” he said. “We are going to be chasing American records, world records. She’s that dedicated, that focused.”