Wednesday, April 1, 1998
Full Speed Ahead
After overcoming adversity,
By Pat Bigold
the future is bright for Kaiser High
star sprinter Endia Abrante
Star-BulletinENDIA Abrante's biggest dilemma this spring is deciding which Division I track scholarship to accept. Late Sunday night, the Kaiser High sprinter got back from a trip to the University of Maryland. It's one of three schools on the state champion's short list of finalists. The others are Washington and Oregon.
NCAA champion Louisiana State University, Kentucky and several other programs also made offers. Rarely has a Hawaii prep track athlete received so many Division I offers.
Abrante is a disarmingly well-spoken young woman who teaches a Latin dance class at Kaiser, aspires to a career in law and revels in dreams of what she might accomplish on the track.
But she recalls the terrifying moment when she thought she might have lost everything, including her ability to run. A year ago last December, a city bus in which she was riding was involved in an accident.
"I hit my abdomen over a pole," Abrante said. "When I got into the ambulance, I couldn't stop crying because I didn't know what I was going to do. I really didn't."
Abrante was a double state champion (200, 400 meters) as a sophomore and an honor student. But she realized that a prep athlete's junior season is the one that really counts with recruiters.
After the accident, doctors advised her to forget running for the 1997 season.
"They said, 'Relax this season because we don't know what's happening with your back.' They were pretty scared because nothing showed up on X-rays or CAT scan.
"But I knew that if I didn't run my junior year, I wouldn't have anything to show the colleges in my senior year."
Kaiser girls' track coach Janine Walker Fairley said she wasn't surprised Abrante overcame the pain.
"Endia always rises to a challenge," she said.
Indeed.
When auditions were held for a Sprite beach commercial last year, Abrante didn't hesitate. She went for it and won a part.
Then she used part of her earnings from the spot to buy her first puppy.
The puppy was hit by a car on Kealaho Road. She tried to revive it with CPR. She was unsuccessful, but it didn't stop her from trying as though her own life depended on it.
So when Abrante decided she was going to run last season, no amount of back pain was going to dissuade her.
She made it to the state meet, losing in the 100- and 200-meter races to Iolani's Erin Stovall (now a scholarship basketball player at Virginia).
But later in the day, she toppled the 22-year-old state meet record in the 400, held by a woman who was destined to inspire her.
She finished in 56.11, breaking the converted record of 56.7 set by Kailua's Jill Snipes in 1975. Distances were measured in yards when Snipes set the record, one of the longest-enduring marks in state meet history.
Abrante met the 38-year-old Snipes, a triple transplant recipient (two livers and a kidney), and gave her the 400-meter medal.
"When I think what I've been through and what she's going through, there's no comparison," Abrante said.
Every now and then, Snipes, an assistant Kaiser coach, smiles at Abrante and tells her she's going to return the medal some day.
"Maybe when you get married," Snipes said.
"Well, then I'm never getting married," Abrante said with a laugh.
While Snipes provided inspiration, an encounter during a July 1997 track meet with Dacre Bowen, coach of the state champion Punahou track team and a 1976 Olympic sprinter for Canada, proved to be a breakthrough for Abrante.
Abrante had been walking and running with a slight imbalance since the bus accident. Bowen analyzed Abrante's running style and convinced her to enter the Junior Olympics in Louisiana.
She had only two weeks to prepare. But with Bowen's help, Abrante ran the two fastest 400 times of her career at the Junior Olympics.
She finished well back in the field in the final with a 56.06. But in the trials, she had a personal best of 55.89.
Bowen said the solution was to get Abrante to start her running motion with her arms, not her legs.
"Her problem was that she was actually running in front and behind her center of gravity," Bowen said. "What I was trying to do was get her over her center of gravity. She was doing some things that were putting an incredible amount of pressure on her legs."
Abrante said she admires Jackie Joyner-Kersee, but that her role models are "closer to home."
They include her father, who is the chief criminal investigator at the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, and mother, Eleanor, a former high school track star in Kentucky.
Eleanor is easily spotted at her daughter's races.
"She runs the length of the 100 meters with me in the stands," said Abrante, breaking into laughter and wrapping her arms around her mother. "She's my best buddy."
