Richard Rose focused on and off the track
By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor
Outside The Armory, along 169th Street, acquaintances from schools across New York City pause to notice and pay a moment's respect to Richard Rose.
"What's up, Rich?"
"How you doin' Rose?"
The Public Schools Athletic League Championships have just concluded and everyone in the building saw what Rose, a junior at Boys & Girls of Brooklyn, just did. Around his neck are medals for victories in the 300 and 600 (a nation-leading time) and under his arm he carries a plaque for being named athlete of the meet.
In the PSAL, which encompasses scores of schools from the five boroughs, it's track and field that produces the most college scholarships.
And for a supreme talent like Rose, with range from 200 to 800 meters to go with over-sized determination and work ethic, track and field is the ticket out of the city – to a college scholarship and, hopefully, a better life.
"You've got to be focused on two things," Rose said. "Books and running."
Speed is currency in the PSAL but it doesn't always purchase a successful outcome. Robert Rhodes, of Boys and Girls, is making it at UConn. Strymar Livingston of Columbus (Bronx), national record holder in the 600, is hanging on at Iowa Western Community College. Many others don't even get that far, waylaid by broken homes, poverty, or bad choices.
Rose is connected and supported by an intricate web of fellow track athletes and coaches who want to see him succeed. The night before the PSAL City Championships, Rose texted Livingston for hours.
Adults, like Renee Sterrett, Rose's former teacher and an off-season coach, fill in some of the parenting gaps. Rose lives with his grandmother and a younger cousin in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, an area he says is "calm and collected." His father lives in "Far Rock" (Far Rockaway, Long Island) and his mother lives in Jamaica (the nation, not the neighborhood).
Taking Off In The Hallways
Rose was an aspiring wide receiver for a middle-school football team when the dislocation of a pinkie finger put him on the sidelines. He found out that his seventh grader teacher at PS/IS 116, Ms. Sterrett, also coached track and field after school, and he asked whether he could join her. He was bored and was looking for something to do.
But Ms. Sterrett only coached girls. And more specifically, she coached her own two daughters and a handful of their friends.
Before telling Richard that he could come to practice, she asked the girls what they thought first.
Ms. Sterrett ran a tight ship. She didn't want the addition of a boy to be a distraction.
Richard was approved and invited to come to practice in the hallways after school. That's where Ms. Sterrett conducts all of her practices in winter, in the school hallways. It's where kids all over New York and New Jersey and beyond do their workouts when there is nowhere else to go.
Richard showed up that first day dressed in jeans. He ran back and forth through the halls, jumping over the banana hurdles that Ms. Sterrett used for drills.
Richard stuck with it.
"I could tell he was serious," Sterrett said.
Renee (Adams) Sterrett grew up in the Bronx but went into foster care when she was 10 because her ailing mother couldn't take care of her. A local age-group coach named Hugo Pruter became a key figure in her life as well as other young track athletes in the area. He drove the kids to meets and paid their entry fees. Sterrett (she was Renee Adams back then got a scholarship to run at New York Institute of Technology, which was a small-school national power in the 1980s. She competed on the same relay team as Joanne Gardner (the mother Olympian Natasha Hastings).
Renee got coaching and guidance from Tony Perrone and Foggy Burrows, men she admired. She was racing for a possible spot in the 1988 Olympic Trials in 400-meter hurdles when she hit the last barrier, ending her Olympic dream.
"God blessed me with some good people in my life," said Renee of her pay-it-forward mentality. "We call those 'pearls.' I'm passing the torch on to someone else."
A Template For Success
In Robert Rhodes, two years older, there was a role model
Rose and Rhodes not only shared similar names and initials, but similar talents for the 400-800 combination.
And Rhodes, despite living conditions that weren't always comfortable, was a star in the classroom as well. Not only did he lead Boys and Girls' winning national championship 4x800 relay team (Rose was a freshman on that team), he was the school's salutatorian and gained a full-ride scholarship to the University of Connecticut. An Engineering and Physics major, he was at The Armory for the American Athletic Conference championship and anchored UConn's winning 4x400 relay.
Rhodes was a 60-second quarter-miler as a freshman who started to gain speed as a sophomore.
"I started realizing I could very well use (track) to get into college," Rhodes said. "I was a smart kid. I was salutatorian. I had the grades and I always knew I could get into college, but it was always an issue of how am I going to pay for it."
Rhodes grew up with a single mother who pushed him to succeed in school in spite of recurring financial strains.
"I was resilient," Rhodes said. "You can't be afraid of not being like everybody else. That's the hardest part of high school, the peer pressure. People want you to do things. 'Cut school with me today.' 'Oh, you're a loser.' 'Why are you doing homework?' 'Why are you doing this?'"
No doubt Rose hears the same chatter. A year ago, when he was a sophomore, Richard's image was on a big poster on a third-floor hallway of Boys & Girls, honoring his status as an honor student and star athlete. (This year the photo came down, perhaps, over jealousy it caused).
Rhodes never took his eye off the ball, and when things got toughest a home, it only made his determination and focus stronger.
"(For) my mother and sisters, it was a constant struggle but it was never like we had no meal on the table," Rhodes said. "We struggled for other reasons. How's the light bill going to get paid? Will I still be able to have my phone, because I don't have the money to pay for it? I did move around a lot. I lived in the Bronx before I lived back in Brooklyn (during high school). There was a point in my junior year where I was living in the Bronx and still trying to compete (even with an hour-plus commute).
"(Struggles) pushed me more. I remember we (had) my stuff in storage and my mother couldn't pay for the storage anymore. So they threw away all my medals from junior year on down. So I told myself that senior I can't have as many medals as I had before, but I'll have better medals."
A Chance to Shine
Rose, a junior, is entered in the 400 meters and 4x400 relay this week at New Balance Nationals Indoors, where he'll get yet another chance to show what he's made of.
His Boys and Girls coaches, Anthony Jones and Nigel Gabriel (another former B/G standout), are also primary sources of support and oversee Rose's in-season training.
The sport came quickly to Rose. From those early practices in the hallways of PS/IS 116, Rose began to get immersed in the sport. He started off at 57 seconds for 400 meters in the seventh grade and finished the year 51.4 seconds. A year later, he ran 49.00 in the open 400 and 47.8 on a relay carry. (His current indoor bests are US#6 34.07 for 300, US#9 48.52 for 400 and US#1 1:18.62 for 600).
Rose studied YouTube videos of Michael Johnson and it ignited his own Olympic dream.
His parents are both natives of Jamaica but he is first and foremost a New Yorker.
"I like Usain Bolt, but sometimes I think he's too cocky," Rose said.
Cocky is something that doesn't fit Rose. He approaches track as if it's business. He doesn't shy away from the hard work. He doesn't forget that track can take him places. There was a banquet speaker at the Hershey's Championships a few years back who said something that stuck with Richard: "Your life is in your hands."
Sterrett, who is available for an occasional motherly word of advice, calls him "a diamond in the rough." She helped Rose get into Boys & Girls, a historic yet struggling school, partly because of the quality of track program under veteran coach James Jackson (now retired) and mostly because of its College Preparatory Program.
Rhodes, now happily ensconced at UConn, said he is eager to follow Rose's progress, even if it means losing his own school records.
"I'm very proud of him," he said. "I can't wait to see when he graduates where he decides to go."
