London or Bust
Assistant coach hopes to get her feet wet at the 2012 Olympic Games
Letiwe Patton is a Falcon to the core. Watch her cheer at a cross country or track meet and you'll have no doubt. But that's not her only team. The assistant coach is hoping to represent Zimbabwe in the 2012 Olympics. She needs to clock a qualifying time for the steeplechase — a 3,000 meter run with periodic jumps, including seven water jumps — by July 2012.
"It will be my biggest dream," she says. "I'm hoping to qualify early and get it out of the way."
Patton started running in her hometown of Dorowa, Zimbabwe, in fourth grade. Colorful plastic plates and bowls and other awards motivated her to start competing. At 15, she joined a local running club six miles from her house. To get there, she ran along the busy, main highway, sometimes with shoes and sometimes without — making the workouts about 17 or 18 miles total.
The national and regional races were up to three hours from Dorowa, so her mom would scrape together enough for her to ride a truck, a train, and/or a bus to the event. But the cost was worth it. "I was always winning. I was undefeated," Patton says.
As the top junior runner in Zimbabwe for three years in a row, she traveled to international events, such as the world cross country championships in Budapest, Hungary. She came to the United States through a scholarship program aimed at making the 2000 Olympics, but she did not qualify. "I decided to stay and go to college, because I knew that I couldn't go if I went home," she says. After a successful track and cross country career at the University of Idaho, she started assisting the Seattle Pacific University team in 2009.
Patton is known for tough workouts, constant joking, and good advice. Sophomore Gavin Brand credits her with helping him to improve his mental strength during competition. "She gets in the zone and blocks a lot of stuff out," he says. "She passes that along. It's really inspiring to have someone that good telling you what to do."
Many of her own workouts are done in practice alongside the runners, which was something new for freshman Alli Cutting. "It's really great to have her run with us," she says. "She makes practice enjoyable." It's no secret that the team loves to be around coach Patton. Even the sight of her causes the runners to shout, "Luh – tee – way!"
They hope to shout that at the TV in the summer of 2012."That'd be so sick!" Gavin says. "And I think it's going to happen."
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