A Day of Disappointment Becomes One of Surprise at UCLA

There once was a 90-pound Garden Grove schoolgirl with ribbons in her hair, name of Mary Decker, 15 years of age, who ran around with bigger, older people. Not only did she run around with them, she ran around them. Lapped them. Left them eating her cleats.

People would purchase tickets to important meets just so they could see the more distinguished, accomplished stars of track and field, only to go home talking about the teen-ager they had just seen blowing everybody’s socks off, figuratively speaking, since precious few of them wore socks.

Saturday at UCLA, people came to see the more distinguished, accomplished stars of track and field. In particular, many of them were eager to see Mary Decker, now 28 years old and married to a man named Slaney and a mommy and making her return to competitive running after nearly 20 months of keeping her motor in neutral.

Mary disappointed them, though not deliberately. Minutes before her scheduled appearance in the Pepsi Invitational mile, Slaney dropped out. Her heel, the one she once flashed to those behind her, had let her down again, hurting too much for her to risk the 1987 World Championships and 1988 Summer Olympics or anything else she might risk by aggravating it further.

But, as sometimes happens, you come to see one person and go away talking about another.

Quincy Watts is quick. Quincy Watts is slick. Quincy Watts can cook, so keep your eye on him. He’s the one coming up fast. The young and the breathless. The new kid on the blocks.

Look at him, breathing down the neck of Rod Woodson, the Purdue man who will be playing defensive back for the Pittsburgh Steelers next season. Look at him, closing ground on UCLA’s hustling Henry Thomas. Look at him, challenging world-class sprinters like Mark Witherspoon and Harvey Glance.

Not bad for someone 16 years old.

Two days before, he was running for Taft of Woodland Hills in a big high school meet. Now, here he was, in much faster company, not winning but clocking personal bests of 10.36 seconds in the 100-meter dash (seventh place) and 20.87 in the 200 (second place), and making one wonder if this might not be another Carl Lewis in the making.

“What I was happiest about was running like this against such good competition,” Watts said afterward. “I didn’t even care about the PRs (personal records). I was a little nervous before we got started, but once we did, I just said, ‘OK, here we go.’ I didn’t let anybody intimidate me.”

Watts was living in Detroit until he reached the ninth grade, at which point he decided to move to California and live with his father. Tom Stevenson, the Taft coach, had never heard of him. “He just walked on the track one day and said, ‘I want to run.’ So, I let him run.”

How’d he look?

“Better than the rest of them,” the coach said.

Because he is not only fast and graceful but big, 6 feet 2 inches and 193 pounds, Stevenson was asked if the football coach ever dropped around his office to ask if he could borrow Quincy Watts for, oh, 9 or 10 weeks.

“I’m the football coach, so we don’t have any argument there,” Stevenson said. “I don’t think he should jeopardize his future by playing football. His future’s in track, and right now, with the money they’re making in track, it wouldn’t be worth it. Besides, he’s just too nice a kid. I wouldn’t want to take the responsibility of that happening. If he should ever get hurt, it’s better it happens in track, if it has to happen at all.

“We do kid about it, though. Just the other day, I was asking him how he felt about playing a little tailback.”

Watts didn’t know what he was doing when he tried out for track. His strides were too short, and he had a few mechanical problems. The only running he had done was in playground games and to the store for groceries. But baby, he was born to run. He was made in Detroit, so maybe there’s a motor in him.

“I wasn’t even interested in track,” Watts said. “All I came out here to do was live with my father after he moved out here.”

What sort of runner he will become depends on his progress, his willingness to work and his physical maturity. Because of his size, some already suspect that Watts’ future will be as a quarter-miler. It isn’t easy getting all that body out of a starting block.

“My size hurts me in the hundred,” Watts said. “But then, look at Carl Lewis. How tall is he? He’s pretty big.”

Yes, look at Carl Lewis. Now, look at this kid.

Carl, Jr.

The way tracks can beat your feet, rip your tendons, sprain your ankles and splinter your shins, though, makes it impossible to tell whether a promising teen can grow up to become a great success. Mary Decker managed to do so, despite being victimized by enough pain and surgical repair to make Rambo weep.

Last seen at the Pepsi meet, she was face down on a table, wincing while a couple of men attached small paddles to both sides of her right heel for on-the-spot ionization treatment. It was not a happy ending to her day, although on Los Angeles tracks she certainly has been known to have even unhappier days.

This Achilles’ tendon trouble is just the latest aggravation for the woman who is gearing up for another run at an Olympic gold medal. Slaney has been hurt, one way or another, many times in her career, most memorably in her crash at the 1984 Olympics, and every time she thinks she’s ready to go, something else on her body breaks down.

“What else do I have to do?” she said Saturday. “I’m being tested again, for some reason.”

Sensibly, instead of running on the bad foot and maybe pulling up even more lame than before, Slaney withdrew. It is more important for her to save herself for The Athletics Congress meet at San Jose this June and the World Championships at Rome two months later.

The old Mary Decker, the cute teen-ager who grew up to be a cutthroat, would have been so obsessed about running that she would have tried it anyway. Her husband spoke bluntly about that Saturday. “A lot of what’s happened to her is bad luck, but a lot of it is bad judgment. She brings a lot of it on herself. It’s self-abuse.”

The Slaneys brought their nearly year-old daughter, Ashley, to a track meet for the first time Saturday, but about all mother Mary could do was play with her on the infield and pass her back to her 6-foot 7-inch, 290-pound husband, who hoisted the baby high in the sky.

“Having the baby’s actually helped her maturity,” Richard said later. “Before, everything was focused on track. That was it. She would have prepared herself for the Pepsi meet, and she wouldn’t even know what day tomorrow is. Now, she’s able to step back. She knew she shouldn’t run today. Discretion is the better part of valor.”

And if, heaven forbid, the injuries got so bad that she could never run again?

“Then she’ll probably have 15 kids,” Slaney said. “But I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that. She has a long life left in track and field. She’s not going to finish until she’s happy, until she’s won an Olympic medal or whatever else she’s determined to do before she’s done. That’s what separates people like her from the rest of us.”

The desire to be out there. To stay out there.

When the runners in her event swept past the place on the grass where she was sitting, Mary Slaney forlornly looked at them and said: “I should be there, not here.”

Those who bought tickets to see her could not have agreed more, but at least they didn’t go away empty. They came to see one of today’s greatest runners. Instead, they got to see one of tomorrow’s.