Injury Is His Biggest Hurdle : Hawthorne’s Smith Excels Despite Running at ‘About 80%’

Hawthorne High’s Demond Smith is the state’s best 300-meter intermediate hurdler and second best in the 110-meter high hurdles. Imagine, as he likes to do, what he would be capable of if he was not injured.

A nagging right hamstring that he first tore two years ago has Smith running at “about 80%” these days, still good enough to put him at the top of the state’s rankings but far below what he thinks is his best.

“It’s too frustrating,” said Smith, a senior. “I see what I can do--I just can’t do it.”

His time of 37.76 seconds in the 300 hurdles is No. 1 in California, and his 14.35 time in the 110 hurdles is .13 behind Saddleback High’s Charlie Davidson.

“I can see myself running 13.5 (in the 110 hurdles),” he said. “But I can’t do it.”

Early in his junior year, Smith had his 110-meter time down to 13.8 before he re-injured the hamstring. Apparently, it had not healed correctly, and scar tissue built up. Now, doctors tell Smith, the only way for it to completely heal is surgery.

After the relapse last year, Smith’s times soared as he was running at about 60%. He was still good enough to finish second in the state meet in the 110 hurdles behind Isaac Carson of Jefferson High of Daly City.

“Ever since I re-injured it last year, my concentration has been off,” Smith said. “I’m always worrying about really hurting it.”

This year has been only slightly better for Smith.

“It’s been frustrating for him,” said Hawthorne Coach Kye Courtney, the 1992 California Coaches Assn. boys’ track and field coach of the year. “He expected to be beating everybody by a huge margin. He has found out that he has to listen to me, that he has to come along slowly.”

Nobody had to encourage Smith to keep trying. On the contrary, the injury only made him try harder, whether that was good for him or not.

“I love track too much for me to give it up,” Smith said.

Smith’s mother, Stephanie Williams, had to resist her maternal urge to make him quit for awhile for his own good.

“I realized that only he knew his own body and what it could do,” Williams said. “Plus, I think he really wanted to prove to himself that he could do it.”

Smith stretches and ices his leg every night and sees a therapist once a week. But even with the injury slowing him, he is winning most races easily.

The one exception was in last week’s Mt. San Antonio College Relays when Smith and Davidson battled in the 110 hurdles.

Davidson won the race with a state-best time of 14.22 (Smith was clocked at 14.46), but Smith claims that Davidson jumped the gun.

“He did a rolling start, and the starter didn’t call him back,” Smith said. “I probably would’ve beat him, except that I hesitated when I saw him leave early, thinking they would call him back.”

Smith hopes to get another shot at Davidson, and he probably will in the Southern Section Masters Meet, in which athletes qualify for the state meet.

Smith has been receiving college recruiting letters since last year. He is leaning toward UCLA, with Iowa State and Colorado also in contention. So far, his injury has not worried recruiters.

Colleges have been most impressed with Smith in the 300 hurdles, which Smith feels is his best event. Once he gets out of high school, though, there is no 300-meter event. There is the 110 hurdles (which are raised three inches in college), and the 400-meter intermediates.

In Hawthorne’s 85-31 Bay League victory Thursday over Leuzinger, Smith won the 110 hurdles in 14.6 seconds but did not compete in the 300 hurdles because of his tender hamstring. Smith ran second leg on the Cougars’ 1,600 relay team, which won in 3:42.7.

Smith is already looking ahead to 1996, when the Olympics come to Atlanta. Although it’s four years away, “it’s not too early to start getting mentally prepared.”

Smith imagines what it must be like to race for the United States in the sport’s showcase meet. He imagines running the 400 hurdles, running it his way, the way he likes to do it now.

“I start in the back and let everybody get 20 or 30 meters ahead of me,” Smith said with a smile. “Then I blow past everybody in the last hundred meters.”