Jamele Mason-Vegas
Former track & field student-athlete and Olympian
Life after track & field
I’ve been an athlete my entire life up until the day I walked away from running track and field in 2016. From the age of 5, I’ve always been active in some sport year round but there was something about watching the 1996 Olympics that had me intrigued with track and field. Growing up I mainly played baseball (being that I’m Puerto Rican) & basketball, but track was something I’ve always wanted to do after seeing the Olympics for the first time and in 2003, I got my first go at track and field.
The beginning
I started running track in the 7th grade at the age of 13 and knew from the moment I started, that the hurdles were what I wanted to do. At the time I didn’t have a coach to teach me proper technique or form and for that reason, they didn’t want anyone running hurdles until enough of my begging convinced them to just let me try it in a track meet and the rest was history. My first hurdle race I surprised myself and my coaches with an easy win over the competition and from that moment on, with or without coaching, they let me continue with the hurdles. Once I got to high school, after my freshman year, I was forced to make a very hard decision which was track or basketball, did I mention marching band? After my freshman year, I decided to drop basketball which I was better at in that part of my life, and marching band to focus on becoming the best athlete I could in track. This meant track ALL YEAR ROUND. It was that decision that changed my life forever because my sophomore year in high school once I dropped everything but track; I shocked not only myself & my parents but also my coach. Just a couple of meets deep into the season, I had run the fastest time in the state that year and also was considered within the top 10 in the country and it was that moment that everything changed for me. I remember thinking to myself, “I can make it to the Olympics one day”. My Jr. & Sr. year in high school were no different, everyone in high school track who ran hurdles knew who I was and by the time I was a senior in high school, I had solidified my strength as being tied for number one in the nation in the 110m hurdles and number 4 in the nation in the 300m hurdles. I had scholarship offers from any and every school you could possibly think of and after carefully evaluating, made a decision to attend Texas Tech because they had a very strong hurdle program.
When I began college in the fall of 2008, the Olympics had just taken place and I made a vow that I would be at the next Olympics and seeing all that I had achieved in high school, there was no doubt in my mind that I would get there. Like most athletes, adjusting to a college program takes some time. My freshman year I had a decent season but nothing spectacular. It was then that I had to reevaluate what I was doing and what I could do better. I cut out a lot of bad eating habits, drank tons of water and cut my partying down to a minimum and it paid off big time. By my sophomore year, not only had I dropped almost 2 seconds of my personal best, I finished number 7 in the NCAA. My Jr. year followed as being my most consistent season and that year I finished 5th in the NCAA and qualified for my first world championships which were held in South Korea. This was my first taste of what I thought the Olympics would be like and I was like a kid in a candy store. Seeing all the athletes that I had looked up to since I was a kid and even competing in the same heat as 2 of the people I considered icons, solidified that this dream of mine was coming true. After returning from Korea I rested about a month and then began the training for my Sr. year which was the most important year of my life because it was the Olympic year (2012) and I had to be sure that I worked like I had never worked before. The season started off slow and when I say slow, I mean SLOW!!!!! I had one of the worst indoor seasons I had ever had in my life but knew it was time to figure out where I could improve. After starting outdoor season, I realized, I wasn’t as polished as I had been previous years so I took it into my own hands to make sure I get there. I was practicing and doing things outside of practice to help get me back into form. I would go to yoga, Pilates and even go on extra runs or attend cycling classes and it worked. By the end of my last collegiate season, I was number 2 at the NCAA championships, top 10 in the world and guess who was headed to the Olympics?
The Olympics
It was surreal to me that for my entire life, I had this vision of being an Olympian and 16 years after seeing my first Olympics, I made that dream a reality. The love I received from friends, family, fans was amazing. It felt like I was surrounded by so many people at that time which kept me encouraged. I would receive messages all day long from people in my hometown saying how proud they were and how they always remembered I talked about this day. It was probably the most proud I had ever been in my entire life. The best feeling of it all was that my mom, dad and grandma, flew to London to watch me compete and the look in their eyes when they saw me was the most gratifying thing I have ever experienced in my life.
Going into the Olympics, I was projected to finish in the top 15 with the time I had run that season. And in my preliminary round, I was so sure that I could make it to the next round. I had the previous world champion in my heat and we were in his hometown of London so the crowd hyped him up but that didn’t take away my focus. As the gun went off, I had one word in my mind and that was EAT!!!! I got out like a bullet and pretty much led the race until hurdle number 8 where I made a little mistake that messed up my momentum finishing the race and then I see one person pass me then it turns to two and then three. As I crossed the finish line, I knew I didn’t get the automatic spots to get to the semi finals but I was hoping that my time was fast enough to get me to the next round. I ended up missing making the next round by 1 spot. I had never experienced heart break like that in my life. Prior to going to the Olympics, the agent that I signed with was saying the shoe companies wanted to wait until after I competed in the Olympics to talk about signing me so the pressure to run well was on but I didn’t execute and among other emotions, that was the biggest worry I had and after leaving London and talking with him, nobody wanted to sign me. I was hurt and felt like everything I had worked towards just went down the drain. I didn’t know how I was going to make it without any endorsements.
Professional Track Life
After the Olympics, I took some time to regroup because although I didn’t get signed, I knew that I could still get signed if my next season was good enough. To support myself and this dream, I had to pick up a full time job. The first job that offered me and had the flexibility with my practice schedule was Hollister. I was a store manager and came to work after practice was done in the mornings. The problems started because I was standing on my feet all day. Being a runner, especially after hard workouts, getting off your feet Is important but I had bills I had to pay and the prize money I would get wouldn’t be enough to cover my day to day expenses. My first professional season was the worst season I had in my life. It was the first year that I didn’t have a faster time than the previous season and my times suffered so bad that I was running close to my high school times. After my first year professional, I decided to switch coaches from my previous professional coach to see if a more aggressive approach to running would work. The practices were harder, the drive to practice was double and the sacrifice was even more. When the season started, like the previous season, I wasn’t happy with the results. I told myself I would give myself some time to shake the rust off but it didn’t come off. Halfway through the season, I made the toughest decision I had ever made in my life and that was to finally walk away from track. It was tough even coming to that but I felt that I was sacrificing so much and the results weren’t there plus I was struggling to make ends meet and I felt like I could have a better life if I focused on something that would make me money.
The transition
To this day, many people don’t know what I went through when I decided to walk away from track. I was depressed like I had never been and there was nothing that could feel that void. There were many days I stayed in bed all day with no tv on, no phone, I would just stare at the ceiling and think. I decided I had to get up and do something and I knew real estate was something I always wanted to get into and even after getting my license, I still felt empty and not completely happy. I couldn’t watch track on tv for a long time and I never told people who I would meet that I ran track and made it to the Olympics because I was ashamed and felt like a failure. However, like the old saying goes, “Time heals all wounds”, it proved to be true. Year by year, I found that I would make better peace with the past and all my success & failures that I had. I had to shift my focus from not looking at what I didn’t accomplish to what I did and that helped a great deal when putting things into perspective because for the longest time, I could only see what I did wrong. I had to consistently remind myself that little ole me, made it as far as I did. Being an Olympian means you are 1 in 1.5 million people and the odds of that are remarkable.
Today I am fully engulfed in my real estate career which in many instances reminds me of being an athlete because my success is dependent upon how hard I work. So I guess you can say that the competitive nature never left.