Tahesia Harrigan-Scott with Taylor Hill, left and Nelda Huggins who celebrated their 17th and 16th birthdays during the Harrigan-Scott Speed and Technical Clinic
FEBRUARY 5—For the last 10 years, Tahesia Harrigan-Scott has been the face of BVI Track and Field. Alone at many Games and Championships along the way earlier in her career, she had always been asking Chief Coach Dag Samuels one simple question.
“We are we going to have more girls?”
Samuels could only stammer ‘soon, soon’ and smile.
Harrigan-Scott has now taken things into her own hands, literally putting her money where her mouth is. During her inaugural Harrigan-Scott Speed and Technical Clinic on Feb 2, featuring the likes of Olympic champions Kirani James, Dwight Phillips, Harvey Glance and World Champion J.J. Johnson, she threw out a change.
“Anyone breaking my 100m record of 11.13 seconds, I’m putting a $1000 in a CD and will add to it each year until it’s broken,” said Harrigan-Scott who has also run 22.98 over 200m. “I would like my record to stay, but realistically that’s not showing production. I want them to go and train and break my record eventually,” she added. “If I break it, I won’t take it. So, its for somebody else to break it and I would give them the $1000 regardless if it’s one year, 5 years 10 years, however long it takes—I don’t think it’s going to take that long but, when they break it, it will be an incentive for them that if they run fast, they’ll get the reward.”
Harrigan-Scott said while it’s only the 100m right now, as time passes, I want to add other events.
Nelda Huggins who turned 16 on Saturday and has a 100m legal best of 11.83 seconds but ran a windy 11.77 last year and opened with another windy 11.83 on Jan 25, is taking Harrigan-Scott’s challenge seriously.
“Of course,” she said. “I’m going to break it.”
Huggins and Taylor Hill who celebrated her 17th birthday had everyone sing for them, led by Harrigan-Scott.