General | 9/19/2016 4:00:00 PM
The following feature originally appeared in the football game program on Sept. 17, 2016.
In more ways than one, Karrington Seals has jumped to the head of the class at Wayne State University.
The junior from Farmington Hills, Mich. is already one of the best hurdlers the women's track program has ever had, and in indoor competition, with all due respect to everybody else, she is THE best in Warriors history. Period. End of statement. The body of work tells us so.
Seals became the first indoor women's track All-American in school history when she finished eighth in the NCAA Division II Championships in the 60-meter hurdles last season. She became the first non-distance runner to advance to the NCAA finals by breaking the school record with a time of 8.505.
Granted, women's indoor track program has been around for only a relatively short period of time, but then again, someone had to be first – someone had to be the person to break through and do it in a big way on a grand stage – and the 2014 graduate of North Farmington High School was the one who went out and did it.
Adding to Seals' resume is the fact that she has no less seven of the top 11 times in the 60-meter hurdles in WSU history.
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In outdoor competition, she was an honorable mention All-American last spring after finishing 10th in the 100-meter hurdles in a time of 13.87 seconds. She has the top 11 all-time outdoor times in that event.
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"The one thing you need to know about Karrington is that while she's not the fastest girl in the hurdles in terms of raw ability, she gets the most out of her talents," said
Rondell Ruff, who is the head coach of WSU's women's indoor and outdoor track teams and also the men's and women's cross country squads. "She's a jack of all trades. She uses a common-sense approach to figure out what she has to do to be successful, and then she works at doing it."
But we said at the start that Seals is multi-talented, and she is. For as good as she is in track, she is just as good, if not better, in the classroom, having been named to the Athletic Director's Honor Roll (a grade-point average of at least 3.5) for all four of the semesters she's been at Wayne State heading into this fall. That includes a perfect 4.0 in her first semester in the 2014 fall term.
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That's the way to begin crafting a career in medicine.
For over a decade and a half – since she was in kindergarten and matter-of-factly put into her time capsule that she wanted "to make sick people feel better" – Seals, just 21 years old, has wanted to be a doctor. Majoring in Biological Science Honors, with a minor in Spanish, Seals she has her sights on becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
It's one thing to be a decorated track athlete, or a decorated student. But to do both at the same time – to be a decorated student-athlete? That's no small feat indeed. Only a precious few are able to do it at any school, even in Division I.
Her excellence in both endeavors, which makes Seals a great fit as a member of the school's Student-Athlete Advisor Committee, for which she served as co-secretary last school year, could well be her crowning achievement at Wayne State.
Nobody knows that better than Ruff.
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"It's extremely tough to excel at both academics and athletics at the same time," he said. "I know when I was competing in college (in track and cross country for the University of Michigan from 2002-06), I couldn't do it. I had to make a decision between the two, which one I would concentrate on. I made sure I got the grades so I could receive my degree, but I put the greater emphasis on athletics.
"Karrington can do both because she does a good job of balancing things. She never complains about having to do all-nighters to keep her grades up. She realizes that's what she has to do, so she does it." Or as Seals puts it, "I don't like to fail at anything."
And she doesn't, except for perhaps getting started on time in some of her endeavors.
"I'm a terrible procrastinator," Seals admits.
Everybody would procrastinate like she does if they knew they'd get her kind of results.
But it wasn't always this way – Seals wasn't always a track star, or even a track athlete – and she doesn't come from a track family or even one that's particularly athletic, which makes her journey to get to where she's at today the most interesting part of her tale.
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"I think my story is pretty boring," Seals contends.
Boring? Boring?! Really?! That is hardly the truth. It is anything but boring – or normal.
Being an intelligent young lady, Seals knows that, though. More likely, she's just being extremely humble, which is just another reason to admire and respect this 21-year-old with the warm, contagious laugh and smile.
Seals' story is, in fact, extremely special – and then some. It happened as it did despite a lot of hurdles that could have tripped her up.
A good place is start is … well, at the beginning, before there was even a Karrington Seals – at least officially, anyway.
Karrington is not a common first name for females. So how did she get it? Does it have some special family significance? Or some little-known meaning?
"No, none of that," Seals said. "My mom (Darlene Seals) said the name just came to her out of nowhere in a dream one night when she was pregnant with me, and she liked it."
That should have been the first clue that there would be no rhyme or reason for some of things in Seals' life, such as her foray into track. It just kind of happened.
While growing up, Seal was in competitive dance – really into it, in fact.
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"I would be at dance practice from 3 to 9 p.m. most days," she said.
But she got burned out on dance in middle school and, when she was in eighth grade, told her mother she intended to quit.
"And do what in its place?" Mom wanted to know.
No answer.
"You're not going to just sit around," her mother warned. "You've got to do something."
Spring had finally sprung, and so had spring sports at her school.
"Why don't you try track?" her mother asked.
And so track it was without Seals – or her family – having much idea of what the sport was about.
"My dad (Robert Seals) is a runner now, but he wasn't a runner then," Seals recalled.
"As for my mom, she had gone out for track one year in high school, but she lasted for only about a week before she quit."
But from that brief encounter with the sport, what Seals' mother did discover about track is that it involved running – lots and lots and lots of running – and so if her daughter were going to shelve the strenuous rigors of competitive dance, then she was going to take up something that really challenged her physically.
And competitively as well. In fact, it was more than she could handle at first.
"I was a below-average runner that first year," Seals said. "I really wasn't that good. Never in my wildest dreams at that time did I ever think that I would get a scholarship to college for track."
That didn't dissuade her, though.
She started to like track.
"And my nature is such that I put all of my energy into everything all of the time, so I kept working hard at it," Seals said.
That work, fueled by the fact she was having a good time, eventually began paying off when she got to North Farmington High School. She improved – greatly – and even began competing on AAU track teams.
Then, out of the blue, came one of those hurdles that threatened to knock her flat.
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"It was the preseason practice in my senior year," Seals said. "There was something in my right foot that kept hurting. It just didn't seem right."
It was a stress fracture. Her senior season was over before it ever got started, and so was her high school career.
In addition, that chance for a college scholarship, which once seemed like a pipe dream but had begun to come into focus, faded away again.
Not for long, though. Her AAU coaches had some connections at Wayne State and made a pitch to the school to give her a shot. The school's coaches listened and she became a Warrior, something that both Seals and WSU have never regretted.
Her first two years at Wayne State have been great, but Ruff thinks she still has plenty of room to grow.
"I've always been accused of being too positive, but while I'm optimistic, I'm also realistic," he said. "I've told her that she can do a lot better than what she's already done, and I wouldn't have said that if I didn't believe it."
Added Seals, "When Coach came here a year ago, he said he planned on coaching a national championship team. The change in coaches was kind of hard at first and we weren't quite sure about what he was saying, but now we're drinking his Kool-Aid. We're so excited. We're so pumped. The girls are working hard. A championship is in the works."
Perhaps for both the Warriors and Karrington Seals, who knows a thing or two about success.
