Livingstone College has a deeply rooted sports history. The Blue Bears football team played in the first-ever Black college football game back in 1892. Norries Wilson, a Livingstone alum, was the first Black head football coach at an Ivy League school when he coached at Columbia University for five seasons. Former NFL running back Natrone Means was a running backs coach and offensive coordinator at the school, and another NFL legend – and arguably Livingstone’s most notable alums is Ben Coates, who won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens in 2000, before returning to Salisbury to be the head football coach at his alma mater.
However, as great as these athletes are, they may have to make room at the top of the mountain for a hometown ‘shero.”
Quanera Hayes is one of the most decorated athletes to ever come out of Livingstone College. In 2016 she won a gold medal in the 4x400-meter race at the World Indoor Championship in Portland. A year later she won gold again in 4x400 meter races at both the World Relays in the Bahamas and the World Indoor Championships in London. She followed up those spectacular performances with a 2021 gold medal in the 400-meter race in the Diamond League track and field event. She also won the 400 meter race at the Olympic Trials in June of 2021, which qualified her to race in the 2021 Olympics which was delayed because of the pandemic – two years after the birth of her son Demetrius.
The balancing act between being a professional athlete and a mother is no easy feat, but Hayes hasn’t lost her competitive edge and desire to compete on the track, and she’ll have an opportunity to once again represent the United States at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest this month. Hayes was one of 138 athletes named by USA Track & Field to compete in the event.
The Hope Mills native is part of the relay pool, and a member of a Team USA squad that picked up 13 gold medals, nine silver medals, and 11 bronze medals from last year's World Championships in Oregon, in addition to comfortably winning the inaugural World Team Trophy.
Hayes brings her experience and individual accomplishments to an already deep and talented squad that is capable of winning gold medals in their respective events. The nine-day competition at the National Athletics Centre in Hungary, and from all of us here at the Star of Zion newspaper, we’d like to wish Hayes good luck and we can’t wait to see her return home with another gold medal around her neck.
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