April 25, 2007

By Jim Sumner
TheACC.com

Kim Graham was six when she joined the family business. Well, it wasn't actually a business, not in those days; more like an avocation. The hobby was running from one place to another place real fast and Kim Graham did this about as well as any woman in ACC history.

Herman Graham was a sprinter and football player at Virginia State. His wife Loretta was a sprinter in high school. All four of their children were sprinters. Jay Graham, the youngest and only son, was an All-America running back at Tennessee and played four seasons in the NFL. In 1977, Herman Graham, Frank Davis, Jr., and Rodney Bullock founded the Durham Striders, one of the nation's top youth track and field organizations. Herman's daughter Kim began running for the Striders that year.

She liked it and was good at it from the beginning. Graham was running 62 seconds for 400 meters within a year. She also raced at 100 and 200 meters. Graham gave field events like the long jump a try but preferred the visceral thrill of having the competition right beside her.

In 1981, the family moved to Manassas, Virginia, after mom Loretta was transferred with her job at IBM. Kim went to Stonewall Jackson High School, where she won numerous state sprint titles, three as a senior. She finished second in the 100 meters at the U.S. Junior Championships in 1989, third in the 200 meters. The top track and field powers beckoned.

Clemson was just moving into that category. In the early to middle 1980s, the Tigers boasted a handful of top long distance runners, athletes who ran cross country in the fall and track in the spring. But they didn't begin to take women's track and field seriously until 1987, when head coach Wayne Coffman was able to hire assistant coach Ron Garner away from small-college power Christopher Newport. Coffman and Garner were able to recruit and nurture top sprinters like Lisa Dillard. So the Tigers were on the radar screen in 1989 when Graham was looking at colleges.

There was a concern. It appeared that Graham would not be academically eligible as a freshman. Was Clemson taking a chance recruiting her? Not according to Garner. "I recruit people, not SAT scores. The more we got to know Kim, the more we knew she could do the work academically and the more we knew she would be an asset to Clemson."

Graham says, "I loved everything about Clemson but the people were the main thing. They recruited me early. They trusted me and they believed in me."

Graham sat out the 1990 season, getting her academics in order. She exploded on the scene in 1991. Graham won ACC indoors titles at 55 and 200 meters. But track champions are made outdoors. The 1991 ACC Track and Field Championship was held in Chapel Hill, home of the league's top dog, and only miles from where Graham had learned to run. North Carolina came into the meet having won four consecutive indoor and three consecutive outdoor league titles. Garner says, "They were ahead of us. North Carolina was where we wanted to be. Nobody gave us a chance, not on their home turf."

Graham was the equalizer. She finished second in the 100 meters, captured the 200 meters in a then league-record 23.42, and anchored a first-place finish in the 4x100 meter relay. The final event was the 4x400 meter relay. UNC entered the race with a one-point lead over Clemson.

The first three legs of the relay left the outcome in doubt. Graham and UNC star Kendra Mackey took the final baton pass basically even. It was a cold, wet, windy day and Graham had been running heats and finals all weekend. With the partisan crowd roaring, Mackey blasted down the backstretch and opened up a lead. Graham maintained her composure and fought back. In Garner's telling, "It looked like Mackey had the race won, but we knew better. We knew what Kim could do. She stayed focused and calm. She had that ability to run you down. When she came off that final turn, she just opened up and no one could challenge that finishing kick."

Clemson won the relay in a stunning 3:34.50 and the meet championship. North Carolina went on to win the next seven outdoor team titles, making 1991 its only miss in an 11-year period. Graham, who was named the ACC Performer of the Year, says, "That was my biggest thrill in college. It was exciting and a little scary. There was a lot of pressure. Beating UNC in Chapel Hill was unheard of."

Graham went on to lead Clemson to a 12th-place finish in the NCAA championships, finishing 4th in the 200 meters in 23.15 and anchoring Clemson's 5th-place finish in the 4x100 meter relay.

The next two years were more of the same. Clemson won the 1992 ACC indoor title and finished second outdoors in 1992 and 1993. Graham again was named ACC Performer of the Year in 1992 and 1993, sharing the 1992 award with Virginia distance runner Claire Forbes. She is the only woman to win that honor three times. Graham ended her ACC career with 15 conference titles. She finished second in the 200 meters at the 1992 NCAA championships and fourth the following year. Graham tried out for the 1992 Olympic team at 200 meters but was eliminated in the semifinals.

She continued to run following graduation in 1993. The 1992 Olympic Trials showed her where she stood. Garner says, "It was obvious that the 200 would not be her Olympic event. It had to be the 400."

Anyone who has ever run track knows that the 400 meter run is more than just twice as long as 200 meters. It is a different world of pain. A fit runner can sprint 200 meters all out without going into significant oxygen debt. Not so at 400 meters, where the need to dig deep into one's reserves causes competitors to compare the stretch run to having a bear jump on their back.

According to Graham, "There were times when I hated the 400 and times when I feared it. It is just such a tough event. But it became apparent that it was my best bet."

Garner agrees. "She continued to develop. She got stronger. Kim was very smart about her career, knowing when to rest, when to train, when to race, when to work on her skill set. She understood about energy distribution, which is vital in the 400. She didn't have perfect technique but it was right for her body. It worked."

Graham worked with Randy Bungard, who was an assistant at Clemson when she graduated. Bungard left Clemson for a similar job at Virginia around the time Graham graduated, spent some time at Texas, before going back to Charlottesville as head coach in 1997. Graham also moved, convinced that Bungard was the coach who could best help her to the next level.

It was a good match. Bungard says, "Kim was a coach's dream. There was no prima donna stuff. She had a strong work ethic, a great heart, and an ability to handle pain. She knew how to keep everything in perspective. She was a tiger in spikes but so sweet off the track."

The plan was for Graham to maintain the speed she needed to excel in the 200 and add endurance for the 400. Bungard says, "Her natural speed made it possible for her to run fast early, without running out of gas. If she could get the strength, then her competitiveness would bring her home. Kim had as much refuse-to-lose-mentality as anyone I've ever coached. She would do anything humanly possible to win."

The 1996 Olympics loomed on the horizon. Bungard notes, "In order to compete at that level, she needed to be able to run opening heats well, while maintaining her strength for the finals. That meant lots of weight work, circuit training, and endurance work."

Graham moved up the charts in the 400, placing 4th in the USA Outdoors (51.43) in 1994. The following year was her best yet. Graham was ranked third in the United States in the 400 with a best time of 51.15 and ran the first leg for the United States gold-medal team at the 1995 World Championships.

Atlanta and the Olympics were next. Graham qualified in the 400 meters, finishing third in the trials in 51.87. She also was named to the relay squad.

Graham advanced into the semifinals in the 400 but finished fifth in that race in 51.13; the top four advanced to the finals. The agonizing near-miss served as a motivator for Graham.

The 4x400-meter relay closed the games. Graham ran the third leg, taking the baton from Maicel Malone; Rochelle Stevens ran the opening leg. Graham says, "I was in the best shape of my life. Missing the finals in the 400 was a terrible disappointment. It wasn't going to happen again. Losing the relay at home would have been an embarrassment. My experience helped. I was able to calm my nerves and focus on what I had to do."

Graham had plenty to do. She took the baton several steps behind the team from Nigeria. The German team also was in the hunt. Garner, watching at home on TV, says "I could see it coming. I had seen Kim do it so many times."

Graham calmly and methodically reeled in Nigeria's Charity Opara and then pulled away down the stretch. In Bungard's words "she just smoked it."

Graham says, "A lot of work went into that moment. It all came together. It seemed like it wasn't that hard to pass people. The crowd was screaming for me and I said to myself `I want that gold bad.'"

Graham ran a blistering 49.49 leg and gave anchor Jearl Miles a solid lead, which she maintained through the finish line. The gold-medal time was 3:20.91. Nigeria took silver, Germany bronze. Eleven years later, Graham says, "This definitely was the highlight of my career. This was my Super Bowl."

She wasn't finished. Graham finished second in the U.S. Outdoors Championships in 1997 in 50.65 and ran the second leg for the United States team in the 4x400 at the World Championships; the Americans finished second. She won the United States Outdoors in 1998 (50.69), the biggest individual win of her career. That same year Clemson inducted Graham into its Hall of Fame.

Graham hoped to go back to the Olympics in 2000 but a series of nagging injuries began to creep in, a sore hamstring here, a strained Achilles tendon there. She qualified for the Olympic Trials in the 400 meters and advanced through the first round. But Bungard could tell that something was wrong. "She just wasn't healthy. She came up to me after the first round and told me that she just couldn't go. Knowing how competitive she was, this was telling. She was a champion and it wouldn't have been right for her to go out on a bad race or maybe not finish."

Graham retired from running but not from the sport. She had been building a resume as a coach, four years as an assistant at Virginia, two years at Duke. Graham moved west. She's an office manager, teacher, and coach at Sacramento High School. Graham has been married for four years to Jahmal Miller, a hospital administrator, and now answers to Kimberly Graham-Miller. She is expecting their first child this July.

Graham hopes to become a college head coach, an ambition Bungard enthusiastically endorses. "I think she'd make a great head coach. We grew up together, me as coach, she as an athlete. I learned more from her than she did from me. She's already a great person. Her mother did such a great job with that family. Kim has very high morals and has more common sense than anyone I know. She has an amazing ability to size up people in just a few minutes. She's a no-nonsense person on the track but knows how to leave it behind off the track. Kim is very loyal. If you earn her loyalty, she'll run through walls for you. She's like a sister to me."

Garner agrees. "You can talk about her speed or her endurance but her best attribute is her incredibly large heart. She is a special, special person. As great a runner as she was, I'm more proud of her for the person she is. She's one of the most wholesome people I've ever known. She's a perfect example of the adage that it's not what you come in with, it's what you leave with. No one ever left Clemson with more."

Jim Sumner's articles on southern sports history have appeared in the ACC Handbook, the ACC Area Sports Journal, Blue Devil Weekly, Inside Carolina, the Wolfpacker, Baseball America, Basketball America, and other publications. His latest book, Tales From the Duke Blue Devils Hardwood, was published in 2005. In his bimonthly column "Looking Back... by Jim Sumner", he will examine the rich history of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

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