Over the past two years, Brenda Taylor has hurdled to a place in among the world’s elite runners. A success on and off the track, in 2001 Taylor was a World Championships semi-finalist and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard.

Though she did not begin running seriously until high school, Taylor excelled in sports from an early age. She competed in gymnastics, volleyball and swimming; but by high school, running took priority. Her introduction to hurdling came the summer before ninth grade when she went to a hurdling lesson with her twin sister. Taylor turned out to be a natural hurdler and just months later, won a state Junior Olympics title. She had a stellar high school career, winning three state championships in the 300m and 400mH, and earning All American honors three times.

At Harvard, Taylor excelled on and off the track. She won three ECAC titles, 23 heptagonal titles, and set Harvard records in nine different events. In her junior year she competed in the 400mH Olympic Trials, finishing 11th. The following year, Taylor was the Penn Relays and NCAA champion, and competed at the World University Championships. She capped off her collegiate career by receiving the Honda Cup as the top female collegiate track & field athlete. She also was on top academically, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in the honors psychology & biology program with a focus in cognitive neuroscience.

After graduation, Taylor moved cross-country to train in California. She finished third at the US Nationals, earning herself a trip to the 2001 World Championships, where she made the semi-finals. Taylor repeated her bronze medal-winning performance at the 2002 US Nationals. 2003 was a breakthrough season for Taylor including an indoor World Championships bronze medal and a 7th place world ranking in the 400 hurdles. Having recently signed with Nike, she is training six days a week to work on her hurdling technique and conditioning for the next competitive season.

Funding from DHAC/ The U.S. Athletic Trust will help Taylor to pay for the costs of this intensive training which she hopes will eventually lead to a spot on the 2004 Olympic team. In the future, she hopes to return to academia, attending medical school with a focus on public health policy.

I have been an athlete for 18 of my 23 years. I began running track and field, the sport that would define my high school and college athletic career as well as my post collegiate career, at the age of 14. Although I garnered an NCAA title, a world championship semi-final, the 2001 track and field Honda Award, 3 Eastern Coast Athletic Conference Titles, 9 Harvard records, 4 Heptagonal records, and over twenty Heptagonal titles while at Harvard, the most powerful moment of my athletic career did not take place on the track. I have to admit that nothing has ever felt better than the moment when I crossed the line at NCAAs in 2001. Me, the underdog from Harvard, in first place. I gained a powerful satisfaction from knowing that everyone who had asked me countless times, “does Harvard have a track team?”, would have their answer in front of them as I completed my victory lap. I had also reached a personnal goal of running under 56 seconds, for the first time. However, I did not realize the real impact of my success until later. Because of my performances in 2001, I was selected as the track and field Honda Award winner for the best performance by a female athlete in track that year. As a winner, I was featured in a large article in the USA Today. A young girl saw the article, and her father wrote me a letter expressing his daughter’s fascination with my accomplishments and requesting an autographed photo for her. He explained that his daughter was an athlete and a good student who had her concerns with attending a good university because it might sacrifice her athletic goals. She was very motivated by my success both athletically and academically, and as a result of the article, she decided that both challenges could enhance each other. I was touched by her motivation and have since been able to participate in several camps for young and underprivileged children. Observing the hope in their eyes when they realize how far athletics can carry them is the most powerful thing I’ve experienced in my athletic career. The first step to success for anyone is daring to strive for it. I feel very lucky that I’m in a position to help young athletes dare to dream both on the field and in the classroom, and I hope that I will continue to raise the bar in my own athletic career so that my picture and theirs is an even bigger one.