Handling It

Hey, Arantxa. My name is Brian, and I'm a sports columnist for the Tufts Daily.

(Pause)

I spoke with your mom yesterday, and I just wanted to know if I could talk with you for a few minutes about yourself and about your running.

(Pause)

Do you think you'd be willing to do that?

(Pause)

Hello?

"Hang on just a second."

(Pause)

"Yeah, that's OK."

Would you rather do this now or should I call back tomorrow?

"Yeah, that would be better, like midday."

Alright, cool, thanks, I'll talk to you tomorrow.

(Click)

Not a great start to an interview. Something like when Barry Bonds tells a roomful of reporters, "Sorry, no questions today." Suffice to say, I was a pretty intimidated.

But this was bigger than Barry -- much bigger. Arantxa is Arantxa King -- 14 years old. And her mom is Branwen Smith-King, the Assistant Athletics Director at Tufts.

Arantxa is a freshman at Medford High School, and she's about the fastest thing this town has seen since Paul Revere. Her race is the 55-meters. A couple weeks ago, she ran it in 7.14 seconds at the All-State Championships.

Did I mention she's 14? And she doesn't turn 15 until November.

She's won every 55-meter race she's run, including every big Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association race this year. And she won the Dartmouth Relays. Basically the only thing in this state this girl isn't winning is the Democratic nomination.

So I called back.

So Arantxa, what's your favorite subject in school?

"He he, science, I guess."

What're you doing in science this year?

"Biology, he he."

What happened? A day earlier this girl had sounded like a pint-sized prima donna. All of a sudden, she had turned into, gasp!, a 14-year-old girl.

I had reached Arantxa just after she got back from practice. Her coach couldn't be there, so she came up to the Tufts track on Saturday afternoon and did sprint drills by herself, for an hour and a half.

I asked her how all her running practice had affected her schoolwork.

"It's kind of hard because I have to be gone all the time," she said. "But it helps me because me when I get home I know I need to do my work."

I know chemical engineers who don't have this work ethic. This girl goes school-practice-homework-school-practice-homework and just keeps going.

I wanted to know what her friends think about her running. I wanted to know if every Friday afternoon, her friends say, "Yo, Arantxa, let's go hit the mall and see a movie," and Arantxa has to say, "Sorry, ladies, I gotta go practice my starts with coach before it gets too dark."

I didn't think 14-year-old girls would understand. Again, I was wrong. "They just think it's amazing that I can run so fast," she said.

But Arantxa, don't they ever complain that you're never around?

"Nope."

I told her to hang on a second so I could write down what she was saying, but I really just needed a minute to gather my thoughts. Truth is, she wasn't saying much, and I couldn't really believe what she was saying. She whispered and giggled like any other high school freshman girl, but when the gun goes off, she's like the Oreck XL -- nothing beats her.

Since you don't exactly lose, um, ever, what do you think about when you get set in the blocks? Do you go up there thinking, "I'm about to kill these girls" or do you just say, "I'm 14 years old, I'm gonna go for a run?"

"I never think that I'm going to beat everyone," she said. "I try to focus on doing the best I can do."

Right answer. All the right answers. Who's been preparing you for the spotlight, Artantxa, who's been helping you adjust to the attention?

"My teammates, my coaches, my parents -- they just tell me to relax and to not stress out."

Enough warm-up questions. Now for the biggies. Where's this girl going? Is she gonna book it for the cash as soon as puberty hits?

So, Arantxa, you heard of Freddy Adu?

"No, who's he?"

He's the same age as you are, and he just got a sweet deal from Nike to play soccer. Dude's got skills like Ronaldo, but he's won more international under-17 titles than he's taken math tests. You think you'd go pro?

"Nah," she said.

What do you think you'll be doing in five years, Arantxa?

"Going to college."

Her coaches say she could be an Olympian, her mom was a pentathlete in the Caribbean and Pan-American Games, her dad, Adrian King, played on the Bermuda national cricket team, and this girl's sights are set on college.

Since she started running circles around every high schooler in Beantown, there's been a lot of media attention on Arantxa, from the Medford Transcript to the Boston Globe. "This is all new to her," Arantxa's mom said. "She's handling it very well."

Yeah, no kidding.