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Furm's Take: The New And Improved Kristen Bates
A slight glimpse of the old Kristen Bates at this year's national championships? One had to look fast to catch it.
Grantham, PA — Kristen Bates and Kristen Bates stopped by my office last week for a little sit-down chat. It was a pleasure getting to know both of them. Confused? Allow me to introduce. First, there’s the Messiah senior who just became the school’s first-ever individual dual national champion, winning both the 55-meter hurdles and pentathlon at the 2010 NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field National Championships two weeks back at DePauw University. Then there’s the Kristen Bates who hates running. “I still despise it,” she told me. “I’m going to be so fat when my career is over. I hate to do almost every individual workout there is. This past summer, when I started training, the most I could run straight through was four minutes away from my house and then four minutes back. When I was finished, I fell down in my yard.” It gets better. One of the Kristen Bateses I met now has nine All-American honors, a Messiah track and field record. She’s appeared in six national championship meets, has 10 school-record marks and was just named this winter’s national field athlete of the year by the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. The other used to think track was a ‘blow-off’ sport. “I ran track in high school, but I kind of got suckered into it,” she said. “I would do anything I could to get out of the workouts. Sometimes, my friend and I would hide under the high jump mats so we wouldn’t have to run. Track was such an irrelevant thing.” That attitude may have been the reason Bates never made it out of districts in any high school track event, and it certainly helped Messiah head coach Dale Fogelsanger never recruit her. “I was coming to Messiah, I knew that for several years,” Bates said. “But the summer before I came, I sent Coach Foge an email introducing myself, and asked, if basketball doesn’t work out, could I be part of the team? He sent me an email back that said, ‘Sure you can be on the team.’ That’s how my career started.” And that’s why th … wait a minute. Basketball? Seriously? From a five-foot, three-inch track star who admits “my inseam is not the most beneficial” for hurdling? Bates looks like a spec compared to most of the Quadzillas she competes with in the hurdles — could it have been any better taking it to the rack on the basketball court? Turns out, it just may have been. The game of basketball is an interesting topic for both Bateses. For one, it’s still and will always be her life-long love. For the other, its some sort of marriage gone tragically awry — Love & Basketball morphed into reality. “Basketball was my passion,” Bates said while slumping back in her seat, almost as if discussing a long lost friend. “I had a ball with me everywhere I went. I’d dribble underneath my desk before the teacher came in the room. I used to make cassette tapes of our games in high school so I could fall asleep to the sounds of the shoes squeaking, the ball bouncing ... the crowd. Basketball was an idol to me.” But Bates’ gifts on the hardwood had a ceiling. She became a Christian while attending Messiah’s basketball camp, and prayed about the sport the summer before starting college. “I had some D-III (basketball) letters, but I wasn’t good enough to play here,” she says. “I remember praying to God, ‘If I can’t use basketball to glorify You, I don’t want it to be part of my life anymore.’ It was one of those prayers you say, hoping that God lets you have your way after you give Him an ultimatum. But that’s not what He wanted for me.” Suddenly, Bates catches herself, and the other interjects. “It was really hard,” she says, beginning to smile. “But this is just as good.” The old Kristen Bates was an uber-confident basketball player at West Perry High School, not afraid to mix it up with anybody. During a scramble for a loose ball in an AAU game, an opponent took a swing at Bates. She called that the highlight of her career. “Anything it took to win, I would do it,” she said. “It was us against you. I was a fist-pumping, in-your-face type of player. That’s just me.” The new Kristen Bates? Well, she’s a bit more reserved. After winning two national championships a few weeks back, she mostly smiled. There was no hoisting the trophies into the air on the medal stand. Not even a fist pump. “I’ve had to check myself so much,” she says. “It’s my style to go crazy and jump up and down, but to outsiders it can come across as cockiness. After we won the MAC Championship this year, I wanted to dog pile at midfield, but we’re Messiah. We don’t do that. You never know who is watching you, and what kind of influence you might have.” Bates has taken that ideal to heart. She has Psalm 115:1 stitched into the side of her track bag, and continually posts Facebook statuses not about herself, but about her God. Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory because of your love and faithfulness. “You can really be a witness through track, and I never realized that in high school,” Bates said. “Back then, I thought that if I didn’t work hard, the only person I was hurting was myself. But at Messiah, we try to make track as much of a team sport as possible. I’ve got great teammates and coaches who work just as hard, if not harder, than I do. I represent so much more than just myself.” Bates will graduate this spring with a degree in psychology, and she hopes her 3.89 GPA will help get her into graduate school to pursue another degree in occupational therapy. Unlike any other sport, however, she’s not done: The outdoor track and field season started last week, and Bates will most likely have another shot on the national stage in May. Should another title be in the cards, there will be no Terrell Owens imitations. “What I’ve been able to do, it’s really all because of Him,” Bates said. “I feel like, because of my struggles with basketball, it’s helped me realize that. Injuries, illness … it can all be taken away so fast. I feel that my athletic abilities are not something that I’ve done, but rather a gift that I’ve been given.” Yeah, so maybe the old Kristen Bates and the new Kristen Bates are the same person. Maybe God — with a little help from sports — is still in the process of shaping one truly remarkable young lady. She has enough national championship trophies either way.
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