If you have the nickname “Flash,” that’s already a lot to live up to.
To do so requires quite a bit of discipline and tenacity, to say nothing of talent. It helps to have a supportive family, a clear goal and an unmatched drive to go with a high level of self-belief and a tenacious competitive streak.
The above paragraph is, basically, a one-paragraph description of Kenisha Phillips.
Austin Peay’s latest in a long line of sprint standouts, Phillips has blazed a different trail than that of most of her predecessors. Where longtime Austin Peay sprints and hurdles honcho Valerie Brown went deep into her ties around the region to nab standouts like Breigh Jones, Sabrina Richman, Tymeitha Tolbert, Kyra Wilder and dozens of others to establish the foundation of one of the elite running programs in the area, getting a world-class caliber athlete from Guyana requires a little luck to go with recruiting savvy.
You also make your own luck, to a certain degree.
“Sabrina [Richman]’s high school coach is from Guyana and she’s friends with the lady who helped Kenisha and other athletes get to the states and find schools and institutions,” said Austin Peay head coach Valerie Brown. “She told her about APSU because Sabrina was here and I recruited her that way. I started speaking with Kenisha through WhatsApp, we were able to email; it was a unique recruiting experience.
“It was really a situation where she wanted to go so
Kenisha Phillips while competing for Guyana
mewhere to be part of a team that was as talented as she was. She had offers from bigger schools, but I was fortunate to be able to win her over with what we’ve been able to build here and how we’ve been able to elevate people like Erika Adams and Tymeitha Tolbert. She was sold at the opportunity to win championships here.”
She’s already etching her name among the greatest sprinters the program has ever seen. In her first race as a Governor, at the Saluki Fast Start in Carbondale, Illinois last December, Phillips might have been nervous, excited, anxious or any number of emotions. But the gun sounded and 60 meters later, she was something else:
Holder of Austin Peay’s indoor 60m dash record, equaling Tolbert’s 7.49 mark at the previous season’s Ohio Valley Conference Indoor Championship.
“The first win was a really good feeling,” she said. “It was my first time running for the school and competing on the big stage.
“For me, I was mentally prepared. I know what I’m about and what I’m capable of. It was a good starting point. I expected success early. I was training really hard and [Coach] Brown set our expectations very high.”
Phillips’ expectations for herself have always been high, even before she was given her Flash moniker by a teacher in high school. From an early age, she knew what she wanted and committed herself to that pursuit.
It was a precocious Kenisha Phillips who watched Usain Bolt torch the field at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and became inspired to chase greatness.
“I was watching him and how fast he could run,” she said. “[When] he won and the crowd went crazy, I decided, ‘That’s what I want to do, I want to be just like him and represent my country and go to the Olympics.'”
She’s well on her way to making all her dreams a reality, based on her first half-season as a Governor and the maniacal work ethic she has showcased to get to this point. Following her debut effort, she followed that up with four more of the program’s top-six 60m times of all time in just her first season.
Then she won two gold medals at the OVC Indoor Championships, added an additional silver in the 60m dash and provided a world-class run in the final leg of the 4x400m relay to give the Govs their first team title since 2001. For her efforts, Phillips earned OVC Freshman of the Year and Athlete of the Championship honors, the first runner in league history to take both honors in the same season. The ceiling on her potential was officially removed at that point—multi-time league champion, multi-time Athlete of the Year, NCAA Championship qualifier, Olympic qualifier, you name it.
Losing the spring outdoor season due to COVID-19 obviously mashed the brakes pretty hard on those dreams, at least in the short term. But to reiterate—she did ALL the things in the above paragraph in just the indoor part of her freshman season.
Her odds of reaching and exceeding those heights would have to be considered pretty good when you think of it like that.
“It was hard to deal with losing the spring season,” she said. “I kept on training and kept doing what I had to do. I have a dream and I want to be able to live up to that dream someday. One of my main goals is to make it to the Olympics and represent my country. I’m not far from reaching that; I need to continue training hard and continue to be determined.” (Adapted from video by LetsGoPeay.com)
