Youth Spotlight - Samirah Moody

The final USATF New England (USATF-NE) Youth Spotlight for the indoor season features Samirah Moody (Metro Cobras/Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols School/Cambridge MA). Moody twice set an all-time New England high school indoor record in the 200m.  At the adidas Indoor Nationals in Virginia Beach on February 28, she set the first record in preliminary rounds with a time of 24.30 (which qualified her for the finals, where she took 9th. Three weeks later on the same track, she improved the standard to 24.13 in the finals of the AAU indoor championship.  Moody also set personal bests in the 55m and 60m dashes at the adidas meet running 7.01 and 7.52 respectively. 

Saleena Rashed, Moody’s coach at the Metro Cobras, said that while Moody’s competitive drive is important, there’s more to track and field than simply the time or place on the results sheet. 

“I feel like there are some athletes who just see their time,” Rashed said. “For example, you could come in last in a race, but run the best time of your life, and run a season or all-time record. At adidas Track Nationals, Samirah came in seventh in the 200 and broke the state record, but she was not happy at all. I told her, ‘You broke the record, you lowered your time.’ I think it’s more about being competitive for those athletes and knowing they can do better. So that’s why she came back two weeks later and was able to drop her time.”

USATF-NE spoke with Moody about her accomplishments

USATF-NE: You set an New England high school record at Adidas Indoor Nationals, were you thinking about setting that record going into the meet?

SM: I try not to think about records or anything that big. My mindset is to always come in and compete with whoever I’m running with and also to improve myself. If my improvement comes with a record or something more monumental, that’s always great. That adds to the feeling of accomplishment after, but going into a race, I don’t like to add too much pressure on myself.

USATF-NE: You guys have had similar challenges when it comes to consistency with training facilities. Mentally, how have you approached that all season?

SM: It’s easy to compare yourself to these girls who are in Texas, Florida, or states down south that never closed down, those who have been outside practicing all this time, and it’s easy to be like, “why can’t I hit that time too?” But like you said, you look at all the adversity we’ve had to overcome, not having places to practice or having like a 40-meter turf that you’re practicing on, and that’s how you’re getting your workouts in. I think my mindset has been, “how can I create consistency for myself?” Even if our practice schedule is up in the air every week based on whether our facilities are open or not, I know that I can get abs in every day. I know that I can do certain things every day that can help me reach my goal, so that’s been my plan. Also, getting into the mindset of knowing that I have done everything I can to get ready and just trust that all that hard work will come out in some way, shape, or form. Just believing in that and not getting in my head and beginning to doubt myself on the line, because I think that’s where it’s easy to make mistakes and it’s easy to undercut yourself in those big moments or in those big meets.

USATF-NE: What are you working towards right now?

SM: For outdoor, I just want to keep bringing down my times. There’s obviously always technique things that need to be tweaked or reset, but I feel like my mindset is very solid. I’m very ready, I’m very hungry, I feel like that whole quarantine phase made me realize how much I love running. I’ve gone through injuries, so that itself has made me realize how much I love to run. It’s more about keeping that momentum going as long as I can, and once I go off to school, being able to channel that again when it gets hard.