The Closer

Maddy Price is unafraid to do what it takes to win — a lesson she learned from her dad.

  By DAVID KIEFER | Contributor

  In baseball, the closer is handed the ball in the most dangerous and mentally torturous point of the game. He holds nine innings of his teammates’ best work in his hands and, through his own performance, can uphold or destroy all of it in an instant. Such is his power. 

  There is a commonality between the relief pitcher inserted into a close game to protect a lead in the final inning, and Maddy Price, a senior sprinter at Menlo School in Atherton.

  Both are unafraid. 

  They have to be.

  The 400 meters is among the most difficult events in track and field. It’s a sprint, and yet it’s impossible to sprint that distance. Instead, the race turns into a competition not of speed, but who can last the longest.

  In other words, it’s about pain, and confidence, and a body’s will to endure when sensibility tells it to shut down. That’s when Price is at her best.

  “Maddy, you are the fastest closer in the West,” Menlo coach Jorge Chen tells her.

  He’s seen it enough times to know.

  “If there is someone 5-10 meters ahead of her in the last 100, Maddy will get them,” Chen said. “Because Maddy always wants it more than anyone else.”

  Combine intensity with athleticism, strength, size, genetics and the willingness to work hard and you have Price, a potential state track and field champion.

  That potential was made clear not in a victory, but a loss. At the prestigious Arcadia Invitational on April 12, Price ran 53.43 while finishing second to Long Beach Poly freshman Kaelin Roberts (53.37). The times remain the two fastest in California this year. 

  It also made Price the second-fastest in Central Coast Section history, behind only the 52.83 run by Olympian Leslie Maxie of Mills-Millbrae in 1984. It also remains the fastest in Northern California this year and is No. 4 in the nation.

  And yet, “I know I can go faster,” Price said. 

  A two-time CCS champion last season, in 200 and 400, Price was sixth in the state. However, she already has improved her best 400 by 1.35 seconds this year and has replayed the Arcadia loss in her head countless times, searching for ways to make up that 0.06 of a second that deprived her of victory.

  “Your body decelerates as you’re going, especially after 200 meters,” Price said. “There’s no way you can hold on. It’s a race of who can hold on the longest.”

  Price didn’t plan on being a runner, of going through that torture. Soccer and basketball were her sports of choice, but she was so athletic that in sixth grade at Menlo’s middle school, she signed up to run in the league cross country meet. Racing against seventh and eighth graders, and without any practice, she won.

  “As soon as I saw her, I knew she was a phenom,” said Chen, who witnessed the race. “She was an athlete and was going to be a good one, in whatever sport she tried.”

  Chen, who coached the Menlo middle school track and soccer teams, and later cross country, convinced her to try track and field, envisioning her as a sprinter (“In soccer, she would blow by everyone,” he said). He began to train her through a summer track club and, by her eighth-grade year, Price was 10th in the Junior Olympic nationals. With help from a personal coach, Mark Mueller, she has continued to develop and, last fall, signed a letter of intent with Duke.

  She also has aspirations internationally. A dual citizen, Price hopes to represent Canada, the country of her parents’ birth, in the IAAF World Junior Championships in July 22-27 in Eugene, Ore. Price already has eclipsed the meet’s qualifying standard of 55.25. Now, she just needs to finish in the top two at the Canadian junior nationals June 27-29 in Moncton, New Brunswick, to clinch a spot. 

  “The goal this year is win junior nationals and get to the World Championships this summer,” Price said. “Later on, I would love to compete for Canada at the Olympics.”

  One of her greatest attributes is fearlessness. She describes jumping off 60-foot rocks into a lake during summer vacations in Canada, and a similar approach is vital to the 400. 

  “Running a 400 all out and not saving it, you have to have a little bit of fearlessness to do that,” Price said. “I used to save it because I was relying on my kick. But now I know that if I want to get a state championship, I have to be fearless.”

  It’s also a family trait she learned from her father. 

  Shawn Price, a Silicon Valley executive, has a passion for racing himself. Until suffering a serious injury, his passion was motor sports. 

  He won the GT class of the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in his first professional car race, in 2005. Before that, he won the Baja 1,000 off-road motorcycle race in 2002 and was the top finisher from the Western Hemisphere in the 2003 Paris-Dakar Rally, covering 7,000 miles through the African desert in 19 days.

  Maddy and her sister, Nikki, a sophomore lacrosse star at Menlo, remember those days. In fact, Shawn is counting on it. He hopes that the lessons he learned during his racing career can somehow carry forward to his daughters.

  “So much of sports is a mental game,” Shawn said. “The difference between success and not reaching your goals is, maybe, two percent. How do you put yourself into that state where you reach that two percent? You’ve got to believe in yourself and push through. It’s about expecting that hurt and having the belief that you can go beyond it.”

  Shawn certainly experienced that while riding alone on the endless Sahara sand dunes.

  “You’re suffering and you have to tell yourself, ‘I’m not going to stop. I can’t stop,’” Shawn said. “I felt it at Daytona too. The mental state is there is no stopping. There is no relief.”

  Maddy and Nikki grew up riding dirt bikes, sometimes on a family friend’s property in Woodside, and sometimes in the hills near Hollister while on family campouts. They drove go-karts too, and waterskied, and wakeboarded, and snow skied and snowboarded. 

  Shawn, the son of a Canadian foreign diplomat, lived in Europe, Africa, Australia and the Caribbean. Shawn eventually found his way to Silicon Valley, where he established himself as a successful business executive.

  Perhaps because of his own upbringing, Shawn wanted to raise his family without fear of the unknown. He followed his own passions knowing the risks, but remained safe in the understanding that his family knew those risks and understood he was doing what he loved.

  “If you’re going to do these things, you have to be aware of the consequences of lying on the ground,” Shawn said.

  Only 20 miles from the finish of the 2007 off-road Baja 250 in Mexico, Shawn was in second place when he hit a canyon wall at more than 100 miles per hour. He broke his femur in 20 places, broke a tibia, ankle, and foot, and suffered a concussion. Fortunately, he remained on the trail and was found quickly. 

  Shawn remembers being conscious enough to call his wife, Sarah, with a satellite phone while still prone, and being airlifted to a San Diego hospital where he underwent 12 hours of surgery to put his leg back together.

  “I remember being calm,” Shawn said. “I’m most proud of being calm.” 

  Doctors told him he would never walk again. Shawn spent 11 weeks in the hospital, and endured multiple subsequent surgeries. 

  For a while, the stricken leg could not bend more than 30 degrees. But Shawn was determined to walk, and more. After an arduous rehab process of years, not months, Shawn indeed achieved his goal of walking again, and now also bicycles and can ride motorcycles. He also has returned to racing, though not cars or motorcycles, but sailboats. 

  Of course, Maddy watched her father’s recovery closely, and his determination has been an example and a source of motivation. The mental game was strong with her father, and he provided the greatest example of what hard work can achieve.

  However, it’s also Shawn’s worldly view of life that Maddy has embraced. When he had his accident, he felt his family was prepared, because he was doing what he loved and everyone knew the risks involved. Maddy’s fearlessness seems to be an extension of that attitude.

  “Don’t be afraid in this world,” Shawn said. “Be open to all new experiences. So many people are afraid. They create all these self-imposed limits. I really wanted my kids to be open and try everything. To follow their heart and do what they love.”

  And, for Maddy Price, that means closing strong, and being unafraid to do so.