Ama Boham of Valatie, a senior at Cornell, pulled off the upset of the meet at the Ivy League Indoor Track Championships at Dartmouth. It was her best individual performance in the 60-meter hurdles at the perfect moment and earned her a spot in the Cornell record books.
The Ichabod Crane graduate, a three-time state champion in the 100-meter hurdles, looks back on the race as a surreal ending to a freakish winter month.
She started the indoor season strong, tying her personal best 60-meter hurdle time. “Things were looking good,” she said.
But in the beginning of February she became ill, testing positive for COVID-19. After 10 days off to recuperate, isolate and rest, her comeback races leading up to the Ivy League Championship were disappointing. “I was horrible,” she said.
“It ended up being a process of being able to trust myself and my body again because of how poorly I had run. I had a week to trick my brain into, and my body into, getting better and believing that I could run a time that I really wanted to run,” she said.
She was aiming for the school record, set by her former teammate, All-American Brooke Overholt, who is finishing her track and field career as a graduate student at Vanderbilt.
Boham felt good after the first day, knowing she could improve her fifth-place qualifying time of 8.58.
“I think my coach noticed how much my demeanor had changed. I ran a time the first day that felt like it was where I should be. And I was very excited because I didn’t think my start out of box was very fast. And there’s a weird situation at the finish line at Dartmouth where there’s two lines. A lot of my teammates were warning me, don’t lean at the wrong line. And I ended up doing exactly that. So then I said to myself, what if I fix that and fix my start? I…
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