Elyria native, three-time Olympic gold medalist Tianna Madison leads first Elyria Youth Track Club practice

ELYRIA — Tianna Madison stood at the finish line of the 20-yard sprint and yelled "keep coming." She handed out high-fives and shouted "let's go" as the kids ran a lap around the Ely Stadium track. She led warmups, even skipping down the track with 19-month-old son Kai on her hip. The Elyria Youth Track Club held its first practice Tuesday afternoon and couldn't have had a more impressive coach running the show. Madison is a three-time Olympic gold medalist — she showed the boys and girls the medals and took group pictures wearing them — and three-time world champion as a sprinter and long jumper. "It means the world," said Randy Smith, the club's co-organizer with Aric Bowens. "There aren't a whole lot of three-time Olympic gold medalists walking around. So this is something we're soaking up as much as we can. Just imagine Tianna Madison introducing you to long jump. "Look at her, she's in her element." Smith said 115 kids had registered for the new club, and more than 50 from kindergarten through sixth grade participated Tuesday despite overcast skies and the chance of rain. Many parents stood outside the track watching and cheering. "Parents are engaged with children doing something healthy," Smith said. "Three years in the works, now it's finally happening," said Bob Madison, Tianna's dad who jogged around the track with Kai in a stroller. "You can't beat this. It's a wonderful thing." Madison, a 2003 Elyria High School graduate, lives in California but has committed to being an integral part of the club. She's scheduled to lead practice again Thursday and hopes to return for a meet July 29. An indoor season is planned for the winter, with an outdoor season to follow. Kids from all communities are welcome and will have access to other quality coaches, including Elyria coach Jackie Below and former Pioneers athletes. Madison told the group's leaders she'd be in town this week and asked to help. "They were like, 'Help coach? You can run it for the first week,'" she said. "I am CCd on all of the meetings and try to give my input and try to be as supportive as possible. And this is just the first iteration. I hope I am in a position with way more notice to be more involved more consistently in the future." She stood in the middle of the track facing the kids lined up in their lanes and opened practice with an "ETC" chant for the new club. It returned throughout practice to re-establish focus and foster a sense of team. Madison ran with the groups, flashing a big smile, and ushered a pair of the smallest girls to the side to keep them out of harm's way. She explained the sprint drills after telling the students to "raise your hand if you want to be fast" and demonstrated how to properly pump the arms, with the force causing her entire body to move as she sat on the track. The project means a lot to her already. "Oh, this is one of those things in my notebook. I have things I would do if I had all the time and all the resources in the world," she said. "So I was really excited to hear that Aric and my dad and my mom (Jo Ann) and everyone else came together to put this together because I don't live here full time and couldn't do it. And so I basically was like, 'Oh my gosh, it's happening, how can I be involved and how can I help?' "Because it was really a critical part of my development to be exposed to sport, but also it opened so many more doors for me. So being able to get to these kids at such a young age and introduce them to something they might not have considered before, especially having me around as a resource that is accessible. They can always message me. They know where my parents live. As someone who's walked that path before, I wanted to put a face to that and for them to know that they could do it, too, if they want to." Madison won nine individual state titles and a team title at Elyria. She and her parents had a plan for her to get to college and traveled to camps and meets to gain exposure and experience. "I think that planted the seed for me. Like, oh, it would've been nice to not be the only one," she said. "I was seeing even just as close as Cleveland or Lorain, those cities had teams and then I would be the only one from Elyria. And so I'm really happy that this is the beginning and maybe one day we will progress to having a track club that travels and does Junior Olympics and AAU. But this is the perfect start." After the workout, Madison gathered the boys and girls to hear a bit of her story and look at her gold medals. "Whatever you work hard to do, you can stand on top of your own podium," she said. "There's no limit to what you want to become." One kid asked if the medals had chocolate underneath. Another said, "I think I saw you on TV." "That was the idea to give them the opportunity to have fun, to engage with Tianna, somebody that walked the same streets they walk," Smith said. Madison would've loved having an Olympian coach her when she grew up. "It would've been awesome because, one of the buzz phrases right now is representation matters," she said. "And people usually think of that in terms of diversity, but it's also in terms of possibilities. And so I think it would've been nice for me to know that it was possible to be from a small town and bust out of the box. "That's why I'm really grateful to my parents who really made it a point to make sure we were well-traveled and experienced all these things. And so because of them I knew that there was more and that I could achieve more, but that's not always the case for everyone. And so for them to be doing this now for other people's children means a lot to me." When the lessons, speech and pictures were done, Madison was asked about the impact she can have. "It's really interesting because I get older and the kids that I work with get younger and then they're like, 'Who are you and are you on TikTok?'" she said. "And I'm like, no, I don't know how to use TikTok. "Though maybe it plants a seed, maybe they look me up and then go down the rabbit hole of things that I've accomplished or look for me on YouTube or see that viral relay video and go, 'Hey, she was our coach last week. That's her.' 'Oh, that's a picture of a medal, I touched that medal on Tuesday.' So that's why I do it. I just hope that it wets the whistle or sparks a fire." Contact Scott Petrak at (440) 329-7253 or spetrak@chroniclet.com. Like him on Facebook and follow him @scottpetrak on Twitter.