A wind-aided 13.71 seconds was all it took for Darius Reed to take his place in Metro State history. That was the time that Darius Reed ran at the NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships where he placed third in the 110-meter hurdles. It was also the 19th-fastest time in Division II history. However, that was by no means where his story began or where his story will end.
For those who are lucky enough to know Reed, they would say that his personality is one of the things that shows the most when you get to talk to him. He is an honest and happy person who makes people around himself feel comfortable around him.
“[Darius] likes to keep things light and have fun at practice and be not so serious which is what I want,” head coach John Supsic said.
However, Reed has not made his way through his career without some challenges. Some people that have paid attention to local high school athletes over the past years might recognize the name Darius Reed but not know where they know it from. Reed is a local high school product who was All-America as a high school senior in 2006. People might ask how is somebody who was All-America in 2006 and then competed for UCLA from 2006-07 during his freshman year is now only a sophomore at Metro State in 2012. But therein lays the incredible story that Darius Reed has experienced over the years.
Reed began his track and field career when he was a kid. However, the initial reason that he stayed with it was for another reason.
“I think that when I was a kid, I liked it more because there were a lot of girls around,” Reed said.
In the end, the thing that made him stay with track, however, was the fact that he was good and kept winning.
“I think that if I had lost a lot when I was younger then I might have quit. But I won a lot as a kid so I stayed with it,” Reed explained.
From there, Reed focused on track and field. When asked what his favorite event is, Reed responded instantly without any hesitation, “hurdles. 110-meter hurdles. That's not even a question. If I could run any event out there it would be that one.”
He trained really hard until he posted the second-fastest time in the 110-meter hurdles in the history of Colorado high schools.
For someone who was so highly regarded, one would think that he was also highly recruited by many of the top universities across the country. However, he was not as highly recruited as one might think. One of the only colleges that recruited him early on was UCLA. Reed was then urged by his parents to sign early so he would know where he was going to go to school.
When the first day of signing came about, Reed signed with UCLA. After he signed, with UCLA, several other schools came around trying to get him to come to their school. Unfortunately for them, it was too late. However, according to Reed, he wouldn't change a thing of where his path took him.
“I would not change a thing about everything I've gone through though especially with signing with UCLA. In the end it was a good fit at the time,” Reed said.
UCLA, unfortunately for Reed, was the beginning of his struggles. During his freshman year, he was a constant contributor for UCLA. However, because he was such a constant contributor for UCLA, he began to drop his focus on everything outside of athletics. At the end of the year, he had to drop out of school due to what Reed described as, “freshman mistakes.”
He decided to stay in Los Angeles after he dropped out of UCLA. He spent the next couple of years hanging out and partying with friends. It wasn't until 2010 that he decided to come back to Denver and stay with his parents. It was then that he began to start on the path of going back to school. One of the places that Reed reached out to was Metro State, for a chance to be able to compete in his favorite sport once again.
Head coach John Supsic was very interested in bringing Reed onto the team.
“About two years after not being in school he shot me an e-mail. And as soon as I saw his name I recognized it and called him back right away,” Supsic said of Reed.
Finally this past fall, Reed was back on the team. However, his transition back to competing with a team was not an entirely smooth one. Reed struggled initially with the idea of how different things were for him coming from a Division I institution where he was a highly-recruited athlete to coming to a smaller Division II athletics program.
When you are a highly recruited athlete for a Division I program, then you are given a sense of entitlement. However, Supsic told Reed when he joined the team that he was going to be treated like every other athlete.
“[It did not matter whether you] were going to finish last on the team or first on the team, you're going to be treated the same way,” Supsic told Reed.
The differences from Supsic's coaching style and how Reed believed that he should be coached led to a falling out between them during Reed's first semester on the team in Fall 2011.
“Especially when it came to morning practices,” Supsic said of their differences.
It led to Reed quitting the team this past fall and looking into possibly transferring to another school after winter break.
But just as things have a tendency to fall apart in people's lives, they can have the chance to turn things around. This happened for Reed in January when he decided to patch thing up with Supsic and came back to the team for a second chance with Metro State. He was out of shape when he came back to the team but something clicked for Reed that began to make him work harder than ever before.
He worked extra hard every day to get himself back into shape. Reed lost 25 pounds from the end of the indoor season to the end of the outdoor season.
“From the moment that [Darius] came back and joined the team, he was a joy to coach. He was a model student-athlete,” Supsic said.
After Reed came back to the team, his work ethic completely changed. Some of the issues he had before such as the early morning practices were no longer an issue for him.
“Darius would be at morning practice every morning before I would even get there and I would arrive 15 minutes early,” Supsic said.
This helped lead Reed to being able to have the best season of his career this past spring. He ran the best times of his career and placed third at Division II outdoor championships in Pueblo at the end of May.
This is only the beginning of what could be a strong and impressive career for Reed here at Metro State as Reed is also currently training for Olympic Trials.
Reed's path that he has taken through life is one that many people can relate to in some form or fashion. Reed has gone through many challenges in his life, but he has worked to fix many of the problems and issues that he has had to face and continues to try to overcome all challenges he faces every day. And if Reed is able to continue to do that, the sky is the limit for both his track and field career and his personal life.
