Spring Break
Coachman exceeds own goals
Brent Wilburn
Issue date: 8/28/07 Section: Sports
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As the whistle blew to start the race, Coachman gained a sizeable advantage and blazed across the track to finish as the winner.
Not bad for a sophomore who only tried out for the track team at the urging of his older sister.
"She just told me I needed to go out there and try," Coachman said. "She was a good runner, and she knew that I could be too."
That race instantly secured Coachman a spot on the track team and was a sign of things to come.
He spent his remaining high school years on the track team and also joined the soccer team, which helped to further his conditioning.
Following high school, Coachman accepted an offer from Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, Ala., to run on their track team for the first two years of his college career.
Between those two years of college at Wallace State, Coachman made a decision that affected his progress in track meets. In fact, his decision made track seem insignificant. He chose to enlist in the military.
"I signed up for the military in October 2003," Coachman said. "I was deployed to Iraq in the spring of 2004."
While in Iraq, Coachman mainly served as an armored truck driver.
His primary mission was to transport supplies such as food and ammunition to different stations in Iraq, which proved to be a dangerous job.
"I was like a moving target to them when I was driving that truck," Coachman said. "They planted IEDs (improvised explosive devices) at different spots on the road to try to stop us."
Though there was a constant threat while he was in Iraq, Coachman stayed calm and even improved in some areas of his life while overseas.
"One day I was sitting on the back of a trailer and decided that I was going to make a list of goals," Coachman said.
The goals ranged from doing better in events on the track to trying to stay in touch with his infant daughter, and they helped to keep him in line while he was overseas, and he accomplished almost all of the goals he wrote down on that piece of paper.
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