Track Teammates Ready for Outdoor Season

Special to UConnHuskies.com

STORRS – If not for a few astute high school coaches in Orlando, Florida, and Westbrook, Maine, the UConn men's track team would likely be missing two of its most important performers. Marc Morrison was headed for a future in football. Mahamed Sharif was focused on soccer.

"I played football, basketball and track in high school, but I really wanted to go for football," Morrison said. "I didn't really take track all that seriously until my senior year when my coaches convinced me I had real potential in it."

"I actually played a lot of soccer before I started track," Sharif said. "What got me into track was, my teachers said, 'Mahamed, you're way too hyper.' They got me into track to calm me down. I was just trying to find out what my niche was. I had really good coaches in high school, so that's the people who guided me."

From those beginnings, both Morrison and Shaif advanced to UConn track and have become mainstays – Morrison in the long jump and triple jump, Sharif in middle distance runs – as the Huskies prepare for the 2024 outdoor season, which begins on March 15 at the Black & Gold Challenge. Coming off their third consecutive BIG EAST Indoor Championship, the Huskies are gunning for their fourth straight outdoor title.

"They are good dudes, they work off each other," said UConn head coach Beth Alford-Sullivan. "They are good leaders, they are good people, they are good energy. Every day, they bring a positive -- Marc in kind of a cool way, Mahamed in kind of an amped-up way. I like both of them for the uniqueness that they have."

The two track athletes, who are roommates on campus, were on the team when Alford-Sullivan took over as head coach two years ago.

"I got here and inherited a great program, there's no way else to say it, so it was easy for me to step in and take assessment of everybody," Alford-Sullivan said. "Marc definitely stood out right away. He got better through the year. Last year from indoor to outdoor, he got better, then moving on to the NCAA Championships. One thing I really like about Marc is he's cool, calm and collected. During the national championships in Austin, he had his family and his sister, mom and grandmother and he just came over, talked to everybody in the stands, go back out and take another jump, just really cool.

"Mahamed, on the other hand, had a different experience. He came out of an indoor season that was running pretty OK, solid for him, to just popping off to a school record in an NCAA qualifier. Just a brilliant phase in his training and racing. So, it was really fun to be able to celebrate his indoor championship."

Morrison, out of Bishop Moore Catholic High School in Orlando, is a two-time BIG EAST Indoor Long Jump Champion and a two-time BIG EAST Outdoor Long Jump Champion, with a personal best of 7.64m, which qualified him for the NCAA Outdoor Championships last year, where he finished 19th in the country. As a freshman, he also won the triple jump at the BIG EAST Outdoor Championships.

"I sprinted in middle and high school, but I always had bounce and I worked on that and I kept getting bouncier," he said. "I knew long jump had some good potential for me. I tried high jump, I wasn't good at it. But I tried the triple jump my sophomore year and I liked it. But I just did it for fun. I really didn't know what I was doing."

Since then, Morrison has learned what it takes to compete with the best in the conference and the country.

"To be better, it starts in the weight room, you have to get stronger, you have to get bouncier, you have to get faster," he explained. "Then you have to work on your runway speed. Then you can get to the runway and work on your jumping, your form. It's the little things that help you improve in the long jump. Even if you improve by a centimeter, it's still improvement because not many people can do that. They stay stuck on the same mark over and over again."

Coach Alford-Simpson has no doubt that Morrison can improve on his already stellar performances.

"There's a lot of things to do to improve the long jump," she said. "You are going to get stronger -- getting stronger is going to allow you to be faster, getting faster is going to allow you have much more force into that board to be able to produce a better jump and then the technical part of the jump – experience, technique, just keeps getting better. So, where he's already got some great marks, he can get even better. The triple is harder on the body, that's for sure, and it is harder to master. There's many more phases to it. Long jump is a sprint, a plant and a jump. But the triple ends up being much more complicated. Marc is doing a great job. I may not have thought of Marc in that way (BIG EAST Champion), but I wasn't surprised when he pulled it off."

And Morrison, speaking for most track athletes, made clear that competition isn't all about winning.

"My biggest concern is about my mark, not records," he explained. "Even if I was to get second, but I jumped out of my mind, I still would be happy because I'm improving. I'm improving as a person. The other person … well, it was his day. I've already won gold medals and obviously, I want to win more, but honestly, it's more about improving my mark so I can leave here knowing I did my best, I gave it my all."

Sharif, from Westbrook (Me.) High School, suffered a severe leg injury in high school soccer, so he went to cross country, then made the natural progression to distance running in track. But then there was the decision about events.

"My junior year of high school was first time I tried the 800," Sharif said. "I was originally a 200, 400 guy but never that good at it. But there was a meet, the Dartmouth Relays, and my coach entered me in the 800, because she said she had a hunch. I really didn't know what I was doing. I thought it was just like a longer 400. So I go out, running all out … I think I come in at the 200 at like 26, way too fast. I finished in like 1:54, third in the nation. I won it by a pretty big margin, but I didn't know what I was doing. ,It was an eye-opening experience – I found something I didn't know I could do, so I got trapped. The 800 is a hard, hard event – there's a lot more base to put into it, but there's aggression for it, too."

Sharif has won gold medals as part of the UConn 4x400 relay team in both the BIG EAST Indoor and Outdoor Championships, but ran a school record of 1:46.96 in the 800 at the Last Chance Indoor Qualifier to earn a berth in the NCAA Indoor Championships.

"You want to run comfortably through 400, like 50 to 52 (seconds)," he said. "Then the next 200, you pick it up but you really want to hold it – that's when you grind it. Then, the last 200 is an all-out sprint."

"On the long jump, it's just you," Alford-Sullivan explained. "But when you're racing, in our events, you're dealing with competitors. So, there's an ability that athletes can have, to have the right touch, to feel what's going on in the race, to know what to do. But you also have to be prepared for your competitors, you have to know what your competition is capable of and you have to be able to react or take charge. And Muhamed is learning all of that. He's had some brilliantly-executed races and he's had some misses big-time. But his passion comes through and the mistakes that he makes are usually passionate mistakes. And I always say, I'd rather have an aggressive, passionate mistake than a passive mistake."

Sharif has even tried to steal some of his roommate's thunder.

"I've been trying to get Coach to let me try the long jump, or the triple," Sharif said. "She says, 'No, Mahamed, you'll get hurt.' But I say, 'Coach, c'mon, let me just try it. I'm playing in the sand, it can't be that hard."

For now, Morrison and Sharif will remain in their own lanes, happy to support and motivate each other through another season.

"Mahamed is just a great guy, a cool guy," Morrison said. "He likes to take pictures, do his own stuff. But we always motivate each other. He tells me

about his 800 stuff, and I try to understand his stuff, but at the end of the day, it's about motivating the team."

"We've been friends since we got here," Sharif added. "He's a very easy person to talk to. He motivates everyone on and off the field. I'm from Maine, he's from Florida, so I'm surprised we mesh so well."

And all it took were a few changes of sports, a couple of college decisions and a love of track to find that out.