Still sprinting: Coaching keeps Kansas City lawyer moving

Daily Record and the Kansas City Daily News-Press, Apr 5, 2007 by Charles Emerick

Cliff Wiley still can run fast.

Age has cost him a step or two from his days as an Olympian and world champion runner in the 1970s and 1980s. But the 51-year-old lawyer and high school track coach is still confident in his stride - even against kids less than half his age.

"I used to go out to the track and run with the kids every workout," said Wiley, a second-year coach at Washington High School in Kansas City, Kan. "I kind of run every other day now. But I think I can still beat most of them.

"I can still run, and I can still run fast - problem is the next day I can't walk."

Wiley, a solo practitioner who does primarily probate, domestic and personal injury work, spends his spring afternoons at the track.

There he learned some of life's most valuable lessons.

The sport led him out of the inner-city Baltimore neighborhood where some of the kids he grew up with went on to run at the Maryland penitentiary.

"It was my thing, like the kid who's on the basketball court all day and night," he said. "Track was something that I enjoyed doing."

Track took him to the University of Kansas. He won four conference championships, a dozen All-American awards and a world record.

He learned there was much more to the world outside Baltimore.

"I used to run across the street at KU," Wiley recalled, "and a student finally asked, 'Why do you run across the street?' I said, 'Because the cars will hit you.' What I didn't understand, people stopped at crosswalks, stop signs and stop lights. You didn't have to run across the street. I was the fastest street crosser in the world."

Wiley later won medals at games across the globe. He earned a spot in the 200 meters for the U.S. Olympic team in 1980, although he never got to run because of the boycott of the Moscow games ordered by President Jimmy Carter.

Through coaching, Wiley teaches young athletes the lessons he learned as a kid.

"I had a great high school coach, and I try to take some of those things and give them back," he said. "I get a lot out of it. It makes me feel good to give something back to them the same way my high school coach was instrumental in telling me, 'Cliff, even though you lost, the sun is still going to come up tomorrow.' He told me that I will get another chance."

Ken Ferguson, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, has known Wiley for 15 years, and the two continue to work together on several committees for USA Track & Field.

He said Wiley enjoyed seeing the kids develop in the sport and in life.

"Part of it is getting the kids to understand," he said. "Sometimes they really don't realize what they had until they get older. They're getting something unique. These kids are starting to see the value of the increased effort, focused concentration, discipline and so forth."

Wiley gives thousands of kids every year the opportunity to run at a series of Cliff Wiley Track Classic events throughout the country.

The event began about 20 years ago in Baltimore. It has expanded to about dozen cities. The Olathe second annual classic will be July 21. He expects more than 1,000 kids from throughout the Midwest.

But Wiley stressed the event was about participation, not just winning.

"Most of the kids are not going to be Olympic champions, not going to make any national teams or get a scholarship to college," he said, "but having that medal around their neck, they can go and show their family and friends that they accomplished something. That's what is important."