Navaeh Burns has sticky notes plastered to her bedroom wall with two numbers written down: 23.8 and 52.0.
Those are the numbers the Oak Park junior is chasing in the 200-meter and 400-meter races this spring. Burns is one of the main contributors for a Knights’ girls track and field team pursuing a fourth straight Division 1 team state championship.
Burns has been writing down her goals on the track since she first started running, after switching from gymnastics. The practice started with her mom, Shirley, writing down her times on the back of her running bibs, which Burns would hang up in her room. She then started posting her goals as well, starting by writing on the light switch panel and sticky notes in her room to avoid comparing herself to others while trying to improve.
“I was hanging up all of my bibs, my medals on the wall,” Burns said after running in the 100-meter race in an OAA Gold meet at Oak Park on Thursday, April 23. “At a point in time, I was time-chasing because I wasn’t as confident. But, I started putting my goals on my wall, what I needed to do, realistically or unrealistically, so I always have a goal in my head.”
The two specific goals written down for her junior year would be record-breaking times in Michigan if Burns runs what she is shooting for in the 200 and 400, in the state finals on May 30. Burns has already clocked in a 54.21 in the 400 –the top time in Michigan so far this year – and a 24.39 in the 200, fifth-best in Michigan. Burns is also a part of Oak Park’s 4×100, 4×200 and 4×400 relay teams that have the top times in Michigan, according to athletic.net.
Through her first two years of high school, Burns has already won seven individual state titles – two in the 400 and five as a relay team member. After repeating for the third time as the state 400 champion at East Kentwood last May, Burns had one final goal – four straight.
“We are going to make it happen,” she said at the time.
“The thing with Navaeh is that she’s been able to deal with the ups and downs of having expectations and wanting to reach certain goals,” Oak Park track coach Brandon Jiles said. “As far as a four-peat, that is in the cards for her. I’m excited about it, but it is track and field, so there are no guarantees. But if anyone has the potential to win four in a row, it is her.”
At the home meet Thursday, Burns finished first in the 200 with a time of 24.69, first in the 400 with a time of 54.35 and then second in the 100, two-tenths of a second behind freshman teammate Aubry Douglas. Her long, smooth strides allow her to reach top speed quickly and glide past the competition.
Oak Park coaches are encouraged by Burns’ early times and what it could mean a month from now.
Burns, and the rest of the Oak Park sprinters are in the early stages of their periodization – a training technique to help runners improve by slowly tapering down on the quantity of running throughout the season to increase quality, or peak times, at the right point of the season because of the inverse relationship between speed and distance ran – which means she should get faster over the next month.
“We are still giving her a good amount of volume and complete recovery stuff,” said Oak Park assistant Ravi Smith, who previously coached at Southfield Lathrup and the University of Virginia before joining Oak Park nine years ago. “So for her to be running near her fastest times when we are doing this kind of workout bodes well for her development.”
Even with the early success this spring, Burns knows she must stay focused with a target on her back.
“People are going to notice when someone keeps winning and winning, so they are going to be gunning for me,” Burns said Tuesday at a meet at Dearborn Divine Child. “I know that I have to push and put in all my work so when that time comes, I’m ready.”
Strong support system, mentality keys success
Whether the race is at Oak Park, the other side of the state or the other side of the country in a national event, Shirley Boyd, Burns’ mom, is always in the stands ready to cheer on her daughter and record the race on her phone.
“My mom is up there and she has not missed one meet unless she absolutely has to,” Burns said. “If she misses it, she’s watching online. I have my grandparents, my brother, my cousins, and people in my family who have run track. My family is a very great support system.”
Boyd does her best not to add any pressure to her daughter’s plate, with her goals already set in stone on her sticky-note-covered bedroom walls. Boyd always tries to keep Burns’ spirits high in a mentally taxing sport where you are racing yourself as much as others, and providing everything she can to support her track dreams.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my baby,” Boyd said while serving as a parent volunteer in the concessions stand during Oak Park’s track meet.
Her older brother, 10 years her senior, has also played a major role in Burns’ track career, helping take care of her when Boyd was at work, serving as an advisor on recruiting visits and being one of her “best friends” throughout her life. He went with her on her recruiting visits to schools including Michigan, Tennessee, Baylor, Illinois and Vanderbilt.
“My brother and I are 10 years apart, so he’s always been a person to protect me,” Burns said. “He’s been a father figure in my life. If my mom was at work, he was taking care of me. My brother does acting and he’s a producer, so he has his times where he’s too busy, but if he can make it out, he’s always going to support me no matter what.”
Her support system, coupled with running with plenty of other top track athletes in Michigan under a strong coaching staff, has allowed Burns to shape her mindset to handle the stress and expectations. She has the right people around her to feel comfortable and confident as she races against her own times towards her written goals.
“Whoever I am on the track with, it doesn’t matter who it is, where they’re from, what time they run, I’m running my own race,” Burns said.
The constant race against herself helps her continue to find ways to improve despite already being one of the top athletes in Michigan.
“When you start to plateau, to be able to still have those gains requires a titanic mental effort and being able to steel your mind against all the pressures,” Smith said.
“So for Nevaeh to continue on that path, PR (personal record) as a freshman and sophomore and then still continue on that path upwards, she has had to have great mental focus, a lot of attention to detal, supreme coachability by being able to respond to whatever a coach is saying and internalize that. … Her ability to do that has been sort of the key cog in seeing her transcend what she was doing before and conquer that plateau.”
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Jared Ramsey covers high school sports for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at jramsey@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Oak Park’s Navaeh Burns pushes herself past sprinting plateaus
Reporting by Jared Ramsey, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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