Staying in her lane: Local phenom White bursting onto track scene
Jun. 30—Za'Nariae White is turning heads.
In June, she owned the 13- and 14-year-olds with her 100- and 200-yard dash times, which rivaled high school competitors.
She recorded times of 12.34 seconds in the 100 and 25.22 in the 200 at the USA Track and Field Indiana Junior Olympic championships at Wabash College in Crawfordsville.
Those marks were better than the sectional champion at Terre Haute North and some competitors in Bloomington — the final juncture of the high school state finals.
The eighth-grade sprinter at Sarah Scott Middle School will be kicking up rubber July 6-9, at a showcase between the top youth competitors in Indiana and Illinois in a USATF championship in Champaign, Ill., at the University of Illinois.
The homegrown talent, and her coach and cousin — Larry Hines of Speed U, a travel track program based in Terre Haute — currently train at Rose-Hulman's track.
"He tells me to never give up and keep pushing," Za'Nariae said.
It's a rebranded program from Sycamore Striders that extended to bringing in emerging talent throughout the Hoosier State.
The emphasis is on development for youth athletes, not result times.
Though, there have been top-flight times. Before White, it had a national champion, Sabree Brooks out of Cambridge City, who won the 200 in the 13/14 age division in 2021, and Adriana Swanson from South Bend, a national runner-up in the hurdles.
She's the daughter of Adrian, a former Indiana State hurdler in the early 2000s.
White is rapidly carrying the torch for up-and-comers. She started training with Hines at age 6 and has gotten off to a resounding start.
"I knew she had something in her because her very first track meet, she ran the 100," Hines said. "The gun goes off, she's running but she's not staying in her lane. So she is pretty much bumping everybody out of their lanes, but she finished first."
After this initial plunge, an official showed her grace to let her race in the finals.
After some mechanics correction from Hines, White maintained a straight and disciplined stride in her lane to win the final heat.
The rubber hit the road after that showing.
In 2019, she won the USATF Athlete of the Year in the state. As a sixth-grader, she broke Scott Middle School's marks in the 100, 200 and long jump, and a year later, she won state in the 100 on the ISU track.
"I'm more than excited," her dad, Rosa White, said. "To watch all the work that went into what she does right now in all of the training and hard work, and to see some these accomplishments coming around — I'm ecstatic."
Za'Nariae has annually been shaving a second off her sprints for the past seven years.
Her 5-foot-9, 130-pound stature has earned her the nickname "Moosie," which is a name of endearment for the strength the teenager has amassed and without having pumped iron in the weightroom.
"It all started out in the yard," Rosa said. "She grew up with two older brothers and two older boy cousins, she would be out there playing with them. I signed them up for football, and she was like, 'Dad, I want to play.' I noticed she had a gift of a burst of speed on the football field, and we decided we were going to sign her up to start doing track."
The running back and linebacker for the Terre North Patriots youth football program has a balance of strength and speed according to Hines, a former West Vigo track coach.
"She's aggressive. She will run you over. She will out-sprint you," he said "This girl is different. She's not playing [any] games either."
The breakout sprinter said the best part of this experience is fraternizing with competitors and ultimately lacing up her track spikes to aim at being the first to the finish.
The emerging star said perpetual improvement is the goal.
"I just want to get better at it every day, just keep playing," Za'Nariae said.
