People that inspire me - Audacia Moore

There are 49 weeks left in the year and once a week I will write about someone in my life that is inspiring or motivating to me.  Hopefully others will read it and gain a little bit of inspiration in their life as well.  There is no particular order to these writings, just a bunch of people I am fortunate enough to know.  So without further ado ….

Inspirational person #2 of 50 – Audacia Moore

Most of the more inspirational people in my life are older than me, or at least peers, so it might be a bit unusual for me to write about someone almost 15 years younger than me.  Well, Audacia Moore is not the usual person.

I first met Audacia after the state track meet in 2008 when I started recruiting her to come to Wichita State.  She was the fastest 100m runner in the history of the state of Kansas so I figured it would be a monumental task to convince her to become a Shocker.  I quickly learned Audacia had far less interest in track and field as she did for finding a good nursing school.  Fortunately we were pretty good in both and she decided to stay in her home town for college.

I had only been the sprint coach at WSU for two years when Audacia arrived to campus and the women’s sprint group had been average in terms of contribution to the team.  Audacia changed all that.  As a freshman she started winning titles and scoring points - and it never stopped.  So many titles. So many points. By the end of her career she had won 10 MVC titles, scored the most MVC points in school history and broke every sprint record at WSU.  Since her arrival in 2009 WSU has always had one of the best women’s sprint group in the Midwest – and Audacia was where it all started.

I’ll save why she is so inspirational to me for down below.

I asked Audacia five questions, here are her responses …

Question 1:  What have you yet to accomplish that you very much want to?

Audacia:  Lots of things!  I’d love to travel the world and drag my family along with me.  Go back to school and get my masters.  Learn how to swim without a life jacket.  Dunk on my brother.  That’s just the top of my list.

Question 2:  Who/What inspires you and why?

Audacia:  My parents.  They sacrificed a lot for my brothers and me.  I always want them to look at their kids and know they did a good job.  As my parents get older I want to be prepared to take care of them, just as they took care of us.

Question 3:  What one thing would you change about society?

Audacia:  We’re too self-righteous.  I think we as a society would like to believe we’re open-minded and accepting of all individuals, but in reality we’re not as flexible as we think.

Question 4:  What drives you to be better at something?

Audacia:  I don’t like feeling inadequate.  I leave my job every morning and review what went well and what could have been better.  As a nurse my actions can be to the benefit or detriment of those I care for.  I like to carry that attitude over into everything I do.

Question 5:  What makes life meaningful?

Audacia:  Faith, family, great friends and good food.

Final thoughts … Why do I choose to have Audacia in my life?

I’ve stayed in touch with Audacia here and there since she graduated and every time we see each other it is nothing but smiles, laughs and hugs.  For a while we’d go see thought provoking movies together but unfortunately life happens and work schedules don’t seem to coincide as much as we’d like.  At 27, she is already well on the way to leading a very productive life and I am glad to call her a friend.

When she was on the team, she was the ultimate TEAMMATE.  She would do absolutely anything to help the team succeed.  Here are just a couple stories.

After having a super successful freshman year in the sprint events where she was one of the top freshmen in the country, she volunteered to try long jump and triple jump for the first time to score more points for the team.  Not only did she learn how to do them, she ended up becoming all-conference multiple times and we won additional MVC titles because of her extra points in the jumping events.  She never did this for glory of herself, in fact she hated having the attention on her.  She only did it to help the team win.

Another thing that was inspiring that not everyone knew was that she ran most of her outdoor senior year on a broken foot.  She had a terrific season opener at Arkansas where she ran 23.57 in the 200m and then returned to Wichita with a lot of pain.  After finding out she had a fracture in her foot, her only response was, “it’s ok, I can deal with the pain.  I got this coach!”  Her senior year outdoor was probably the worst of her career in terms of how fast she ran but she still scored major points in five events and led our team to a victory at the MVC Outdoor Championships on our home track at Cessna Stadium.  At the conference meet, one of the officials said to me, “Well it looks like Audacia wasn’t able to sustain her success this year huh?”  After telling this person that Audacia had just run five races and completed 12 jumps on a broken foot he looked at me in disbelief, apologizing and telling me how fortunate we must be to have her on the team.  Most people will remember her records, titles and contribution to WSU Track & Field.  I will always remember that outdoor senior year and how she came to practice and meets every day and gave us literally everything she had.

On top of all that, Audacia was a 3.97 Nursing student and one of the absolute best people you could ever get to know.  I am so lucky to know Audacia and even if I don’t see her every day like I used to, I hope she knows her spirit is alive at our track everyday because she inspires me to be a better person and to push everyone around me to do the same!  Thanks Audacia!