SportsKids of the Year 2016: The Sheppard Sisters

The day before Halloween, an unseasonably mild 70-degree Sunday, 24 girls sporting pink-and-blue track suits formed two lines at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, New York. Their lines may not have been perfectly straight — as their coach, Jean Bell, noted afterward — but the members of the Jeuness Track Club, ages five to 16, executed their plyometric drills flawlessly as they warmed up for a USA Track and Field cross-country meet. 

On this day the girls were preparing to run three-person relays in their respective age groups, with each athlete covering one mile. Eleven-year-old Tai Sheppard would set up 10-year-old Rainn Sheppard to beat the second-place team in their division, also a Jeuness group, by a whopping one minute and 20 seconds. Nine-year-old Brooke Sheppard would run the middle leg of a relay and help her trio finish second in a different division.    

Tai wants to qualify for the AAU Junior Olympic Games every year. She placed second in the 80-meter hurdles in her age group in Houston in July, her second time competing at the meet. “Since I qualified for my first year, I’m like, I can do this,” she says. “I know I can.”

“I plan to go to the Olympics one day in [a distance race],” says Rainn, who returned from Houston with a gold medal in the 3,000. “My track and field goals are just to keep getting emotionally and physically stronger. It’s all about what’s inside, in your mind. You have to say: You can do this, you can do this.”

“My goals are to get faster as a runner and jump higher,” says Brooke, who placed second in the high jump in Houston. “For college, I would want to stay nearby so I can see how the team’s doing.”

If these three siblings sound confident, it’s not an accident. Their mom, Tonia Handy, appreciates the encouragement that Bell and the Jeuness coaches have offered her daughters. “I think it’s given them a sense of security,” Handy says. “I think they worry about me out in the world less now that they know that I have the support of really good people and I’m happier.”

Life hasn’t been easy for Handy’s family. She has raised her girls on her own since before Brooke was born. Their half brother was shot and killed three years ago at the age of 17. Handy works hard to support her family, but they have lived in a two-bedroom unit in a homeless shelter since last September. (Handy played the role of exterminator when they first moved in, ridding the apartment of bugs and mice.) 

To speak with Tai, Rainn and Brooke is to understand optimism and dedication. To watch them compete is to witness grace and determination. For these reasons, and for their accomplishments on the track, the Sheppard sisters are the SportsKidsof the Year.

Discovering a New Passion

Tai, Rainn and Brooke didn’t grow up interested in sports. They enjoyed participating in a chess club after school and playing the piano. Tai started her own book club for half a dozen students in fourth grade after finishing the class requirements.

Last winter, their babysitter, Sharon Davis, who looks after them while Handy works, registered them to run in indoor track meets. 

They had a lot of fun. Separately, while competing at the Colgate Women’s Games, they caught Bell’s attention. “I gave cards to each of them to give to their mothers,” recalls Bell, who didn’t realize they were sisters.

When they got home, they spoke to their mom about attending track practice the next day. “The first thing I thought about was, Will their education be interrupted? Because these are great kids,” Handy says. “When it comes to schoolwork, they are No. 1. They were never into sports, so I was kind of leery, but [the parents and coaches] were so welcoming. It was beautiful. I took them to a practice, and they had the time of their lives. I never thought they could run so fast!”

That summer, Tai and Rainn qualified for the 4 x 400-meter relay at the AAU Junior Olympic Games in Norfolk, Va., and they helped their relay team win gold.

The sisters continued to earn medals and trophies at local and regional races. They’ve maintained A’s and B’s in school and have broadened their extracurricular activities. Tai and Rainn were cast in their Brooklyn school’s production of Alice in Wonderland. (Rainn is Alice. Tai is a playing card. Bell’s sister, Betty, is sewing both costumes.) This fall Brooke was admitted to a weekend art program at the prestigious Pratt Institute.

Since they joined up with Coach Bell and Jeuness, they have become more disciplined, more focused, and more outgoing. “That’s one of the things that I really appreciate about them being in the sport,” Handy says. “They’re good girls. And being with this group of girls at the track, at track practice — they respect one another.”

That has become Bell’s aim since she founded the all-girls Brooklyn-based track club in 1985. “Responsibility doesn’t come in a card on your 18th birthday,” Bell says. “It’s about problem-solving for your journey. It’s about building the whole person.”

Her goal is to keep her runners invested in school and in track and out of trouble so they can earn college scholarships. Girls do science projects at her house, and she coordinates outings to movies and celebrations around the holidays. Bell and the other coaches collect report cards and give tutoring. The day before Halloween, coaches and parents assembled bags of treats for the runners as Bell supervised while wearing a headband with jack-o’-lantern antennae. “We want to keep them interested and having fun,” she says. 

Williams, who is the team manager. He wanted to cover Handy’s trip to Houston. 

With the coaches’ blessings, Handy surprised Rainn before her 3,000-meter final. 

“I just ran over and jumped on her and hugged her,” Rainn says. “When she came, I was so excited. Boy, I wish I could do that again.” 

At Home on the Track

The Sheppard sisters may have been racing for only two years, but they have already settled into a rhythm in their favorite events. 

Brooke is partial to the high jump. “I’m not that tall, but I can jump really high,” she says. 

Rainn loves the 3,000; she was the nation’s top AAU qualifier for her age group. “It’s long and so relaxing,” she explains. “I can run it fast and I’ll still be relaxed. . . . My strategy — not my secret strategy, I’m not going to tell you that — is to go fast when other people don’t go fast. They go out in the first couple laps, and then I’m right there. Then they slow down, and I run faster.” 

Tai prefers hurdles. “It’s really fun, but it’s also hard because of the technique you have to do,” she says. “It’s a very quick race, but I’m also very good at it, so it makes it, not easy to win, but pretty easy for me to not get scared about what I’m going to do.”

No matter where track and field takes these girls, they will have the support of their mom and their track family.

“I want to, of course, give them a more stable life,” Handy says. “But as far as a stimulating, open life, they’re getting that now.”  

“They are the most optimistic people I’ve ever seen. Nothing gets them down,” Bell says. “They’re going to go far no matter what.”  

GALLERY: SPORTSKIDS OF THE YEAR FINALISTS

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Before starting seventh grade, Cyrus entered a powerlifting competition for beginners. “I just got into it — the crowd, just having more people who lift like me in the community,” recalls Cyrus, whose dad, Matthew, had introduced him to the sport. That year, Cyrus set two world deadlift records for his age group. But practicing when his dad was at work was lonely. Last fall, he invited friends from the wrestling and football teams and their younger siblings to lift with him, and he has worked with them on using safe techniques. “We have better friendships,” says Cyrus. “It makes us all stronger, together.” Last February, competing in the 132-pound weight class, Cyrus set a world deadlift record for his age group (425 pounds). In April, in the 148-pound division, he set a national deadlift record (419 pounds). The 2020 Olympics are in Japan, and Cyrus, now a 15-year-old sophomore, wants to be there. “He is a freak of nature, athletically,” says his wrestling coach, Patrick Kim. “He’s a coach’s dream as far as character goes. You don’t doubt that [he] is going to be successful in life. That’s a really good feeling to have.”

Alexander had a busy summer. He and his dad coached at a camp for kids and teens with disabilities. “We taught kids how to field ground balls, how to throw, how to hit,” says Alexander. “Helping kids that didn’t have the opportunity to play baseball made me feel good.” And he won his age group in the MLB Pitch, Hit & Run competition at the All-Star Game in San Diego in July. Finally, in August, he was named a Miami Marlins Student-Athlete for his accomplishments in the classroom: He made all A’s as a second-grader last year. Alexander, who began playing T-ball when he was three, helped his travel team of six-year-olds win a national tournament in Tampa, Florida. In 2015, his team was the runner-up in the 8U competition at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Elite World Series. He primarily plays second base now, and he led his team in steals last season. “He has good instincts on the base paths,” says Davon Person, one of the coaches for Alexander’s team, ESP Matrix. “He’s very confident off the base.” The eight-year-old is working on improving his swing from both sides of the plate, and he especially looks up to a speedster on his hometown Marlins. “Dee Gordon inspires me. We both run very fast, and we both have a good glove and feet,” says Alexander. He also loves the sport. “When he makes big plays, he’s the kid who gives the fist pump,” says Person of Alexander. “He gets a lot out of the game. Some of the other kids are a little more reserved. He plays the game with a lot of passion.”

Competing in road races and triathlons runs in Jack’s blood. He’s the fifth member of his family to appear in a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED publication. His pedigree, of course, didn’t guarantee success — but he’s had plenty of it. Jack, who is 10, won his fourth straight age-division USA Triathlon Youth National Championship in July and for the first time finished ahead of all 7- to 10-year-olds, beating the second-place athlete by 34 seconds. The next week he won his division at the three-day Rocky Mountain Junior Cycling Challenge, which included three events. His older sisters Coco, a triathlon national champion who appeared in SI’s Faces in the Crowd, and Hayley also race. “We all push each other really hard,” says Jack. “We get better, and we get faster, and we all work together, but we also try to beat each other.” The fifth-grader will compete in Nordic skiing this winter and plays up a level on the Vail Mountaineer peewee hockey team. John Engelhardt, who coached Jack in swimming from 2011 to ’14, remembers him as a leader among his more than 100 swimmers. “Jack is a gifted athlete. You give him instruction, and he takes it and goes with it,” says Engelhardt. “He’s going to be someone you’re going to be writing about in 20 years.”

She might be four feet tall, but Kathryn, who is the only girl on a U10 boys’ team and also plays on a U14 girls’ team, often beats opponents who are much bigger. “She is a little pocket Hercules,” says Zach Slenker, who coaches the York Devils U10 team. “She capitalizes on anyone second-guessing her.” Kathryn, a straight-A student, began playing when she was four after watching a Philadelphia Flyers game on TV with her dad. “I thought, Man, that looks like a fun sport,” she recalls. The next day, she and her mom went to a skating rink. “That was the first time I ever skated,” she says. “It inspired me.” Since March, Kathryn has tried to inspire others. The fourth-grader volunteers every Monday with the York Polar Bears, a local organization that gives children and young adults with special needs a chance to play on a hockey team. “I like seeing smiles on their faces when I teach them something new,” says Kathryn, who at 10 is several years younger than most of the volunteers. As a defender, she doesn’t score a lot, but she earned the U10 club’s Rick Hare Unsung Hero award, given to the most improved player who works hard and encourages teammates. “She lets her game do the talking,” says Slenker. “She doesn’t talk trash. She just knows she can beat someone.”

Photo credits: Al Tielemans (with coaches), Richard Drew/AP (Tai hurdling), Courtesy of AAU (Rainn running)