THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606090055
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY ANNE SAITA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BARCO LENGTH: 117 lines
Rasheca Barrow's family once asked an evangelist to help heal the young girl, who was suffering from a heart problem that left her weak.
Instead, the preacher found herself moved to pray for the girl's feet.
``We didn't understand what was going on, and it was even strange to the evangelist,'' said Rasheca's mother, Robin Barrow.
Nor did anyone ever believe that a decade later Barrow, now 17, would use those blessed feet to become one of this year's fastest high-school sprinters in North Carolina.
She did just that last month by clocking 12.23 seconds for the 100-meter dash and 25.12 seconds for the 200-meter at the North Carolina State Track and Field Championships Division AA meet on May 24. With those times, she won first place in the Raleigh competitions.
And she did it by clocking countless hours of training on the Currituck County High School track, doing drills and sprint exercises that would have been impossible had she not been successfully treated for her medical problem.
On Friday, she took one final lap with 127 of her classmates to formally finish high school.
Barrow, an honors student with a 3.6 grade point average, will attend East Carolina University on a full athletic scholarship.
``I know what I did in high school is going to be a joke compared to college,'' said Barrow, a student government president who finished No. 8 in her class.
Barrow selected East Carolina over other interested universities - Brown, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State, among others - because of the scholarship.
By having all of her tuition paid for, Barrow will be able to devote more time to track and to studying exercise and sports science, rather than working part-time to help pay school bills.
She also wants to help build up the Greenville university's women's track program while continuing to improve on an already impressive athletic career.
Last year the 5-foot-3, 106-pound teenager ran in the National Junior Olympics in San Jose, Calif., and her team earned a bronze medal in the 4-by-100-meter relay.
This winter, at an indoor track meet, she placed second in the state in all classifications. She followed it up with 13th place - out of dozens and dozens of competitors - at a national scholastic meet in Boston.
Barrow's scholastic career reached full bloom with her first-place finishes last month in Raleigh.
The feats were possible, she said, because of her training last summer as a member of a regional U.S.A. Track & Field association's elite track team, coached by Dave Simpson of Greensboro.
Since then, she's run away from the competition in local meets.
``That's how it's been for me all season,'' she said, shyly. ``I've had to pretty much run on my own.''
Next week, Barrow is headed to the National High School Track and Field Championships, held this year in Raleigh.
It was about a decade ago that Barrow and her family believed she was headed in a totally different direction, toward a life void of running. Barrow had transferred to the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank school system after living earlier in Pennsylvania and Currituck County, where she was born.
The young girl noticed how easy it was to win running events at J.C. Sawyer and H.L. Trigg elementary schools' field days. But while at Trigg, Barrow also noticed that her heart would rev up without warning, causing her to feel faint. She was diagnosed with medical disorder.
``That was kind of scary, knowing I liked to run and I couldn't,'' she said. ``Then my future started looking dim.''
She was prescribed medication, wore a heart monitor and was told she could outgrow the disorder. But Rasheca and her mother, firmly believe it was the healing powers of another source that made her symptoms vanish.
About 10 years ago while they were at church one night, Rasheca's mother took her out of the sanctuary and asked the evangelist to pray for her. ``Then she suddenly began to pray for her feet,'' Robin Barrow said. ``I don't understand why, but she was led by the spirit of God to pray for her feet.
Rasheca attributes a great deal of her success to God,'' her mother says. ``She's obedient to the spirit of God, and she just did what she was told to do. She's healed and, of course, she wouldn't be able to run like she did if she wasn't.''
Barrow later followed her physical education teachers' advice and joined the Currituck County High School girls' outdoor track team during her freshman year of high school.
``The real awakening came when she got in high school and she just took off. Year after year, she just progressed more and more,'' said Robin Barrow, who works as a customer service representative for the county water department.
Barrow lives with her mother and 15-year-old sister, Natisha, in Grandy. Her parents divorced when she was 6, and her father works in Winston-Salem. She also has two half-brothers.
Barrow and a cousin are the only two in her family to attend a four-year college.
Barrow's mother credited the staff at Currituck County High School for helping Rasheca compete at the national level.
``They have supported her endeavors and assisted in helping her go a step beyond what the school planned to do,'' she said, noting the efforts of athletic director Tom Davies and girls' track coach Dawn Ostendorf.
Despite an intensive running regimen, Barrow also has kept on track with her grades while carrying heavy academic loads.
When she wasn't traveling around the country for track, she was attending academic conventions, such as last year's National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine in Texas.
In addition to dozens of athletic trophies, Barrow has high school certificates of excellence she earned throughout the years in English, trigonometry, advanced biology, U.S. history, ELP (economics, legal, politics) and, of course, physical education.
Barrow believes that her spiritual faith, reinforced by attending Bread of Heaven Church in Elizabeth City, has contributed to her success.
``I guess that would be my gift from God, my talent from God,'' she said. ``My academics would be my gift. And my track would be my talent.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Rasheca Barrow, 17, is a Currituck County track star who finished
first in the 400 and 800 meter runs at North Carolina state
championships. On Friday, she took one final lap with 127 of her
classmates to formally finish high school. by CNB