Wright all around

KNOXVILLE -- There was little tangible reason to think Signal Mountain resident Phoebe Wright would become one of the most successful student-athletes in University of Tennessee history.

Wright was a solid runner at Red Bank High School, but far from a spectacular one. She finished sixth in the state meet at 800 meters as a sophomore, then fourth as a junior and fifth as a senior. Her personal best was 2 minutes, 15.95 seconds -- several seconds slower than UT generally prefers.

Yet four years, eight All-America awards and multiple national championships later, Wright seems to be no surprise to anyone in the UT track and field program.

She surely isn't shocked. Beneath the demeanor and soft voice of an elementary school art teacher lies the talent and drive of a world-class athlete.

"Do you want the honest answer? Or do you want the humble answer?" Wright said when asked about her expectations four years ago. "In high school, I knew I was really good and just hadn't reached my potential. I don't know why I had that belief in myself. I had no proof, really, but I've just always believed in myself.

"I came to school to run -- and to win."

J.J. Clark was a believer, too.

Clark, Tennessee's director of track and field, receives an estimated 100 e-mails per week from high school athletes and their coaches.

"I'll show you right now. I've got 1,200 of them right here," Clark said, pointing to his office computer.

Most of those letters state the same case.

"Everybody supposedly has 'untapped potential,'" Clark said with a smile. "People always say that with my coaching, they can do this or that. Obviously, most of the time that's not the case."

With Wright it was.

To this day, Clark doesn't know why he believed Wright and her Red Bank coaches. He just did.

"I guess you could say they sounded convincing," Clark said. "I had no reason to believe them, but I just did. All I knew was she could run 2:16, but something inside me said, 'They're right.'

"And you know what? They were right."

Wright always wanted to run for the Lady Vols -- she lived in Knoxville for three years while mother Lucy attended UT law school -- but she was literally less than four seconds from becoming a Colorado Buffalo.

She couldn't lower her 800 time to 2:12, though, so she drove two hours north and walked on at Tennessee.

"God works in mysterious ways," Clark said. "If she runs that 2:12 -- which should have been easy for her -- we wouldn't have gotten her. I think God intervened for a couple of months to keep her slow enough to come here. I think God wanted her to be here."

For whatever reason, everything worked out starting with Wright's first workout in Knoxville. Clark said he was "blown away" from that initial day.

"It looked so easy for her. She just looked so comfortable, so strong, so good," he said. "She was so light-of-foot. It was unusual. I knew right away she was going to very good.

"Now, did I knew she'd be two-minute good? No. I thought she'd be 2:08 good. Did I think she'd be a national champion? No. I thought maybe she could run in an NCAA final. But she just kept improving every day, every year."

No kidding. Wright's personal best shrank to 2:13.20 during her indoor freshman season, and she ran the 800 leg on the SEC champion distance medley relay team. Then she ran a 2:08.01 to place 11th in the SEC outdoor championships that spring.

"Coach Clark told me I'd get to 2:06 by the end of my freshman year if I did everything he told me to do," Wright said. "I didn't quite get it, but I knew I could."

And she did. She won three All-America awards as a sophomore, whittling her personal best in the 800 to 2:04.92. Three more All-America awards came the following year, when she helped lead the Lady Vols to an overall national indoor championship. Her time decreased to 2:04.38, then 2:03.57, then 2:02.11, then 2:01.12.

She twice tried to break the two-minute mark, which would have qualified her for the World Championships, but she missed by an agonizing four-tenths of a second. She also missed an outdoor NCAA title by a minuscule amount, finishing second.

She didn't wait long to atone for that, though. After helping UT to three consecutive DMR national championships, Wright got her first individual national title this past winter in the 800. And if she advances from this week's NCAA regional in Greensboro, N.C., she'll be in position to add an outdoor title next week in Eugene, Ore.

Wright also ran on the Lady Vols' world-record-setting DMR and 4x1500-meter relay teams, as well as their American record-setting 4x800 team.

But arguably her most impressive accomplishment came last month. She won the Boyd McWhorter Award, doled out annually to Southeastern Conference's top scholar-athlete -- with equal weight given to each side of that hyphen plus community involvement.

"It's the highest honor a student-athlete can receive in our conference ... and Phoebe was an excellent selection," league commissioner Mike Slive said. "She is an outstanding representative of Tennessee and the Southeastern Conference."

Wright, noting the Lady Vols' tradition of athletic and academic success, said she "absolutely could not believe" she was even UT's McWhorter nominee. Not that she's complaining, though. The award comes with a $15,000 scholarship she can use for graduate school while continuing to train in Knoxville as a professional the next several years.

Monday she was announced along with Matt Maloney from the UT men's team as the SEC's track and field scholar-athletes of the year. The SEC women's runner of the year for the indoor season, Wright was first-team All-SEC for outdoor track as well.

Books have never strayed too far from her mind, not with a 3.96 grade point average with majors in chemistry and cellular and molecular biology, as well as ecology and evolutionary biology. She plans to focus on biochemistry in graduate school in planning a career in pharmacology.

"Our university is so proud of Phoebe -- all of us," Clark said. "She has incredible balance in her life. She's a great athlete, obviously, but she's really just an all-around great person. She's our team captain, and that motivates her more than her individual success.

"She's a great role model as a student and an athlete. She doesn't stay up all night and get involved with nonsense and drama. She's everything you want as a coach."

For at least the next few years, Wright plans to stay in Knoxville to train while completing her graduate studies. Eventually, though, she hopes to settle down in Chattanooga and spend some of her free time running trails behind the new Signal Mountain High School.

"I've been too spoiled by Chattanooga, and Chattanooga's been too good to me," she said. "I'll end up back there at some point. It's my home, and I love it."

The Scenic City will have to wait a while, though. Clark said he's looking forward to continued on-track work with Wright, who dreams of qualifying for the 2012 or 2016 Olympics. Even 2020 is an option, considering she's competing in a sport in which athletes often peak in their late 20s.

"I want to see how far I can go, and Coach Clark wants to push me as far as I can go," Wright said. "I don't want to think about the Olympics too much -- what if I get hurt or don't want to run anymore? -- but every runner aspires to be in the Olympics."

Clark won't predict Wright's future, either, but he won't put any limitations on it.

"I just hope she keeps wearing orange shirts," the coach said, "because whatever she does in life, she's going to be successful, and she's going to make us look good, and we're all going to be very proud of her."