Rainey Is Thinclads' Renaissance Woman

Some Harvard students do a lot of activities and do them all fairly well. Some other students have chosen to become a standout in just one or two specific areas.

Then again, there are those who somehow manage to master it all, to be a standout in everything they're involved in and still have their heads screwed on straight.

You don't know one?

Then meet Meredith Rainey, the star sprinter on the Harvard track team.

The Brooklyn native is not your traditional Renaissance woman.

Not only is she a Big Sister in Phillips Brooks House's Academy Homes program, but she also participates in the Harvard/Radcliffe Foundation for Women's Athletics, excells in academics, and she will begin teaching English classes at night to Cambridge high school students.

If that doesn't impress you, she also runs the fastest 400, 200 and 55 meters any woman has ever run at Harvard.

Stormin' Meredith

In her freshman year of college, after a five-year absence from running at any organized level, Rainey joined the Harvard track team as a walk-on and proceeded to take the Eastern track world by storm.

She began running in third grade after finishing third out of hundreds of other little track hopefuls in a five-week competition, she caught the attention of renowned track coach Fred Thompson, who would go on to become the 1988 Women's Olympic sprint team coach. Thompson coached her in the Adams Track Club, where she built the foundation for a successful track career over a four-year period.

"He taught me how to run," Rainey says of her off-season coach. "My form is pretty good because, at an early age, I learned how to do it right."

She has always had the luxury of tremendous support and encouragement from her family-on and off the track.

"My family has flown all over to see me run," Rainey says. "My mother especially has been wonderful. She's the biggest influence in my life."

After an extremely promising seventh grade year in which she ran the 400 meters in a little over 60 seconds and made it to the finals in the Junior Nationals, Rainey put her spikes on the back shelf and ventured out into other activities and sports, including basketball and volleyball.

When Rainey arrived at Harvard after turning down Yale and several other Ivies, she was motivated to run track by the large number of her peers who were involved in athletics. So she pulled out those spikes and headed across the river to Gordon Indoor Track.

"It's a lot of fun," Rainey says. "I enjoy being on a team here. That's important to me."

For Rainey's teammates, the feeling is mutual.

"Meredith is a very positive force on the team," Co-Captain Elizabeth Ross says. "She's supportive of everyone. She's a very selfless person."

"Despite her individual talent, above all, she's a team player," says Mark Joseph, one of Rainey's closest friends. "She's always concerned with the team and how they're going to do. That's what's amazed me about her, time after time."

The junior sprinter's enthusiasm for track and her ability to motivate others with her team spirit has made her a leader and a role model on the team.

"Everyone admires her. She's very together," freshman Jamelle Bowers says. "She realizes that school comes first. At meets, when she cheers for the team, she'll make other people get up and cheer too. Even if she loses a race, which is rare, she never has a bad attitude."

"I try to think positively," Rainey says. "Track is so mental. I try to visualize the race from start to finish over and over. From the time I get to the track until the time I run, I'm in my own little world thinking about my race."

Whatever Rainey does in that "little world," she must be doing it right. For three seasons now, Rainey has consistently won her races.

Besides being a steady point-getter in meets, Rainey has already captured the Crimson record in both the 200-meter run and the 50-meter dash. Her time of 24.50 in the 1988 Greater Boston Championships set the record for the 200-meter dash and she broke the 55-meter record with a 7.21 at last year's Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet.

This past July, Rainey competed at the United States Olympic trials, and her time of 53.12 was a new Harvard record in the 400 meters. She advanced to the second round of competition, but she missed the semifinal round by one spot.

Any Olympic hopes for '92?

"To train seriously for the Olympics, I'll have to sacrifice some plans, and I don't know if I'm prepared to do that," Rainey says.

The articulate and confident Kirkland House resident is majoring in Social Studies and plans to go on to law school after graduation next year.

"I want to eventually go into the Peace Corps," Rainey says. "I have a lot of conscience. I feel very strongly about people giving back to the community. I get annoyed with people who are apathetic and who don't care about people and the outside world."

"Right now track is third or fourth in my life, but in three weeks when nationals come around, it'll zoom up to number one, and I'm going to wish it had been number one all along," Rainey says with a smile. "I'd like to do better at nationals than I did last year. I want to go lower than 53.24."

And chances are good that she will.

"Once she decides she wants to do something," Joseph says, "she works on it until she does it well. That's true for track, her studies and her relationships. Anyone who's spent some time with her knows she's going to go a long way."

With her speed and attitude, it won't take too long.

But then again, nothing takes too long for Meredith Rainey.