Off to the Olympics

Clendon Henderson can now look back fondly on an extremely painful moment: The first play of the first football scrimmage during his senior year at Meadow High School in rural Texas.
Henderson, a running back, played six-man football, so it was a surprising he was even getting looks at playing college football. Texas Tech had sent letters. So did a number of Division II schools. The letters stopped the moment Henderson’s ankle snapped.

The play was over. The whistle had been blown. Still, two opposing players plowed into Henderson’s unprotected right leg, leaving him with a torn meniscus in his knee and a broken ankle. His football career? Done. No one was taking a flier on a six-man player who missed his senior season due to injury.
So why, exactly, would this be a fond memory?

The shattered ankle began a chain reaction that turned Henderson from middling college football prospect to one of the nation’s top competitors in the discus throw.
After the injury, he attended South Plains College and competed in the decathlon for coach Lance Bingham, an old family friend. Both quickly realized that the discus was Henderson’s strongest event. Bingham moved on, taking a job on Brant Tolsma’s staff at Liberty. Soon after, Henderson had an open invitation to join the Flames’ track and field team.
Henderson eventually married the first girl he met in Lynchburg (Tolsma’s daughter Brenda), finished in the top 10 at the NCAA outdoor championships twice and earned an invite to the U.S. Olympic Trials next week in Eugene, Ore.

So, yeah, everything seemed to work out well for Henderson.

“I really feel like the Lord allowed that to happen,” he said. “I took the injury as something terrible that ended up being something great in the end.”
Henderson closed out his Liberty career earlier this month with a third-place finish at the NCAA championships. He holds the Big South record in the discus with a throw of 204 feet, 3 inches.

But that mark is well short of the Olympic “A” standard of 211-7 that must be reached if Henderson wants to go to Beijing later this summer.
“Right now at practice, I’m throwing better than I have ever,” Henderson said. “I feel like I can do it if I get the right conditions.

“A good, strong front but right-handed wind coming in really helps with the discus. I feel like if I can get one of those winds, I can definitely do it.”
The preliminary round is July 3 at 8:30 p.m. PDT. The top 12 throwers advance to the July 6 finals at 2:20 p.m. PDT.

The top three who have reached the “A” standard move on to China.

Henderson, who earned Academic All-America honors after finishing with a 3.72 GPA in kinesiology, took a big leap this season, adding 20 pounds of muscle to his 6-1 frame and bettering his personal best throw by more than six feet.

“As he’s gotten bigger and stronger, I’ve definitely seen improvement,” Bingham said. “He’s just so disciplined with his technique.
“The difference is that he’s so much stronger and more solid that when he hits across the round, he’s in positions that are good, and now he’s got the strength and power to hold those positions and get through it.”

Still, at 237 pounds, Henderson said he’s “tiny” compared to some of the best throwers in the nation, including defending national champion Ian Waltz, who is 6-2, 265 and enters the Trials with the nation’s top qualifying mark — 226-0.

Henderson, seeded 15th in the Trials, is looking more realistically at trying to make the 2012 U.S. Olympic squad. Most of the top competitors in the current field are seasoned professionals. The favorites to claim the top three spots and earn trips to Beijing are Waltz, Michael Robertson and Jarred Rome, all of whom compete for Nike.

“I’m not feeling real pressure,” Henderson said. “I’m feeling really loose, really relaxed. I’ve been resting a lot. I feel really fresh and explosive.
“It’s going to be fun. I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to go out and do my best, and if a miracle happens, a miracle happens.”