Family Drives NSU Sprinter Kai Cole to New Heights

Norfolk State sprinter Kai Cole has won at every level he’s competed at. A state champion and Division III national champion, Cole had gathered a list of accolades before arriving at NSU, but nothing compared to the feeling of helping his team win the 2022 MEAC Indoor Track & Field Championship. 

An opportunity to top that achievement has arrived this week, as NSU hosts the MEAC Outdoor Track & Field Championship at Dick Price Stadium. The Spartans have the chance to take home their first MEAC outdoor title since 2012 and do it in front of a hometown crowd on top of that.

“I feel like this would be a bigger accomplishment [than any other], winning at your own school,” Cole said. “There’s more love here.”

Of all the friends and family that will be in attendance this week, one person’s presence means the most to Cole: his mother. She tries to watch her son’s races in person as often as she can, and Cole’s best performances have come in front of her.

“My charm is my mom,” he said. “Whenever my mom is there, it seems like I always do something amazing.”

He can thank his mother for pushing him down this path in the first place. Cole ran track growing up, but his real passion was basketball. His speed glided him down the court almost too rapidly, so he began to slow down to match the flow of play. 

Cole, who now stands at 5-foot-5, didn’t make the basketball team in eighth grade, and came up just short at tryouts the next year. He had given up sprinting at this point, but his mother encouraged him to get back in the mix.

“She said, ‘just try it. If you like it, stay. If you don’t like it, then you don’t have to do it anymore,” Cole said. “The first meet came, I ran the 55, and I ran like a 6.9. I was so excited; I came home telling my mom that I liked track. She basically told me to just stick with it and it will take me places.”

Cole attended Alexandria City High School (formerly T.C. Williams HS), an institution with notoriety in a multitude of fields. The subject of the 2000 Disney film Remember the Titans, the school has had its fair share of notable alumni from comedian Donnell Rawlings to singer Kali Uchis.

Two of the school’s most accomplished attendees ran with Cole on the Titans’ track team. Brothers Noah and Josephus Lyles inked 8-year contracts with Adidas shortly after graduating from high school, keeping in touch with Cole throughout his college career. Noah won a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and currently holds the fifth fastest mark of all time in the 200m (19.50 seconds). 

During Cole’s sophomore year of high school, he began competing for the Titans’ relay team alongside the senior Lyles brothers, and that’s right around the time he began to take the sport more seriously. The squad had the fastest 4x200m time in America of the season and the No. 2 time in Virginia history with a 1:27.29 finish in 2016. 

While the Lyles brothers had grown used to the attention, Cole was surprised when his high school coach told him that scouts were interested in the young kid running the third leg of the race.

“My coach told me ‘This school looked at you, this school is asking about you,” Cole said. “That made me realize maybe I could have a future in this. Maybe I can really put my all into this.”

Cole received attention from multiple Division I programs including NSU, but his grades didn’t match his talents on the track. With the encouragement of his high school advisor, he made the decision to attend Wesley College and compete at the Division III level until he made the academic strides necessary to move to a larger program.

He made that transition easily, thriving both in the classroom and on the track at Wesley. Cole earned first-team All-American status in the 100-meter dash during outdoor season, but his biggest accomplishment came inside. Cole won the national championship in the 60-meter dash as a freshman, catching the attention of Norfolk State head coach Kenneth Giles, who had recruited Cole in high school.

“That impressed me, and it told me he knew how to compete at a national level,” Giles said. “Regardless of whether it was Division I, II, or III, it told me he knew how to compete at a high level.

When Cole decided to transfer from Wesley, Giles convinced the young star to make Norfolk his new home. Upon his arrival, Cole immediately noticed something different about the school and its program. 

His talents shined above the competition at Wesley, but Cole felt an increased standard of excellence and organization at NSU that he had never experienced before. 

While he found success previously off his talent alone, Cole said he took huge strides at NSU when he began focusing on technique and strategy as much as his physical fitness. He was also impressed by the facilities on campus. 

“We didn’t have a track at my other school, so we would just practice any we could,” Cole said. “Everything is more technical over here, and quality over quantity. It’s easier to get better.”

Cole quickly became one of the team’s top sprinters, finishing runner-up in the 60m at Albany (6.83) before breaking the 6.8 mark at the Penn State National meet. He placed fourth in the 60m and fifth in the 200m at Liberty’s Darius Dixon Memorial Invitational.

“Nobody really expected me to do the things that I did,” he said. “I feel like I’ve just been excelling after that.”

His year didn’t end there. The Spartan relay narrowly qualified for the NCAA East Preliminary Round as one of the top 24 teams, but only 12 would advance to nationals. NSU would need a stronger performance at regionals than its last race of the season, certainly.

“We ran at this last chance meet, and that was just so terrible,” Cole said. “We didn’t run the time we needed to.”

The Spartans delivered at regionals, posting a season-best time of 39.37 seconds to give NSU its first representation for the event at nationals since 1998. The time was .17 seconds off the NSU record set in 1996. 

“It was just like ‘Wow, we really did this after all of the setbacks we had,” Cole said. 

Cole has only continued to improve since he got to NSU, and he hit his longest stride at the perfect time: the 2022 MEAC Indoor Championships. The event was held locally in Virginia Beach for the first time ever at the brand-new Virginia Beach Sports Complex, so the Spartans had plenty of home support.

But the sprinter’s outstanding performance at the meet surprised even Cole himself. He clocked a time of 6.82 in the preliminary round of the 60m, a number that didn’t come close to meeting his expectations. But he bounced back the next day, posting a personal-best 6.66 in the final to take first place in the event.

“Everything felt so perfect,” Cole said. “The whole race felt perfect. I lifted up and I was ahead of everybody. I crossed the line and it said 6.66. I was so excited; I did a victory lap around the track.”

Forty minutes later, he stepped up for the final in the 200m. He had run 21.01 the previous day, but knew he’d need a better time to win with a medal on the line. Per his tradition, he spoke with the coaching staff prior to the race.

“You’re going to run at least 20.7 if you put your race together right,” they told him.

The coaches knew best. Cole set another personal record with a 20.77, earning his second first-place finish of the day. The Spartans clinched their first Indoor MEAC Championship since 2013 later that day, finishing 50 points ahead of second place Howard.

“It made it even better that we won the MEAC as a whole team too,” Cole said. “That was probably one of my proudest moments in track.”

But many of Cole’s proudest moments at Norfolk State have come off the track. He landed on the NSU AD Honor Role for the 2020 and 2021 spring semesters, a fitting recognition of how far he’d come since his struggles in the classroom as a high schooler. 

Cole said he lets his family know every time he receives an impressive grade on a test, and they celebrate those accomplishments with him as much as his athletic achievements.

“Everyone reaches out, praises me, and tells me how proud they are of me,” Cole said.

If the Spartans can perform to their standards this week, Cole’s family will witness another milestone in his journey. Not only will his mother and siblings be in attendance, but some family members have travelled from New York to see the highly anticipated meet. Their presence is the only motivation Cole needs.

“Family is everything to me,” he said. “They are the reason that I run, the reason that I do everything in life.”