Khamari Hardin Shows Progress and Leadership

POUGHKEEPSIE – Hardin doesn’t always love training.

But, he wants to run faster. Progress is how he measures success in his sport. So, he embraces it.

“Sometimes it’s more about discipline than actually liking it,” the senior cross country runner and sprinter said Monday. “Sometimes even when you don’t feel like doing it, you kind of just have to.”

It’s paying dividends.

On Saturday, Hardin registered a personal-best time of 20:43.6 for a 3.1-mile cross country race, finishing 74th at the Section 1 Northern Counties Championships, held outside the Hudson Valley Sports Dome in Milton. Monday brought another reason to celebrate, as he learned he was selected as the Poughkeepsie High School Athlete of the Month for September. When he heard the news, he jumped into the air.

“It’s just nice to know people notice your hard work, in a way,” he said of the reactionary celebration. “Every day you come here, you’re always putting yourself in this space where you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I’m good enough, I don’t know if I’m pushing hard enough, I don’t know if I can get that far. What’s even the point sometimes?’ It’s nice to know that somebody looked at you and they’re like, ‘You’re doing a good job.’”

Coach Jason Conrad said Hardin’s “focus and dedication” were being recognized in the honor in addition to his results; Hardin has registered the fastest times of any Poughkeepsie runners at most meets this season.

“He’s one of the first kids at practice,” said Conrad, who is also a mentor to Hardin in the My Brother’s Keeper Fellows program. “He’s always asking, ‘What can I correct? What can I do better? How can I go further?’”

The coach said that motivation to get better is infectious to the rest of the team.

“He’s literally made other kids challenge themselves to get closer to his times,” Conrad said, noting Hardin “always has a goal for himself. It’s one of the reasons why he’s a good senior and a good leader of the team.”

Hardin has several goals lined up for himself. During the indoor and outdoor track and field seasons, he’d like to make it to the state qualifier meets and hopefully qualify. With a career goal of becoming a teacher, he hopes to attend Marist College and join the Red Foxes track and field team; in order to do it, he needs to reach minimum standard running times the team has posted for potential recruits to reference.

“I just want to run faster, to be honest,” he said.

His next chance for that is at the Section 1 Cross Country Championships at Wappingers Falls’ Bowdoin Park. That meet isn’t until Nov. 9, giving the Pioneers a nice long break in which to improve. Conrad said the goal is for his runners’ times to drop below 20 minutes for the course, given the time they have for training.

And, Hardin doesn’t always dislike it.

“We have two weeks of training,” he said, “which is really nice.”