FAYETTEVILLE — Few get told, 'Wait ’til next year,” in the same year they win a national championship.
Payton Chadwick did. She’s glad of it.
Chadwick followed her coaches’ redshirt plan instead of running what would have been her outdoor finale after winning the 2018 NCAA Indoor 60-meter hurdles. Now a fifth-year senior who was 2019 SEC Indoor 60-meter hurdles champion, Chadwick runs her final SEC Outdoor next Thursday through Saturday.
Arkansas hosts at John McDonnell Field with Chadwick in the 100-meter hurdles, 200-meter dash and 4x100 and 4x400 relays.
“It’s crazy with us hosting SEC Outdoor on my last one and having the home crowd,” Chadwick said.
What a fond farewell. What a path she’s traveled.
Coach Lance Harter and sprints coach Chris Johnson planned for the girl next door, who grew up Payton Stumbaugh at Springdale Har-Ber.
From struggling as an Oklahoma Sooners freshman heptathlete, Chadwick transferred to become a 2016 All-American Arkansas heptathlete to pure championship hurdler/sprinter.
She redshirted with an injury indoors in 2017, and she’s evolved into a hurdling champion, adding a 2019 SEC Indoor hurdles championship, NCAA Indoor third places in the hurdles, and was a member of 4x400 relay champion teams for Arkansas in the SEC and NCAA.
She’s an expert cook with a how-to YouTube program preparing “healthy, nutritious meals that are quick and easy.”
Since 2017 she’s been married to Cannon Chadwick, the former Razorbacks baseball pitcher become realtor. Academically she graduated in 2018 in kinesiology, and now is pursuing a sports management masters.
She readily agreed that she needed that 2018 outdoor break before learning she couldn’t have foot the bill.
“I ended up having plantar fasciitis (a lingering, excruciating foot affliction) toward the end of the 2018 indoor,” Chadwick said. “I actually won Nationals, backed off of training. I still sleep in a little night boot every night just to avoid getting it again.”
Even contributing to 2019 NCAA and SEC Indoor team titles, Chadwick’s training wasn’t caught up until this outdoor season, Johnson said.
“For her to come back indoors and get third at Nationals with all that time off was nothing short of phenomenal,” Johnson said.
Johnson has two hurdling phenoms with Chadwick, who has a 12.83 personal record run in the Outdoor 100-meter hurdles, and sophomore Janeek Brown, who was second and fifth to Chadwick in last winter’s SEC and NCAA Indoor hurdles, then last week set a 100-meter hurdles Razorbacks record/2019 world leading 12.57.
They elicit each’s best, Johnson said.
Chadwick concurs.
“She (Brown) is No. 1 in the world right now, so who doesn’t want to train with the best?” Chadwick said. “We push each other every day. There is a really unique relationship.”
It includes exchanging the baton on Arkansas’ 4x100 relay. Combined with superb teammates from distances, sprints and the pole vault, they share a team mission greater than themselves aiming to repeat outdoors the Arkansas SEC and NCAA team titles the Razorbacks won indoors.
“We have dynamics other teams don’t have very unique to Arkansas,” Chadwick said. “When we’re together, we’re unstoppable.”