‘It’s a chip on the idea of hope.’ Crowley coaches mourn loss of track athlete
The loss of Rashard Guinyard was a chip on the idea of hope.
Guinyard, a senior at Crowley High School, was known for his athletic ability on the track field, but aside from that, he was impressive in the classroom, which helped him land a full-ride scholarship to Abilene Christian University in the fall. He loved his family, worked part-time to pay for his car, studied hard and practiced harder.
So, when news broke that he died after a shooting on Sunday, the greater Fort Worth community mourned how a child who had everything going for him could have it taken away.
“Everyone, as a parent myself, always wants the best for your child, and you always look for the best in your children everywhere,” said Sorento Griggs, one of Guinyard’s track coaches. “So if that means, looking for the best in my child, in another young man over here, if I know this young man, and I know how hard this young man works, I know my child might be 10, 12 years younger than him but seeing that, that’s translatable to my child.
“In every community, we love those success stories and we feed off those success stories. It gives us that much more pride in our community. So losing Rashard, it’s a chip. It takes a chip out of your ideas, because, of course, we see a lot of young promising young men and young women that we lose in their early stages of life, in their most creative and their most determined stages of life. It takes a chip out of hope in the situation. It doesn’t completely destroy that hope, but it does give you a setback, a momentary setback to ‘Hey this is one that we lost in our community that could have helped our community so much.’”
Griggs and Gary Lane, two coaches with the Fort Worth Flyers Track Club, met Guinyard when he was a freshman in high school and he began to train with them.
Lane said Guinyard came to him during his sophomore year and admitted football wasn’t his thing and that he wanted to commit to track full-time. Lane told him it was time to get to work. Guinyard took that to heart.
“He was always trying to find a way to gain an edge. So that meant, if he thought that ‘Well, if I do a couple extra reps now, that’ll help me two months from now, so that’s what I’m going to do to be as good or better than my competition,’” Lane said.
Guinyard was described as a perfectionist, and beyond wanting perfection, was nailing down a strong work ethic that created a presence that wore off on the people around him.
“He would be the one to bring in energy and liven up the day,” Lane said. “He would always bring that competitiveness. … He had those [older] kids he was looking up to, so he was always trying to compete with them and use them for motivation and in turn, turn that into a lot of energy.”
On top of bringing a competitive atmosphere while running against his peers, the 17-year-old quickly became a voice of motivation.
“Rashard had great leadership characteristics, and it wasn’t just vocal, it was demonstrative and he knew how to work his characteristics based on the situation,” Griggs added. “ [He would say] ‘Do you need me to go in here and just go to work? I can do it. … If you need me to just go and support another kid, and help bring them up to the level that they want to get to. I can do that.’ And that’s the biggest thing that stands out about Rashard … you can train leaders to be better leaders, but it’s hard to find people that don’t have leadership characteristics and make them into leaders.”
And Guinyard’s leadership translated beyond other athletes and students, and will continue to do so even through his death, Lane said.
“Him being a perfectionist, that was more of his attitude towards life. Perfection means you have to have that work ethic. And I think that that’s the one thing that I’m going to carry with me, you know, long after his funeral happens,” Lane said. “Even as an adult, we have to have that approach to life, where we want to get the best out of every opportunity that we have — be at work or in our friendships and in our personal lives. Just anytime you get an opportunity to do something, do it the best. Take advantage of it, and get the most out of it. And that’s the lesson I took from Rashard.”
