Nathan Santa Cruz takes aim at City Section 400 title
Sitting in the Birmingham High bleachers wearing headphones before running the 400 meters at the City Section track and field prelims, 17-year-old senior Nathan Santa Cruz looks like a teenager comfortable and confident. Teammates gravitate to him. Maybe it's his smile. Or maybe they want to be near someone enjoying each and every day.
A traumatic experience changed his outlook on life in the fall of 2022 when he suffered a brain injury in the opening football game for Venice High and underwent emergency surgery to stop bleeding.
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'We don't know if he's going to make it,' his mother, Crystal Clark, remembers being told at the hospital.
Santa Cruz recovered so well that he played two more years of football, but his real love was using his speed in track. Last season he finished second in the City Section 400. This year, he ran a career-best time of 47.74 seconds at the Arcadia Invitational.
On Thursday, he'll have a rematch against Justin Hart of Granada Hills in the 400 final. They ran one-two last season.
'I think it's going to be a real competitive race,' Santa Cruz said. 'I'm going to try to come out on top.'
If he doesn't finish first, he's already won. He has a track scholarship waiting for him at Cal Poly Pomona, where he plans to study business or criminology. And he has grown up fast because of what happened to him. He's no normal teenager when you listen to what he believes.
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'At the end of the day, it's God giving you another chance to wake up,' he said. 'Make sure I'm better than yesterday. That's what I do.'
His competitor, Hart, has his own story to tell. He's the son of Kentucky basketball assistant coach Jason Hart, who spent 10 years in the NBA. An older brother, Jason II, also played basketball but Justin was different.
Justin played lots of sports, including basketball, but when he was 7, he told his father, 'I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want you to waste your money."
He wanted to run.
"I didn't want to be in my dad's shadow. I wanted to create my own identity in my own sport," he said.
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He won the 400 and was second in the 200 at last year's City final. He's going for a sweep on Thursday and is just getting started.
"I think the ceiling is really high," Granada Hills coach Johnny Wiley said.
He'll welcome his father and mother in the bleachers cheering loudly.
There really won't be any losers when Hart and Santa Cruz square off. They come from great families and have learned lessons that will help them succeed for years to come.
Santa Cruz makes it clear he runs to make his mother proud because he'll never forget a memory from his hospital experience.
'Seeing her cry at the hospital, I knew I had to go make an impact in her life, make it so she didn't have to pay for her kid to go to college,' he said. 'Seeing her smile, that's why I do it."
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And when days don't go as well as he might like, Santa Cruz said he has learned, 'It's just the way life goes. I think God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.'
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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