Rachel Guest: Leading by Example

Leading by example

In early 2020, Track and Field athlete and Willow Canyon High School Coach Rachel Guest had her eyes set on competing at the World Championships in Toronto. She had just turned 45 and was eyeing some records in her new age group. If you don’t know Rachel, she’s got quite the resume, including being the current Women’s 35 Indoor Pentathlon American record holder, Women’s 40 Indoor Pentathlon American record holder, and the Women’s 40 Outdoor Heptathlon American record holder. As with many 2020 plans, hers got derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. She ended up finding a meet in Texas that would allow her to get at least one competition in that year. She entered in the heptathlon, but entries were low for the event, so they gave Guest an opportunity to enter the decathlon. “I thought, well, I’ve never done the decathlon, and I’ve got six weeks,” she says with a smile. She reached out to her throwing coach to teach her discus because she had never done it before. “She’s already a world class athlete, so with her it was just fine tuning,” said Bill Laing, Guest’s shot put and discus coach, as well as a former Willow Canyon coach himself. “We worked on a few things here and there, and the rest is just her athletic ability.” Then she reached out to a volunteer coach at Willow Canyon, Rich Franklin. “He’s a phenomenal pole vault coach,” she said. “I’ve never done pole vault so I sent him a message and said, hey, can you teach me how to pole vault in six weeks?” She ended up doing seven sessions with him, learned discus as best she could, and made a plan for the meet.

Rachel Guest raises her hands in excitement after winning an event in 2018.

“I always set goals,” she exclaims. “I always have targets. I knew that I had a chance of breaking the record. The existing record was 6,314. I was guesstimating I was going to score around 6,700 points.” She drove all the way to Texas with her gear and began the meet. Day one was a success and she was on track for her goal. Day two she ended up vaulting a bit higher than expected, and her spirits were high. Going into the ninth event, javelin, she was a mere 161 points away from breaking the record. By the time she finished the event, she had achieved her goal. In fact, by the end of the event she scored a whopping 7,070 points. Her excitement couldn’t have been higher, achieving an American record in an event she had never done before. She posted images on social media with her accolades and received congratulations from her student athletes at Willow Canyon. But in the spirit of 2020, nothing can be simple. “About a week and a half after the meet, I found out that both the shot put and discus sectors were not in the allowable limits of decline for the landing surfaces,” she said with a feeling of defeat. “So USA Track and Field was not able to ratify my record.” Rachel has been running Track and Field for most of her life, and this was not the first time she experienced defeat. She’s a native Arizona resident who grew up setting records at Cactus High School as a freshman. She did well at the high school and state level, but she wasn’t quite Division 1 material. Instead she got recruited to Scottsdale Community College, where they transitioned her to a heptathlete. She had only competed in one of the seven events, the 200 meter dash. She had to learn how to do the rest of the events her first year. The story of her first event in college is one she tells her student athletes often, hoping to illustrate the importance of what it takes to be a successful athlete.

Rachel Guest works with track and field athletes at Willow Canyon High School on race starts during a preseason workout.

“My coach took us down to the University of Arizona for an all comers meet,” she said. “My first hurdles race, I was going to run the 55 meter hurdles, I am scared as scared can be. It’s four U of A hurdlers and me. I’m so nervous when I go to jump up and down before getting into my blocks that I don’t realize I’m standing right over them and I tumble over my blocks. I get in, the starter started us. I was a hot mess. I was last, it was embarrassing, and I was furious. I remember walking back to go to my bag, and my coach came up to me and I’m like, that will never happen again. And at first he’s probably thinking, great she’s going to quit. What I was meaning was, I was never going to let that kind of situation happen again. I had one week before my first heptathlon, trained as hard as I knew how, came back that next weekend and broke the meet record in the hurdles and ended up winning the heptathlon.” The reason she shares that story with the kids is because we are always faced with times in our life where we have a choice. We can either let that moment define us, or we can defeat that moment. “I made the choice to defeat that moment and rise above it. Hopefully when they encounter a situation like that, whether it be track or life or school, they take a second thought and say how am I going to choose to deal with this.” Rachel’s successes and failures continued. She became an All-American as a heptathlete and earned a full track and field scholarship to Idaho State. She was training and had her sights set on the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia when she herniated a disc in her back. “My body just had a different plan,” she said. She ended up walking away from the sport for nine years. She got married, had kids, and was living a happy life. But eventually, it just started talking to her again. The sport drew her back. She found out that even as athletes get older, there are competitions. In 2005 she started competing again and did some local meets. In 2007 she went to nationals and ran the 100 and 200 meter dash. By 2010 she started getting back into combined events. In 2011 she turned 35, and when you are 35 you can start competing at the world level in the Masters. In Sacramento that year, she competed in and won the heptathlon. And from there the sky just became the limit. “When you count relays, I am a part of seven different American and World Records,” said a proud Guest. As the female Track and Field Coach for Willow Canyon High School, Guest tries to take the lessons she has learned in the sport and use that to help guide the students. “This is a sport that I am really passionate about. I’ve done it for most of my life,” she said. “I always try to remind the students though that it’s all about what you put into it, because there are a lot of days where it’s hard. I never try to act like it’s easy. I think it’s important for us as coaches to remind them of that. And I think that it does go back to that idea that kids are so used to such an instant life. I think that kids forget that success takes time, it takes effort, and there is so much behind the scenes that goes into it. So I try to remind them on those tough days when they are feeling down, that it’s going to pay off.” For the students, having a world record holding athlete as a coach has some benefits from their perspective as well. “It makes me feel more comfortable because she knows what she’s doing,” said Ashlyn Williams, an 11th grade athlete at Willow Canyon. “She really gives us the motivation to [be successful]. She’ll be competing one day, and we’ll be competing the next. And she’s always fired up with us, which really helps.”

Bill Laing, Guest’s shot put and discus coach, watches as she performs a practice throw at Willow Canyon High School.

For other students, it’s having a coach who can understand in the moment how they are feeling and participate in what they are going through. “It’s really motivating because she’s always so energetic and does the stuff with us and shows us how to do it,” said Savannah Smith, a 10th grade athlete at Willow Canyon. “Not just like a little bit of a demonstration, she actually does it.” “A lot of coaches will stand back and say, run harder, run faster,” said Iris Baker, a 10th grade athlete. “When she does it with us, and can understand and feel our pain, she understands where we are at.” Guest says she does think being a current athlete does help the students because of how technical sports are in general. “When you look at track and even just with running mechanics, I think it definitely benefits them when you can have a coach that can do the drill so they have that realtime example of what they are trying to do,” she said. “As a high school student athlete, they are getting world class training, and that’s phenomenal,” said Bill Laing, former Willow Canyon coach. “She’s known around the world. You just don’t get that at high schools. She’s got a good rapport with the kids and they just love her.” But more importantly than being able to do the same drills as the students, or understand how they are feeling while training and competing, Guest goes back to the very nature and foundation of sports and competition as a way to connect with her athletes. “I recently had my first hurdle race in my life that I hit the hurdles so severely that I didn’t even finish the race,” she said. “I had four student athletes there at the meet watching me, and I still had four other events to do that day. Like many people, I wanted to stomp my feet and get mad and walk away and not finish. That isn’t the way to handle that situation in general, but it’s also about looking at how I can be that role model for them. I picked myself up, put my big girl pants on, and ended up having some really successful performances the rest of the meet.” In true Rachel Guest fashion, and as an inspiration and model for her student athletes, she’s got her eyes set on that decathlon record that wasn’t ratified from 2020, and hasn’t let it go. “The way I look at it, you just have to keep your chin up,” she said. “I was frustrated, but that is not going to get me very far. I’ve already got my sights on the fact that I have all this time to get even better with pole vault and get even better with the discus. And the plan is to just shatter that record in 2021.”

Rachel Guest poses with athletes from Germany and Poland in the Women’s 40 Masters Championship in the Pentathlon. Guest broke the American record at the event.