FAYETTEVILLE - Great for Arkansas Razorbacks men's track and field that sprints coach Doug Case checks his email.
Otherwise, says Kenzo Cotton, Arkansas likely would be without its SEC Indoor 60-meter dash champion/SEC Indoor 200-meter dash runner-up and SEC Harper Award winner as the meet's 18 team points high scorer.
Arkansas also likely would be without its 60 and 200 double qualifier for the NCAA Indoor Championships that began Friday and concludes tonight in College Station, Texas.
Now a senior 15-time All-American with one national championship running the third leg of Arkansas' NCAA Outdoor winning 4 x 100 relay in 2015 and a 2-time SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year while a pre-med major in kinesiology, Kenzo Cotton is that SEC 60-meter champion/Harper Award winner competing nationally this weekend.
Weathering high school days in the snowy Omaha suburb of La Vista, the 8-time Nebraska state champion yearned collegiately to train in warmer weather.
"The winters in Omaha - they are not fun," Cotton said. "I e-mailed all the SEC schools and USC and a couple of others out West and I think Coach Case was the only one to respond. He e-mailed me back that he was interested and that he liked my times and my grades and he gave me his number so we could get set up."
Apparently, it all happened so fast to blur Case's memory.
"That's funny, man," Case said, laughing about the e-mail story that he acknowledged not fully recollecting as by now it seems Cotton always blipped Arkansas' radar.
"I get thousands of e-mails every year and we sort through them," Case said. "Obviously it paid off for us. He was a great high school athlete and we wanted him from the second we saw his stature. You combined what he's built like with his academics you really want him on your team. He's done everything right and it's paying off for him right now."
Cotton had about done everything but win an individual SEC championship, now achieved with his 6.59 winning the intensively competitive SEC 60 on Feb. 25 coupled by his 20.61 runner-up 200 completing the Harper Award.
"I have been wanting to get that award probably about three years now and finally it has happened," Cotton said. "I'm very proud."
Cotton should be, Arkansas Head Coach Chris Bucknam said, especially winning that SEC 60.
"For him to win the marquee event in the SEC, that was really a great thing to see," Bucknam said.
Even greater, Cotton scoring 18 SEC points during a season jeopardized by a Jan. 20 hamstring injury.
Cotton said training time deferred to the injury realistically has him conditioning behind in the NCAA 200 but the 60 is "definitely my race right now."
"I think I'm going into it fourth but we're all really close, a couple of a hundredths of a second," Cotton said. "It's just a matter of who executes that day."
Sports on 03/10/2018