Northwestern senior and University of Southern California signee Twanisha Terry made her second trip to Oregon in as many years for the Prefontaine Classic/Nike Elite Camp. She fills us in on this experience that' reserved for the fastest athletes in the nation. This year nine of the sixteen invitees hailed from the state of Florida.
This was my second year getting invited to the Prefontaine Classic/Nike Elite Camp. I was happy like it was my first time attending. Prior, to the camp I realized some of Florida's top athletes made up half of the trip. A group chat was made with all the Florida athletes we then found out about three athletes that were from different states. I flew from Fort Lauderdale Airport with Tyrese Cooper and Shaun Shivers. We had a layover in Atlanta, Georgia where we met up with the other Florida athletes since we flew from different airports. While waiting for the Florida athletes we came across Elijah from Georgia who also got invited to the camp.
When we arrived in Oregon there was a lady holding a sign that stated "Nike Elite Camp" she checked everyone in. Our driver drove us from the airport to the Nike Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. When we arrived we was greeted by Kirstyn who helps with the camp. She gave us an Elite band to wear for the week along, with some track and field stickers. We put our belongings down and was directed to a room that had lockers in it. The locker had our name on the outside and the inside contained Nike gear. I tried on everything to make sure the items fit. I did two interviews with Runnerspace, and went to the Michael Johnson track to do a video shoot along with taking pictures. We went to Hayward field on Thursday everyone did a little practice. However, when we walked in we was amazed at our spikes they added extra designs to it. They put our last name on the right shoe and Elite on the left shoe. Later on that night we had dinner at Oregon Electric Station. It was described as a "Restaurant complex with 3 lounges in a 1912 former train station offering American fare & live jazz." It was very different never seen anything like it before. After a couple of minutes went by Kristi Castlin and David Oliver joined us for dinner. Once we ordered we had conversations amongst ourselves with the Olympians. We talked about where we were from, what school the seniors signed to, and other topics.
I noticed various Olympians when we went to Vallery River Inn Hotel. Basically that's where all the Nike athletes stayed at during the week for the meet. I noticed Omar McLeod he's the Olympic gold medalist in the men's 110 hurdles, Shaunae Miller-Uibo she's the Olympic gold medalist in the women's 400m dash, and finally I meet the one and only Allyson Felix. She spoke to the group on things relating to track based on the questions she was asked. A few minutes after Allyson was talking Elaine Thompson walked in. She's the 100m and 200m Olympic gold medalist from Jamaica. Once they was done talking to us everyone came together for a group photo. I took a single picture with Allyson throwing up "
