Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 67, February 2015 | Page 12

Ma

and High School in Cape Town. I started to
get more competitive and eventually won the
SA Junior Champs. From there I ventured into
track when I was in grade eight and loved it, so
my mom looked for a coach for me and made
contact with Johan Fourie in Stellenbosch. I
started training with him twice a week, so halfway
through grade nine I moved to Rhenish Girls High
and started training with Johan on a daily basis.
That’s when my love of running really blossomed.”

In the lead

Great Scott!
She’s been setting the Collegiate athletics and cross country circuits alight while
studying in the USA, and now Dominique Scott is hoping to turn her good form
into a ticket to the Olympics so she can race in the green and gold.

Under Johan’s guidance, Dominique won several
SA Junior titles, or finished second to her great
rival at the time, Caster Semenya, and she also
ran for her country twice. Then came her big
breakthrough at the SA Junior Champs and being
spotted by the coaches in the US, and she has
positively flown since then, although she first had
to learn a few hard lessons about pacing herself.
“That was hard for me to grasp at first, because
in South Africa I had been winning race after race,
but when I got to the States, I came to realise
that the girls who are going to win Nationals
are just playing around at the beginning of the
season, because they know how long the season
is. I learnt how to peak at the right time.”

– BY SEAN FALCONER

Training hard, reaping success

“I really liked the girls on the Razorbacks team,
and thought Coach Lance Harter would bring the
best out of me – fellow South African Christine
Kalmer also studied there and I had seen how she
came in with certain times and was running faster
by the time she left. That showed me that Coach
Harter really develops athletes.” (She also met
her soon to be boyfriend, fellow athlete Cameron
Erfud, during that recruiting trip, and they have
been together since she moved to the States.)
And so Dominique took six months off after
matriculating at the end of 2010, then went over
to the States in the middle of 2011 when the US
academic year started, enrolling to study business
marketing with a logistics minor. She will complete
both courses in May this year, following which she
plans to complete her Masters as well. “It is pretty
challenging being a student-athlete, because I
miss so much school due to travelling to meets,
and we train like pro athletes, but still have to
juggle classes and sport. I think most people in
SA wouldn’t even be able to comprehend the
amount of work that we put in. My high mileage
weeks get up to 120km, and we don’t do junk
miles, every run is a solid effort – and we race
a lot. But they’re giving me an excellent and
expensive education in exchange for four years of
running for them, so you really want to run hard
for your university.”

Starting (very) young
Dominique took up running at the tender age of
seven, thanks largely to her mother. “I started
running cross country for fun on Friday afternoons
when I was in grade one, because my mom was
the cross country coach at Herzlia Prep School

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ISSUE 67 FEBRUARY 2015 / www.modernathlete.co.za

Dom with her US ‘Dad,’ Coach Lance Harter

Success in the States
In her Freshman (first) and Sophomore (second)
years, she did enough to keep her scholarship
while competing in the three main seasons per
academic year, for cross country, indoor track and
outdoor track. However, she felt she still needed
to prove herself and justify her full scholarship,
and then in her Junior (third) year, she says
things just went crazy as she made a name for
herself. “I won the South Eastern Conference
(SEC) cross country meet and also helped my
school get the team win, then went to Nationals
and finished 28th. I was really pumped up after
that for the indoor season, where I ran 9:02 to
break Christine’s school record for 3000m, and
we also broke the school record for the Distance
Medley Relay (DMR). I won the SEC 5000m title
and finished second in the SEC 3000m, and then
at Nationals, my school won the DMR, which
we had never done before, and I was second in
the 3000m. After that, I got the outdoor school

Images: Courtesy Dominique Scott

W

hen Dominique Scott won the 2010
SA Junior Champs 1500m title in
4:36.94 (and the 3000m title), little did
she know it was about to change her life forever.
Her win was featured on the TV news that
night, which prompted her proud mother, former
Springbok triathlete captain, age group World
Tri Champ and Comrades gold medallist Renée,
to post the video on YouTube. It was seen by a
number of university coaches in the USA who
began trying to enlist Dominique to come run for
them in the States on a full scholarship. “I was
really fortunate that I got to go on a recruiting
trip and visited my top three pick schools, and I
ended up loving the University of Arkansas, which
is in Fayetteville, a small town that reminded me
of Stellenbosch, where I had really grown as an
athlete,” says Dominique.