Biography
By Jim Hague
When Rutgers-Newark track and field coach Juan Edney attended his team’s awards banquet last spring at the Paul Robeson Hall on campus, little did Edney know that he would find a new member of his squad working among the setup staff.
While the fledgling R-N track program was honoring its athletes for a successful first year, Edney was approached by a young lady who said she was a student at the school.
“I was just walking down the street after the dinner and this girl taps me on the shoulder and says that she was interested in running,” Edney said. “She said she was a student at the school and was a runner in high school. At first, I didn’t think she was serious, but she said she was.”
Selamawit Rutty had just completed her sophomore year at R-N and had no clue that the school had a track program, even though she was a part-time employee as a member of the support staff at the Golden Dome and was also working part-time at the hall that hosted the track team’s awards dinner.
“I didn’t even know that there was a track program here,” Rutty said. “When I spoke to Coach Edney, I told him that I would be interested in giving it a try.”
Rutty was a track and field performer at West Orange High School. Edney made a call to the coaching staff at West Orange to inquire about Rutty.
“She said she was interested in coming out, but she never ran cross country before,” Edney said. “Because she was away from it for a while, I knew it was going to take a while to get back in running shape.”
“I loved track,” Rutty said. “I missed it. I wanted to motivate myself and be active. Coach Edney scared me at first, because he told me that it was going to be so much harder than high school. I was definitely nervous. I hadn’t run in two years and I wondered if I could do it. I knew right away it was much harder.”
But there was one thing that Edney noticed right away.
“She was very dedicated,” Edney said. “She’s one of the hardest workers. Some kids always have an excuse and don’t show up for practice. But she’s there every day. Even if she has something to do, she’ll call and say she can’t make it, then ask me what kind of workout she can do on her own. That’s the kind of kid she is. It’s very rare to find that dedication.”
And the hard work is paying off.
“Each week, she keeps getting better,” Edney said. “She hasn’t missed a practice all year. She really works extremely hard.”
After competing in cross country for the first time ever in the fall, Rutty is competing in the 200 and 400-meter runs in the indoor season and will continue to do so in the spring during the outdoor campaign. Rutty is also running as a part of the Scarlet Raiders’ 4X400 (1,600 meter) relay team with Nicole Binns, Cierra Farquharson and Kenitra Washington.
“Cross country was definitely much harder than I expected,” Rutty said. “But eventually, I got better at it. It definitely helped me a lot to get ready for the indoor season, especially with my legs.”
Rutty’s best time in the 400-meter dash has been the 1:05.48 she posted at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational at the New York City Armory last week.
“She’ll probably do better in the spring, because she’ll have a full year of work under her belt,” Edney said. “She didn’t run for so long, so it takes time to get the better results. She has some good speed. She doesn’t have the long strides that Cierra has. In fact, it’s like night and day. But she runs hard.”
Rutty knows that she’s not even close to the runner she was in high school.
“My best time in the 400 in high school was 61 (1:01),” Rutty said. “I have to cut it down. Practices are really hard and I have to juggle school and work. But I’m never going to quit. It’s impossible for me to give up.”
Edney said that the only difficulty Rutty has had so far is staying healthy.
“When someone stays away that long, they usually have a tendency to get injured,” Edney said. “Right now, she’s battling a foot injury. But to her credit, she came right back and was at practice. She didn’t want to miss practice. That’s how dedicated she is. She wanted to be there even if she was in pain.”
The result was a stress fracture in the foot. But that didn’t deter Rutty.
“I can practice on it, but I can’t put too much pressure on it,” Rutty said. “It is tough to practice on it, but I have to be out there.”
If there is one obstacle, it’s Edney’s battle with her name.
“Some of the time, I call her Rutty and the other times, I call her ‘Salami,’” Edney said. “It goes back and forth. Imagine the time I’d have trying to get Selamawit out of my mouth. ‘Hey, Selamawit, come here Selamawit.’ It would be crazy and people would look at me as if I were crazy. It’s too hard of a name to say all the time.”
“When I tell people my name, they say, `What?’” Rutty said. “They ask me if I have a shorter name or a nickname, but I don’t have one. I tell people to just call me Rutty. That’s what everyone calls me.”
Except the coach who refers to her as an Italian luncheon meat.
“That’s okay,” Rutty said. “My grandfather calls me ‘Salami’ too.”
Rutty is a biology major at R-N. After thinking a little about medical school, she now hopes to work in the medical field upon graduation.
And she’s happy to be a part of the track team.
“I love it,” Rutty said. “I’ve made a lot of friends. It’s like a second family. I’ve done okay with indoor track and I know outdoor will be much better, because I’m feeling better and more comfortable.”
You never know where the next athlete is coming from. It’s not so crazy to find a runner out of an awards banquet. When you’re starting a program, you’ll take the participants any way you can find them.
“She’s turned out to be a find, because she’s a great kid,” Edney said. “You wish you had more kids like her.”
Whatever her name is.
