Kent State of Mind: Dejon Manning - Getting It Right

At first, I never thought of track as a sport that kids join.

I was always more interested in the traditional sports like football, basketball, and baseball.

But in 8th grade, in the first game of the football season, first play of the game, I suffered a clean break on my left wrist! This obviously took me out of those sports for the time being.

When my wrist healed in the spring, my mom, who always wanted me to stay busy with sports, told me, “Alright, now you’re here, you still have to go do something!”

The only sport still available to join was track and field.

And so I did — on the last possible day.

The day I joined was the city-wide scrimmage and since the middle school did not have a team,…