Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Lauren McCluskey: Pullman track community finds itself mourning


Pullman track community finds itself mourning

Pullman High graduate and former state champ killed by ex-boyfriend, police say

By Dale Grummert, Lewiston Tribune Oct 24, 2018

PULLMAN - For Lauren McCluskey's former track and field coaches in Pullman, there wasn't much in the coaching manuals Tuesday to help them steer a course.

"I spend the days working with young people, right?" former Pullman High track coach Kristen Walker said by phone Tuesday night. "As a parent of a college student and somebody who has spent their life working with them, we all have the hopes and dreams, but we also have the concerns - of them navigating the world once they're on their own."

McCluskey, a multi-event track athlete at the University of Utah, was shot and killed by an ex-boyfriend Monday night in Salt Lake City, authorities said. Her body was found in a car near campus student housing, and her attacker killed himself overnight in a church, police said.

Pullman coaches learned the news Tuesday morning and spent much of the day communicating with McCluskey's former teammates.

"No parent, no family, no friend should have to hear that news," said Walker, who now teaches in Auburn, Wash. "I have my own grief and sadness. It's sadness for the loss and it's sadness for all of her teammates and friends that I have watched posting things on social media and taken calls from and texted with today - that at a relatively young age they have to grapple with such a horrific crime. And that makes them feel vulnerable as well as grieving."

One of McCluskey's former Pullman High teammates, Amelia Galloway, wrote a Facebook post that expressed her grief and made a plea for gun-policy reform.

"I hesitate to get political because I don't want to diminish the tragedy of what has occurred," Galloway wrote. "My thoughts and prayers are with the McCluskey family. But I'm sick of hearing about shootings like this and people doing nothing about them except for gossiping about it on social media until they slowly forget it ever happened."

McCluskey and Galloway were the only freshman girls to make the Pullman High varsity track team in 2012, Galloway recalled in the post.

"She was such a sweet, hard-working person," she wrote. "I never knew a more accomplished athlete as well as a kind, humble soul. She will be greatly missed and it hurts me that her life was cut short."

To cap that freshman season, McCluskey won the girls' 2A shot put at the Washington state large-school track meet. As her career progressed she moved toward multi-events, and she ranks 10th all-time for Utah in the pentathlon.

"Lauren had an exceptional ability to just be extremely disciplined in everything she did," Walker said. "She just navigated, time-managed and organized."

Angel Nkwonta, another former Pullman teammate, said by phone Tuesday night that she was "still in shock - to know and been friends with someone and have something so horrific happen to them.

"She was just to sweet - quiet," said Nkwonta, a weight-thrower for the University of Washington. "She was, like, happy all the time. She was extremely dedicated, so driven. When she wanted something, she would go get it."

Mike Hinz, longtime coach at Pullman High and for the Pullman Comets summer track program, coached McCluskey for a decade as she won 19 All-America honors for high placings at USA Track and Field competitions.

"It was a difficult day, because not only did I go through the initial shock," Hinz said Tuesday night, "but there was sort of a recurrent grieving as her former Pullman teammates all weighed in during the course of the day."

Hinz said McCluskey "tended to be somewhat perfectionistic, which is not always a good thing. But one thing was, she was very diligent and therefore a master of technique. When that was combined with her natural talents, that was a good combination.

"She was a very hard worker and didn't often allow herself to be anything but serious," he said. "Those who knew her would know she was not given to frivolity, but the few times when she would relax and get a little away from that seriousness was when she was on a relay team ... as if by virtue of that team effort she could relax enough to allow an expression of joy. And those were the times I remember that I felt the best for her."

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