Citadel's Brown has his sights set on qualifying time

The hurdles are 36 inches high. There are 10 of them spaced around the 400-meter track.

How hard can it be?

"It's pretty hard," said Citadel senior Jamel Brown. "But I always thought the 800-meter run is the toughest."

Brown, as usual, is just being modest. The 400 hurdles, his specialty on the Bulldogs' track and field team, requires a unique blend of sprinter's speed, middle distance runner's endurance and the attention to technique of a pole vaulter or high jumper.

Edwin Moses, the greatest hurdler ever, said he used ballet and biomechanics to perfect his technique. Ralph Lindeman, longtime track coach at Air Force, calls the 400 hurdles "arguably the most demanding of all events in the sprint-hurdle group.

"It requires a combination of speed, endurance and hurdling skill along with a unique awareness of stride pattern, which requires special concentration throughout the race," Lindeman wrote.

In other words, you have to do a lot more than just run fast. And that might explain how Brown, who barely qualified for the state meet as a senior at Summerville High School, has developed into a hurdler with his mindset on qualifying for the NCAA regional championships this season.

"Jamel is just a really hard worker," said Citadel graduate assistant coach Thomas Cummings, a 2006 Citadel grad who works with Bulldogs' hurdlers. "He has great heart and he puts in a lot of extra time every day."

Brown, who won the 400 hurdles at last weekend's Coastal Carolina Invitational in a time of 54.05 seconds, is just 1.44 seconds off the NCAA regional qualifying time of 52.51.

He could also qualify for the NCAA regional by winning the 400 hurdles title at the Southern Conference outdoor championships in April.

If the 6-1, 185-pound Brown can improve this season as much as he did last year, the NCAA regional should be well within his grasp. He cut his personal best from 56.42 seconds in 2006 to 53.97 seconds by the end of last season, when he finished third in the SoCon outdoor finals. That's an improvement of 2.45 seconds.

"Definitely, we think he can get there," Cummings said. "Last year, his best time was at the end of the season, and he's right back to where he left off already this year. We're hoping he can peak again at the end of the season."

Brown is something of an accidental hurdler. He took up track as a junior at Summerville High School because "my twin sister did, and I said, 'Hey, I'll try that, too.' "

Brown found he didn't have the raw speed for the 100 meters, and one day looked over at the hurdlers.

"It was something different," he said. "It looked different, and I thought I would like it."

Nobody likes falling over a hurdle, however, and Brown had to conquer that fear first.

"Everybody falls a little bit at first," he said. "The hardest part is not being afraid to go over the hurdle. That's the biggest challenge in learning the hurdles."

Brown's technique has evolved quite a bit since then. Moses, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner, amazed competitors by maintaining a pattern of 13 strides between hurdles. Brown attempts nothing quite so demanding.

"It takes an elite athlete to hold his stride the same all the way around," Cummings said. "So we concentrate on the three steps going into the hurdle and the three steps coming out. We want him to attack the hurdle and then get down and around."

Cummings was Brown's teammate and training partner in 2006, so they know each other well.

"Thomas ran with me, so he knows me and what works for me," said Brown, a biology major who wants to study infectious diseases. "He doesn't let us do a workout that he has not done himself, so it really works well."

How well will be determined in late May, when the NCAA East Regional is held at Florida State.

"I know I can get there," Brown said. "My trend has been to improve about two seconds every year, so I hope I can continue that."

Reach Jeff Hartsell at jhartsell@postandcourier.com.