I was honored by what you wrote in your “Someday” poem. Thank you for sharing your dreams. I’d like to try to make some of them come true by answering your questions.

Frank Murphy on Twitter

When your 6th grade student, Julia (who is super fast!), includes a section in her "Someday" poem about @AshtonJEaton @HollandElem #inspire

Why I decided to become a decathlete

When I was about your age I lived in a small town of about 2,000 people. So without much to do on the weekends my family would go to a movie rental store called “Flik World” and get 3 movies for Friday, Saturday, and sometimes even Sunday evening. When I would watch all these movies I was always attracted by how the characters moved. When they ran and fought and did stunts I would go outside and try to mimic them. I did my first front flip off of a tree stump and nearly landed on my head. It was exciting though. I started doing them at school to show others how to do them (becuase we all wanted to be Ninja Turtles), but of course a teacher put a stop to that. Eventually I joined a Tae Kwon Do school so I could learn how to do some of the things I saw. So my first interest in athletic movement was inspired a lot by the things I used to watch.

Also, I always liked running. Sometimes while I was getting driven to school I would have my mom stop the car and I would get out and try to race it down our dirt road. I’d yell into the window “how fast am I going now!?” After a few of those mornings my mom introduced me to other sports like baseball and track and field. From that point on I was always doing multiple sports throughout elementary, middle, and high school. There are a couple important things to note here. One is that I did sports becuase I liked them, and not for any other reason. Another separate point is that one of my main goals when I was young was to go to college. I had no idea how I was going to get there, but both my family and I thought it was important.

By the time I was close to graduating high school I was thinking about college. I had narrowed down the sports I was doing to football and track and field, so I was considering going to a Division II or III school that had a good academic program where I could do both. It was a tough decision though because my family didn’t have a lot of money and both options were going to be expensive. But one day I came out of the locker room and my high school track coach asked to talk to me. He told me that he thought I could get a scholarship to a Division I college for track and field. There was a catch though; he thought the best chance I had was doing something called the “decathlon.” He asked if I would like to try it. At the time I was only a sprinter and a long jumper so I asked what it was. After he explained it I thought it sounded interesting. And of course the idea of getting a scholarship was amazing. It seemed like if I could do this thing then I would be doing something I liked and also achieving my college goal. So I said “sure.” I ended up getting a scholarship to the University of Oregon. I did my first decathlon my freshman year. I’ve loved the decathlon ever since then.

So as it turns out I didn’t really decide to become a decathlete. I had a love of athletics that was inpsired by what I used to see and do when I was younger. And I also had a goal to go to college. The decathlon presented itself as an opportunity to do both. It wasn’t until later that my new goal became to go to the Olympics.

How it felt when I was in the Olympics

Being in the Olympics made me feel a lot of things, so I’ll try to go through the ones I think were the most important.

Scared

Both times I went I was nervous and fearful about performing well. Because I had trained for many years and because I wanted to be successful, I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think what usually causes this feeling is the idea that you know what you are capable of and what you’d like to happen, but you don’t know if things are going turn out that way. What helped me through this was controlling what I could control, simply trying my best, the support I got from my fans (like you), and my friends, family, and team.

Proud

Remember those movies I used to watch? Almost all of them were based on the idea of good versus bad. Through watching these I thought people should aspire to be forces of good in the world, even if it meant tough times. To me, being at the Olympics made me feel like I was doing and representing something good. I was proud to have the opportunity to do that and inspire others to try to do good things too.

Human

The Olympic Games is one of the only events I know of where every country in the world gathers in the same place together in peace. My favorite building in the Olympic village was the dining hall. It was about the size of 2 football fields end-to-end, and everyone ate there. That means that for two weeks all of humanity dines under one roof, without issue. When I thought about this I was really struck by the power of it and felt more a part of humanity than I have before.

Inspired

A coach once told me that,

“everyone who makes it to the Olympics Games has a thousand reasons why they should not be there.”

He was saying that every single person faces things in their life that could have stopped them from achieving their dreams. But they are where they are because they overcame them. When I watched the other athletes I tried to think of the things in their life they had to overcome in order to be there and I was inspired by the human spirit.

Daydreaming

I did a lot of daydreaming when I was your age, and I still do today. I think it’s one of the most important things we do, so I’m glad to hear you’re doing it too. While it’s good to have some sort of guide or idea of where you’d like to go, make sure to try to imagine a unique future that is yours. It might be similar to others and it might be different. Either way, what’s important is that you pursue it.

A team of Athletics fans has been working on a little project. Now we’re asking for your help

What we believe:

We believe that sport unites humanity under a common banner; the global enjoyment of peaceful contests of skill and ability. Out of all sports, we think Athletics (US: “track & field”) models this ideal the best; it is the great equalizer with its non-discriminative acceptance of all shapes, sizes, colors and cultures. We believe Athletics is inspiring, breaks down barriers and brings us together.

How we’re trying to share our belief:

Because of limited broadcast time and diverse competition locations, it is difficult to know about and take part in these wonderful Athletics competitions. Waiting for live results then texting a couple friends when something interesting happens is common practice for even an avid Athletics fan. But through social gaming and encouraging vested interest, we are hoping to spark interest in Athletics and its heroes & heroines along with bringing people together through sport.

What we’re making: Roster app

In Roster, we are asking people to create a team comprised of their favorite athletes and have it compete against the teams of others. Through this medium, people will participate in their own peaceful contests, playing off the principle of athletics.

We are asking if you’d like to be part of what we’re doing. We’re asking if you’d help us create and refine a simple tool that hopes to grow interest in athletics and bring people together.

Please understand:

• This app is unrefined and still in functional and visual development
• We are asking you to help in its development
• Track & field is frustratingly complex (last minute injuries, weather delays, incomplete public data, frequent new athletes, competition schedule changes, etc.)
• Collecting statistical & biographical data for athletes & competitions in the background in real-time and coalescing them into one, bug-free “lobby” is legally and technically as wildly complicated as it sounds
• We find it fun and challenging to overcome these problems
• We think our imagined fully realized application could be incredible
• We are initially focused on absolute functionality. We do have some crazy awesome ideas that we’d like to implement but time and money constraints force us to put them on hold and we sometimes think that really stinks
• In-app purchases and/or paying for the app is one of the only ways to make this a continuable project and sustainable project
• We think this is a good idea but understand we could be completely off the mark
• We don’t think we have all the answers
• We’re passionate
• Even if we fail (run out of time and money) we hope our effort will inspire and educate the future

Future visions

What we’d like from you:

1. Download the app: Here (iOS only and iPhone 5s or above for now)
2. Create a roster
3. Participate in the upcoming competitions
4. Give us feedback including, but not limited too, everything;

• you think is missing
• you think is stupid
• you don’t understand
• you would like to see changed
• you would like to see stay
• you’re not sure about
• that is so bad it makes you want to use this emoji 😡
• you like
• that you think we did well
• that you think should be a feature

Please provide your feedback at feedback@pickmyroster.com. We’ll also accept it in the comments below.

Thank you for your time