A Bull run for Northwestern High alums and Coach Carmen Jackson at the Paris Olympics

When Twanisha Terry took her victory lap, wearing an American flag as a cape, she made a beeline toward the Stade de France stands along the homestretch of the purple track. She flashed the sign of the bull toward the two people most responsible for propelling her from the streets of Liberty City to the finish line at the Paris Olympics.

Terry’s father, Antwan Terry, and her high school coach, Carmen Jackson, raised their index and pinkie fingers and, in Miami Northwestern High sign language, flashed back.

“Tears of joy,” Antwan Terry said Friday as he watched his daughter and her U.S. 4x100-meter relay teammates celebrate.

“Ecstatic pride,” Jackson said.

Terry, better known by her nickname Tee Tee, will be bringing a gold medal home to her neighborhood. Where others see poverty, Jackson sees potential. Where others see a dead end, Jackson sees a runway. Where others see a trap, Jackson sees a forge.

“The obstacles and the pain you have to overcome to be a champion -- my girls have endured all that,” Jackson said. “They know how to win.”

Because she taught them. Over 39 years at Northwestern High, Jackson’s track and field teams have won 19 state titles. She has sent five women to the Olympics. In her second trip to the Summer Games, Jackson was busy. She watched Terry run a 9.98 second leg in the winning relay anchored by Sha’Carri Richardson, and finish fifth in the 100 meters in 10.97. She watched Aaliyah Butler compete in the first and second rounds of the 400 meters and in the qualifying round of the 4x400 relay, which earned her a gold medal. And she watched Lloydricia Cameron, who competed for Jamaica, place 14th in the shot put.

At the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, Jackson watched Brianna Rollins lead a U.S. sweep of the 100-meter hurdles. Rollins, “a skinny little thing” when she first asked Jackson if she could try the hurdles, was one of seven children raised by a single mom while her father was in prison.

“They say good things do not happen in Liberty City,” Jackson yelled from the stands. “But yes they do.”

Jackson, 67, has been Dean of Discipline and coach at Northwestern for so long that she’s been mentor to multiple generations. She taught health to Antwan Terry.

“Twan got in trouble with his attitude in high school but became a great, great parent and did a great job,” Jackson said. He’s raised four daughters as a single father, two in the military, one a nursing student at the University of Florida and one in the Olympics.

Antwan Terry’s trip to Paris is his first out of the country. He works as a supervisor for the city of Miami Beach Parks and Recreation Department. He used to work two jobs, his other was as a head custodian for Miami-Dade County.

“He needed a break from work. He works too much,” Terry said. “It means so much to me that he is here with Coach Carmen.

“And this was a great opportunity for Coach Carmen to showcase on the world’s biggest stage her dedication to her student-athletes. She sends so many young women to college. She has inspired so many kids.”

As a teen Terry adopted Jackson’s no-excuses philosophy. No absences, no tardies, no bad grades, no blaming anyone but yourself.

“We’ve all got problems but we can’t use problems as a crutch,” Jackson said. “I always tell my students, ‘Don’t invite me to the pity party. I’m not coming.’”

Jackson couldn’t help critique Terry’s slow start in the open 100 meters -- as well as Richardson’s -- and a couple missteps between 40 and 50 meters.

“You are not going to come from behind in a field like that,” she said of the race won by St. Lucia’s Julien Alfred. Richardson finished second and Melissa Jefferson was third. “But this gives them motivation to go back to the drawing board.”

That they did. In the relay, Terry smoothly accepted the baton from Jefferson, put the U.S. in the lead, and made a clean exchange with Gabby Thomas. Despite a faulty handoff from Thomas to Richardson that left Richardson in third place, Richardson’s emphatic final leg -- she looked to her right with a wilting stare as she accelerated past Germany’s and Great Britain’s runners -- got the gold in a 2024-best time of 41.78.

“No one can run the second leg like me. I love it,” said Terry, who ran the team’s fastest leg. “Sha’Carri did what she does -- she stayed poised on the handoff and showed her top-end speed. We weren’t perfect, we’re not there yet, but we’re getting there and we can go faster.”

The American women, who have won the past two 400-meter relay world championships, again upstaged the American men, who botched their first exchange and were disqualified, ending their fifth straight Olympics without a medal in the event.

Terry trains in Clermont, Florida, with Richardson and Jefferson on the Star Athletics club coached by former world champion Dennis Mitchell. She wore a T-shirt emblazoned with photos of herself, Richardson and Jefferson and headlined by “The Trio Dreamers.” They had hoped to sweep the women’s 100 meters.

“To win the relay with my training partners is amazing,” Terry said. “We knew we could come here and trust each other, rely on each other. We have confidence in each other.”

Before the final, the relay team had a pep talk, Terry said, and she told Thomas, “I’m going to get the baton to you. Don’t try to search for it because I’ll get it to you.”

“We wanted to show that our generation is bringing new talent and we’re capable of carrying on what the ladies who paved the way did for us. The U.S. has so much depth. we can run any four without losing chemistry. We have the complete equation.”

Terry, 25, who was a six-time state champion at Northwestern and a three-time NCAA champion at the University of Southern California, has a long career ahead of her. She wants to use her medal podium to deliver a message.

“I would just tell girls that you can do anything you put your mind to. Don’t put any limitations on yourself,” she said. “Go out and be yourself and do what gives you happiness and what makes you your true self.”

Terry graduated from USC with bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

“Tee Tee has always been a special kid, an honor-roll kid who wanted to set a high bar,” Antwan Terry said. “All my girls have seen me go through the struggle and work hard and they just never take no for an answer.”

When former Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho -- now Los Angeles Unified superintendent -- found out Terry had won the relay, he posted on X his recollection of signing her diploma.

Jackson has no plans to retire. She wants to keep delivering her message, which is that the fastest route to the future is on the track.

“There’s so much work to be done,” Jackson said. “I love doing it.”

Antwan Terry said Jackson seeks no reward beyond the success of her students.

“It’s so easy for a girl to go astray in Miami,” he said. “Coach Carmen not only makes them winners, she sends them to college. She holds the world record for college scholarships for her students.”

Butler, 20, a University of Georgia athlete, earned a gold medal in the 1,600-meter relay for running the third leg (50.41) in the qualifying heat, which the U.S. won in 3:21.44. The U.S. won the final in national record time of 3:15.27 with Shamier Little, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Gabby Thomas and Alexis Holmes.

Butler placed second at the Olympic Trials in the open 400 in 49.71 but did not qualify for the final in Paris.

Kendall Ellis of Pembroke Pines, a state champion at St. Thomas Aquinas and NCAA champion at USC, did not qualify for the final in the women’s 400 meters in Paris.

Ellis, 28, won gold in the women’s 1,600 relay and bronze in the mixed 1,600 relay at the Tokyo Olympics, and won the U.S. Olympic Trials 400 in 49.46 in June. But on Saturday night, four minutes before call time for the relay final, she was told she was not running. She had been told Saturday morning that she would be in the final.

Ellis posted Tweets about the confusion, miscommunication and “lack of transparency,” which has been a chronic problem for U.S. relay teams.

“I’m proud of them as well, glad they got the job done!” she posted after the final. “Just would’ve loved to be communicated with.”