Dunbar High School coach gets opportunity to work with Olympic athletes

Guy Thomas coaches high school track at Dunbar. He always tries to make sure that his students are inspired and well taken care of.

“When a student first comes to me comes to Dunbar, I sit them down and see exactly where they wanna go with this,” he said. Thomas wants them to know “the sky’s the limit.”

Thomas recognizes not everyone starts at the same level. “Sometimes you may come from situations or backgrounds that are not fair,” he said.

He believes they can all use their personal gifts to excel in life. “But I believe that everybody in life is blessed with a specific talent,” Thomas said. “Use your talent to pay for education, to go to college, become economically stable.”

He speaks from experience because running has given him “everything that I have now.”

And, now, Thomas has reached a new milestone with this 10-week internship program he’s earned with Adidas and Pure Athletics. In Clermont this week, the coaches are becoming the students and learning from top athletes such as Olympic Gold Medalist Shaunae Miller.

Of course, Thomas is making his impact here as well. “It’s coaches like this you see out there really inspiring the best of us,” said Noah Lyles, a world record runner.

But Thomas admits he was a little starstruck. “I sat in the car and I looked out the window because the athletes I was looking at were some of the athletes that I saw in the Olympics and I’ve always admired,” he said.

Coach Guy Thomas is super excited to share the “professional workouts, professional diets, how to prep and plan for meets” he’s learned about with his students.

But more importantly, he wants to share his experiences of the success you can have when you buy into his philosophy. “I’ve always thought of it like a bus, and this bus can take you as far as you wanna go,” Thomas said. “Now I can actually show them a physical picture of a person who rode that bus.”