2007 Girls All-Star Track & Field Team

Selma standout, coach find strength in their championship bond.

Published online on Wednesday, Jun. 27, 2007

SELMA — Rosario Sanchez felt the pit of her stomach drop when she pulled up to the Selma High track for her first day of practice.

She wondered how on earth she would fit in. She didn’t know anyone and she could only communicate in Spanish. She had no idea where to go or where the weight room was.

The first-year sophomore from Mulege, Mexico, was just plain scared.

Just when Sanchez wanted to turn and hide in her car, a young athletic boy and his friend came to her rescue. Anthony Puente was on his way to track practice and stopped to help her find her way.

“I was nervous. I talked to the boys in Spanish because I didn’t know any English,” said Sanchez, who moved from Mexico to come live with her brother and his family in Selma. “One of them answered in Spanish, and that was Anthony Puente, but at the time I didn’t know him. He said, ‘Oh come over, we have practice in the weight room right now.’ I said, ‘OK, let’s go.’ And I felt comfortable and he introduced me to the team.”

Puente became her friend, teammate and instant translator. It eased her transition, but Sanchez wasn’t about to let the language barrier slow her down. Selma track and field coach Haskell Henson made sure of it. He had relied on the visual aspect of teaching his athletes the proper technique for the past 40 years, and realized Sanchez was something special.

“My philosophy is a picture is worth a thousand words, and I was able to show her what I wanted rather than telling her,” said Haskell, 64, who started coaching at Selma in 1967 and retired from teaching three years ago. “I showed her every part of weightlifting and every part of shot and discus. She was able to pick it up and picked it up real fast. And that’s the name of the game.”

Henson and Sanchez — named The Bee’s girls Coach of the Year and Athlete of the Year — never dreamed how fast the progression would be. As a sophomore, she won the Central Section shot put title and finished second at the state meet with a throw of 46 feet. The winning mark was 47 feet, 11 inches.

Her junior year still makes Henson cringe despite another section first and a second-place medal at the state meet. He noticed a major glitch in her technique two months before the state meet.

“One day she came out to practice and was palming it,” Henson said. “She said she hurt her finger playing basketball. She fractured it and was trying to get by. I told her, ‘Kobe Bryant you’re not going to be. Now a national shot putter you will be.’”

Sanchez, with her injured throwing hand, went 44-10 at the state meet in Cerritos, just 2 inches off the winning mark. Her sheer strength carried her through another winning season.

“My farthest throw last year was over 47 feet,” she said, “but that was before I hurt my finger.”

She took the summer off to let her finger heal and also visited her family in Mexico. Her drive and determination were evident at age 9 when she started with the baseball throw and then practiced shot put and discus.

“I didn’t have any technique; I just shuffled two steps and I’d throw it,” she said. “But every time I competed, I’d beat those girls by two or three meters. People started talking about me in town.”

In 1999, Sanchez went to her first national meet in Mexico and took third place in the shot put. She won it the next four years and set national records before placing third in 2004, her final year of competition in Mexico.

She had an offer to move to Mexico City but her parents refused because the environment was too dangerous for a 16-year-old girl. After her brother moved to Selma, Sanchez and her parents visited in 2004 and she ended up enrolling at Selma High in the fall.