Olympian Monique Henderson, two-time Gold Medalist, juggles three young ones as she prepares for the fifth season as head coach of men’s and women’s cross-country and men’s and women’s track and field teams
Monique Henderson knows a thing or two about pushing herself to the limit to reach the finish line. She’s a three-time Olympian and a two-time Gold Medalist in the 4×400 relay. She’s also a mother of a 2-year-old boy and twin one-year-old girls.
Henderson, head coach for men’s and women’s cross country as well as the men’s and women’s track & field teams, sees some parallels between world-class sprinting and being a mother of young ones.
“It was pretty grueling taking care of a 1-year-old and then two newborn babies that were very difficult,” she says. “They would cry all the time, and I never got any sleep. To get through it, I just had to flash back to the hardest (sprinting) workouts I ever did. I stayed focused and tried to see the finish line. I knew there was a finish line and that these girls were going to sleep one day.”
Henderson now recalls her toughest sprinting workouts. She would run 10 sprints of 400 meters in a row, with only 90-second to 3-minute recoveries.
Tenacity and talent are what landed Henderson, at age 17, on her first Olympic team at the 2000 Games in Sydney.
Also at 17, she set a high school national record running the 400 meters in 50.74 seconds. That record still stands.
Although she served as an alternate at the 2000 Games and never competed, she was the first minor to make the Olympic Track & Field team since 1976.
Henderson won her gold medals at the 2004 Games in Athens and 2008 Games in Beijing as a member of the women’s 400-meter relay team.
And she remains as competitive as ever, joking about being a finalist for teacher of the year at GWC this past academic year but not getting the gold. Henderson, who teaches kinesiology, health, and fitness classes, was runner-up. “That made me very happy being singled out like that,” she says. “I feel really appreciated.”
Postponed 2020 Games
Henderson sympathizes with the athletes who have to wait another year to compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s already a long time to wait to compete every four years, so having to wait another year is a hard pill to swallow,” says Henderson, who grew up in San Diego and attended Samuel F. B. Morse High School.
“You’ve been training for years,” she continues, “but you have to try to see the positive. Your body is primed and ready to go and you’re scared—you’re not sure what another year will do to your body, your training, what will come up, what will happen. It’s unfortunate, but I just hope the athletes understand why the Games had to be postponed.”
Henderson has great memories of her Olympic days.
“I made a lot of great friends, got to see the world, and I got to do what I love to do at the highest level,” says Henderson, who retired from competition after the 2008 Games in China.
“And I love my medals, because they’re forever,” she adds. “They represent the fact that I am an Olympic champion, and that’ll never change.”
At UCLA, Henderson was on a team that won nine conference titles and a NCAA championship in the 400 meters. She set the collegiate national record in the 400 meters. She graduated from UCLA in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and went on to earn a master’s degree in kinesiology from Fresno Pacific University.
Before coming to Golden West College in Fall 2015, Henderson served as an assistant track and field coach for five seasons at San Diego Mesa College.
“Another college coach told me about the GWC position,” she says. “I had just finished up getting my master’s degree and was taking a couple of classes at San Diego Mesa College. It was definitely something that I wanted to do. I love teaching and, of course, I love coaching, and I wanted to be a head coach one day.”
Henderson had seen Golden West College athletes in some competitions but didn’t know too much about the school.
“When I saw the job announcement and saw that it was in Huntington Beach, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my dream job,’” Henderson says.
At the start of her second season as head coach in February 2017 (the track-and-field season typically runs through May), GWC finished a complete upgrade of its track-and-field facility, which had fallen into disrepair.
“It’s night and day,” Henderson says of the upgrade. “We went from having no throwing areas to having an NCAA-regulation facility for running, throwing, and jumping. We have a top-of-the-line facility now.”
Under Henderson’s tutelage, GWC has produced some stellar female track-and-field athletes, such as Reyna Ramirez (javelin), who now attends UCI on an athletic scholarship.
Henderson, ever the competitor, looks forward to making the program even better.
“We haven’t gotten to where I want it to be yet, but we’ve definitely been very competitive,” she says.
Says GWC Athletic Director Danny Johnson: “I’m extremely excited about the future of Golden West College’s cross-country program. Coach Henderson brings her experience from the most elite level and can mentor our student-athletes on their journey of athletic and academic goals. I look forward to the positive impact she will have on the lives of our student-athletes.”
Henderson is married to Newport Beach firefighter paramedic Aaron Reed. They live in Dana Point. Henderson enjoys running to the beach, which is about 1.5 miles from home.
“I’ve always lived by the beach, and love the fact that I work near the beach,” she says. “This college has a really positive vibe. It has a positive, friendly, welcoming environment.”
