Coach Maat featured in The Commercial Appeal

Amateur track coach sprints to second job

Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal

Coach Hrukti Maat of the Memphis Track Club is focused on helping kids from all over Memphis to realize their potential as track athletes.

By Omer Yusuf

After working the eight-hour morning shift, Memphis police officer Hrukti Maat goes to his second job, where his favorite getaway spot — the track — awaits.

Maat, 52, is the coach of the Memphis Mustangs, an AAU track club that has recently produced three All-Americans: Harrison Williams (Stanford), Erica Bougard (Mississippi State) and his son, Molefi Maat (Illinois). Hrukti Maat has coached the Mustangs since the club’s formation in 2003 and currently coaches about 50 local track athletes.

“I find track and field helps me get away from some of the issues that you deal with day to day, like crime,” said Maat, who has been a Memphis police officer since 1993. “It’s somewhat a safe haven. It helps to not bring work off duty.”

If Maat had it his way, he would’ve never started coaching. Maat said he wanted his sons, Ojike and Molefi, to join the Memphis Panthers, a former AAU track club, because he thought track would keep them in better shape when football season came around. However, Hrukti Maat’s track and field background (he ran in high school and college) led the other athletes’ parents to push Maat to coach the team, and in 2001 Maat gave in and began coaching the Panthers.

The Panthers dissolved in 2003, but the foundation of the Memphis Mustangs’ success was built. Maat’s trip to the junior nationals in 2001 opened his eyes.

“I knew I had to step up to another level, because this was a national competition,” Maat said. “I researched the winning times in all the different categories from age groups 8-18. From there I planned to address the issue of how to get there. I changed the workouts through research and studying different coaching philosophies.”

One athlete who didn’t buy into Maat’s coaching at first was former Memphis University School star and current Stanford standout multi-eventer Harrison Williams. Williams, who had not run track before his freshman year of high school, joined the Mustangs after MUS track coach Bobby Alston advised him to join the club that summer to further his development.

In addition to adjusting to Maat’s lack of positive reinforcement, and Maat’s stern, serious face at practice.

Williams said the coaching drills were strange to him at first because Maat put a lot of emphasis on the form of running, while Williams thought you just ran as fast as you could. Once Williams grasped Maat’s coaching methods, he said it motivated him and the other athletes to just get a “good job” out of him.

Maat acknowledges he’s harder on the multi-eventers than his other athletes, because they have to be mentally tough. Things may not go well in one event, but you have to focus on the big picture.

Nevertheless, success followed aplenty for Williams, most notably in the decathlon.

He won five Division II state titles at MUS in 2013 and 2014 and the 2014 U.S. junior nationals.

Williams also broke the high school record at the 2014 world juniors, scoring 7,760 points.

“He’s always on top of you to make sure you’re doing everything right,” Williams said.

“Once I bought in, my sprinting went through the roof.”

Now, Maat said Williams is one of a few former Mustangs touted to be a future Olympian.

“I always said if we could get one person from this club to be an Olympian, that would be a great feat,” Maat said. “Now it looks as if we have an opportunity for three, four or even five.”

Because he’s an AAU coach and not a high school coach, Maat has no restrictions on when his athletes can practice. The Mustangs practice 10 months a year, three to five times a week and two hours per session.

Whitehaven girls track coach Yusuf Sharif said track clubs are beneficial because they keep the athletes in shape in the summer.

“The kids that do club track get more experience and are more prepared for the school season,” Sharif said.

“The Mustangs are a really good program. A lot of the kids there compete at a high level. It’s always good for kids to be around other kids who are competitive. ”

Molefi Maat, 19, has aspirations to coach track after his career because of his father. Hrukti Maat praised his son’s knowledge of track and field in addition to his passion for the sport.

Both father and son agreed their 12-year relationship as coach/athlete was a great experience because they established the difference between the father/son and the coach/athlete relationships.

“I knew he knew what he was doing, so I never had any problem with it, because he really helped me improve as a runner,” Molefi Maat said.