September 3, 2026
The list outside the cafeteria
There is a particular kind of quiet that happens when you read your own name at the bottom of a list.
Mine was posted on a wall outside the cafeteria at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. Sprint, broad jump, shot put. I had bought track spikes that morning in a panic, a size too small, from the only store I could find open in upstate New York. Everyone else had arrived with Tiger Balm and spare pairs.
Courtney Webb. Dead last.
I sat down with a tray of mashed potatoes and did the math on how quickly I could get to my car. And then the woman from the WeWork kitchen — the stranger who had started all of this by telling me I had the right body type for a sport I'd never heard of — found me, bent down to my eye level, and shouted, "NO WAY. YOU ACTUALLY SHOWED UP."
She said it twice. Then she started telling the room.
Twenty minutes later I was at a table with seven Olympic athletes and hopefuls, listening to injuries and empty bank accounts and comebacks. One of them held out a hand for a high five and said the thing I have now said out loud in front of more audiences than I can count: the hardest part is showing up.
I showed up humbled and left motivated. I showed up unprepared and left inspired. I showed up alone and left supported.
Nothing about my results changed that day. I was still last. But I hired a coach the following week, and I went back, and I improved at every combine after that, and eventually a coach pulled me aside and told me to spend November and December on the Park City track — which set off a chain of events that rearranged my entire life.
All of it downstream of not leaving the cafeteria.
If you are looking at a list with your name at the bottom of it this week: the ranking is real, and it is also not the part that determines what happens next. Stay at the table. Let someone be glad you came.