Myers drawing on past experiences to help those of current Carleton student-athletes

Burlington, Ont. (by David DiCenzo) - Decisions can be difficult when you’re young. Dalton Myers was about 11 years old when he made a call on the sport he would devote his time and energy. In Myers’ hometown of Alley, Jamaica, the usual suspects stirred a passion in youth – football (not the American version), cricket, and track and field. The devotion to the latter is particularly high, evidenced by the massive number of medals won by Jamaicans on the international stage over the decades.

Myers, now the Assistant Director of High Performance Sport at Carleton University, went an unconventional route. He specialized in the 400m. It’s a brutal race that challenges any athlete by combining the need to go all-out, while requiring the mental strength and stamina to pace yourself so the tank is not completely drained before the finish line.

Myers ran the 400 in his university days at the University of West Indies. And ever since, he adopted it as a metaphor for existence beyond the track.

“The 400 became my life journey,” says Myers, a husband and father. “You have to run hard, but you can’t run too fast at the start.

“It’s a race with four stages. In the first 100 metres, you’re running differently than the second 100, and in the third 100, you run differently than the final 100. The way you start and the way you end are also different. You have to build your speed but try to avoid an increase in lactic acid. You’re pacing yourself in the 200- to 300-metre mark, and you’re then positioning yourself to really attack the last 100. It’s important to recognize that a race like that takes so much strategy. It’s considered a sprint, but you have to strategize.

“If you make too many mistakes at the beginning, you will struggle to make it home. The 400 is like life.”

Myers is somewhere in between the 100m and 200m point of his lifelong journey, embracing his still relatively new role at Carleton. Since childhood, he has been a voracious reader and lately the words of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have been influential. Adichie did a TED Talk titled 'The Danger of a Single Story', where she discusses the importance of seeing things from different perspectives. Myers has watched the TED Talk multiple times.

When he arrived in Canada in the summer of 2021, in the thick of the pandemic, he had already had diverse experiences in his career. He held roles at his alma mater as both the Director of Sport and adjunct lecturer. Myers has worked as a columnist in Kingston, Jamaica, been involved in athlete management, and spent almost three years as a corporate planner with the Jamaica Olympic Association.

He has multiple stories, with many viewpoints.

Now as an integral part of Ravens Athletics, Myers loves what he does at Carleton. He works closely with everyone involved in the athletic program – the coaches, athletes, and athletic trainers, among others – to create a model that enables Carleton’s student-athletes to become a better version of themselves, and ultimately, realize their full potential.

“It’s both the tangible and intangible successes that we try to measure here,” says Myers, noting how the responsibilities of his role vary. “One day I might be doing an assessment or working with a coach on a recruiting plan. It could be talking with an athlete experiencing mental health issues. What support can we give that athlete? The next day could be focusing on safe sport.

“We realize that High Performance Sport at a university now is different than it was a few years ago. A lot of the job focuses on off-the-field challenges and development for student-athletes. We are constantly trying to find new ways to ensure that Safe Sport is a big part of who we are. Athletes have to feel safe within this space and feel comfortable that they’re being heard. Anti-racism in sports, anti-black and anti-indigenous racism is a crucial part of that support system. It’s hard to be something that you cannot see.

“We want each athlete at Carleton to be able to see a version of themselves. If it’s a Black athlete, they should see Black leaders who are in a position that they can aspire to. If it is a woman in sport or a member of the LGBTQ+ community, they should see representation and feel they can become a part of the leadership group. The more we address this, the more success on the field will come.”

These concepts of empowerment and acceptance, as well as the lessons sport teaches, were shaped well before Myers started work at Carleton in September of 2021. In Alley, a rural area on Jamaica’s Southern tip known for its sugar cane production, Myers grew up in a fun environment with his mother Ethlyn Stultz, younger brother Kenton Barnes, aunts, uncles, and grandparent. His first university degree was in international relations and political science. Myers always had a curiosity about understanding space and time, which he fed through reading. He studied Rastafarianism and the teachings of activist Marcus Garvey, who commented on the black race.

His passion for sports grew as he got older, when he came to appreciate different aspects like repetition, muscle memory, and learning from both victory and failure. Despite his focus on the 400m, Myers loved cricket and the sport’s role in the cultural norms, traditions, and identity of Caribbean people.

In the fall of 2012, just months before his wedding, he was working as the Director of Sport at UWI when he enrolled in the Masters of Sport Administration program at Ohio University. Myers did some of the online work from his home in Jamaica, while also traveling to Athens, Ohio for weeks at a time to engage in the theoretical aspect of the course. He had already completed a Masters of Philosophy in Cultural Studies, but felt strongly about enhancing his knowledge of sports administration. Myers received that, and more, while doing the degree.

“I was able to understand sport from a different view,” he says. “We looked into the nuances of sport, like finance, management, and marketing. It asked us to consider our leadership styles, what we are doing as leaders, and what are some of the changes we can make. It helped me to hone those leadership skills that are absolutely critical for athletic management and administration.

“The last part of the course asked us to look back on our journeys and self-reflect on our resumes and portfolios. What is in there and what would you like to change? For me, that was crucial for where I was at that stage of my journey. It asked us to be different. That was good because a few years later, the pandemic forced us to do the buzzword at the time – pivot.”

Myers has drawn on all of these experiences in his new home. It’s certainly been an adjustment dealing with brutal Ottawa winters, yet he has his ways of coping, like spending meaningful time with his wife and children, reading, and throwing his support behind English football giant Liverpool FC. Myers wholly embraces his opportunity to work with student-athletes and encourage them to write their own unique story, and help them map out their own personal 400.

He makes another literary reference to the late memoirist, poet, and activist Maya Angelou. One of her famous quotes is ingrained in Myers’ brain: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’

“I’ve lived by that motto here,” he says. “It’s about how you make that student-athlete feel from the moment they are recruited and arrive at Carleton to when they graduate. What is their student-athlete experience? Wins are cool, everybody likes those. But that isn’t the only assessment of whether or not we have a good program.

“It’s mostly about the off-the-field experiences and activities of our students.”