North Salinas High School shows Clara Adams support after post-race celebration controversy
Lindsey Selzer
SALINAS, Calif. (KION-TV) — A North Salinas sprinter, Clara Adams, has made international headlines after winning the CIF State Championship title last Saturday.
She was then disqualified after a post-race celebration with a fire extinguisher.
“I’m Clara Adams. I’m the 400 meters champion,” she said, “And I was wrongfully disqualified for this.”
At North Salinas High School today, Adams, her family and more supportive community members came to show their support.
Adams speaking out Friday morning at the North Salinas High School Library, recalling the events leading up to her being disqualified…
“I went on the grass and sprayed my spikes because my feet were on fire,” said Adams. “I just ran. I just ran 53 seconds in the 400 for the second time in my whole life career.”
Adam’s father said he was the one who helped her come up and execute the celebration.
“I take full responsibility,” he said, “Because if I didn’t give her the fire extinguisher, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
David Adams, who is also a football coach, said he and his daughter were looking to bring more fun to the sport.
“You can do backflips in the end zone after a touchdown. You can jump up high five in front of your opponent and everything is okay,” said Adams. “But then we go to track. We have to be quiet. They want us to be silent.”
Since the incident last weekend, Adams and her father have hired prominent civil rights attorney Adante Pointer.
“She won on the track. But I guarantee you we will win in the courtroom,” Adante said. “If you won’t listen to the will of the people, then maybe you’re going to have to listen to the judge.”
Clara said she feels that her moment was taken away from her.
“They took me wearing that medal around my neck and running everybody away from me,” she said. “And, they took it away from me like, we’ll never know. I could have run faster, I could do PR and I could have won.”
Adante Pointer said they’re giving the CIF a chance to speak up.
“They have a window to correct this wrong. We do forgive, but we will not forget,” Pointer said. “I mean, let’s be clear… and so I call on the CIF to right this wrong.”
As for what’s up next with Clara Adams? Clara told KION she has many things to look forward to on the track this summer.
“I have Nike coming up at 20,” Clara said. “I have West Coast Nationals coming up and I have the Junior Olympics coming up.”
Clara’s going into her junior year, where colleges are supposed to start scouting her, but she’s now gotten national attention.
“We have Princeton mak[ing] contact with us,” Adam’s father said. “We had a track associate from UCLA make contact with us yesterday as well. So, that was a really big deal from all of this.”
Clara is now ready to get an idea of where she will be spending her future on the track.
“During that race, I beat a USC commit and a Stanford commit,” Clara said. “So… where am I going?”
KION reached out to CIF for comment, and we have not heard a response back.