Mizzou Track & Field's Natasha Kaiser-Brown Honored at SEC Tournament
3/4/2020 4:38:00 PM | Women's Track and Field, Track & Field
Mizzou's SEC legend and current associate head coach honored in Greenville, S.C.
Mizzou Track and Field alum and current Associate Head Coach Natasha (Kaiser) Brown was named to the Southeastern Conference 2020 Class of Women's Legends earlier this year and was honored during Mizzou Women's Basketball's opening game at the 2020 SEC Women's Basketball tournament on Wednesday. Brown was featured during the Tigers' opening round win over Ole Miss.
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In the early 1980's, Brown's track future looked promising as she was a highly-sought after recruit from Des Moines, Iowa. Brown was receiving looks from a number of Big 8 schools but chose Mizzou after getting a sense of the family atmosphere of the program and the connections she built with the head coach Rick McGuire and the rest of the staff.
"I had a lot of coaches that were coming to the house. It was nice. It was really nice to be wanted, I guess," said Brown. "When [Mizzou] came to the house, it was just different. It was the first school that actually talked about me. I loved coach McGuire, he was really about the person and that's where I was going. It was the feeling that he was going to take care of me. And it wasn't taking care of me because of being a great athlete but it was because of who I am."
As a member of the Mizzou Track and Field team from 1985-89, Brown, formerly Natasha Kaiser, became one of the most decorated student-athletes in school history. Brown won the 400m dash Indoor National Championship in 1989 with a time of 51.92 seconds, which still stands as a school record and stood as the collegiate record at the time of the race. In all, Brown held eight indoor and outdoor program records. Brown earned NCAA All-American honors in the 400m dash six times while donning the black and gold. While Brown was constantly performing at the highest level of NCAA competition, she looks back on the Mizzou teams she competed with as being extremely close-knit.
"The team was amazing," said Brown. "We were such a tight-knit team. We traveled in vans and just piled in on road trips. There's coaching that happens between the x's and o's and there's the relationships that were developed on those van rides. It was really because we were in the grind together."
Compared to current collegiate track programs that feature an abundance of athletes, the Mizzou squad in the late 80's was a much smaller group, which made team camaraderie and cohesion a little easier to come by. "We all just gelled," she said. "It was just such a family dynamic and it was fun because you felt like you knew everybody."
Brown ended up winning five individual Big 8 conference titles as a Tiger, capturing the 1986 200m and 400m outdoor titles, the 1988 300-yard dash indoor title, and the 1989 400m and 4x400m relay titles. In 1989, Brown was named the Big Eight Female Athlete of the Year.
As her time as a Tiger wound down, Brown began training for the next step of her running career. She spent time in Columbia training before heading to the west coast because of a connection she had in California. Brown quickly started competition across Europe and injured her ankle early on during the circuit overseas. However, she battled through the injury during her first season abroad, tending to her ankle between races and traveling across the continent thousands of miles from home.
"Long story short, the first six races had me questioning if that was what I wanted to do," Brown explained. "From late june until september, it's country to country to country, taping up my ankle and running."
However, Brown felt that her career at Mizzou prepared her correctly for her professional career. The coaching styles Brown was able to soak in allowed her to train with intensity while also realizing the value of letting her body recover. With the time to fully commit to training, Brown reached the highest level of professional running.
By the end of her career, Brown had been a member of 16 U.S. national teams, highlighted by a silver medal performance as a member of the 4x400m relay team at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics. Brown made her second Olympics appearance four years later at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, also as a member of the U.S. 4x400m relay team.
Following a silver medal performance in the 400m dash at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, Brown was ranked second in the world in the 400m dash. She was also a member of the 4x400m relay team which won the gold medal at the 1993 World Championships with a Championship record time of 3:16:71, the second-fastest time ever by an American team at the time. At the 1997 World Indoor Championships, Brown ran a leg on the 4x400m relay team which set an American indoor record of 3:27.66 en route to the silver medal.
Looking back at her career, Brown referenced the experiences she was able to share with her husband, Brian. "After I got married, my husband and I made our first team together as husband and wife and it was like the coolest thing just being together for that," Brown explained. "That was really special."
She emphasized how it was hard to stay in touch without the assistance of today's technology and mentioned that the pair would frequently check lists of competitors upon arrival to see if they'd be together at certain competitions.
"Every time you wanted to know who was coming to the meet, you went to the lobby and there was a list of names," Brown explained. "I'd go down to the high jump and go across to see if his name was on the list and he'd do the same when he'd go to meets. There was no other way to know which is so weird to think about now."
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At the beginning of the 2016 school year, Natasha returned to Columbia, this time with her husband. Brian secured a position as an assistant athletics director while Natasha was named associate head coach with the Mizzou Track & Field. Brown still works directly with the Mizzou sprinters and has continued to find ways to impact action on the track without wearing spikes.
"It's always been the most challenging not being in control," Brown said. "As an athlete, you can pick up the pace or can slow it down. As a coach, you can talk about the strategies and race plans and in the end the athlete has to do it." Brown emphasized that there are plenty of lessons to be learned through the heat of racing on the track and that once athletes develop their feel, she feels that she's taught them well.
Brown also recognizes the sheer amount of distractions that arise in the lives of student-athletes today. "I was a nerd in college," Brown said with a laugh. "I didn't party, I went to maybe four parties in four years. Seriously, it wasn't my scene. I was introverted so I didn't need to join a sorority or do any of that. I just wanted to go to class and run and hang with my friends and go get ice cream, that was my big thing. My life was very simple and that was a lifestyle that was conducive to being a world-class athlete."
Nowadays, Brown tries to keep athletes on track by making sure they understand that disciplined choices in all aspects of life help keep them on track to achieve their goals. She explained that it's always been important for athletes to treat each competition like the last meet. While sometimes the urge to become complacent with smaller mid-season meets, Brown pushes athletes to prepare and execute at the highest level no matter the circumstances.
"I think we look at it like the only one that is important is the SEC Championships and the National Championships," said Brown. "But the only way for those two to go well is to utilize all of the others. You almost have to treat every meet like it is the last one."
Overall, after more than 30 years around collegiate and professional track, Brown knows the importance of making disciplined decisions on a daily basis. "It's not working so much harder as it is smart," she said. "Knowing that you've got to rest, you've got to hydrate, you've got to take care of all of these other parts. They're sacrifices that nobody else is going to make."
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The Des Moines, Iowa native has been an Associate Head Coach for the Tigers since the fall of 2016 after 16 years as the Head Coach of the Drake University track and field and cross country programs. Natasha and Brian have three children, a daughter, Elle, and two sons, Quinton and Kristian. Elle currently plays for the women's basketball team at Mizzou.
