Anna Hall can remember her first “catastrophic failure” at sports, at least in her eyes. She was 12.
The reigning world champion at heptathlon comes from a family of athletes. Her father, David Hall, was a quarterback at Michigan. He also ran track and played basketball at the school in the early-to-mid-1980s.
Her older sisters, Kathryn and Julia, were athletes at Michigan, too.
“We grew up competing with each other, literally over everything: grades, who could learn how to ride a bike first,” Anna Hall tells USA TODAY Sports. “So I always knew I wanted to do sports just because I saw my sisters in it. I was constantly chasing them down, being three years behind. I was not as fast, but I was determined to catch up to them.”
Along with her sisters, Hall had qualified for a USA Track & Field junior national meet.
