When Vickie Liddell is running sprints on the old Pine Bluff High School track oval, her age may be more than the combined ages of all the youngsters lined up beside her. And a lot of times, she leaves them in her dust.
Liddell taught high school band for more than 20 years, and from the sidelines, she yelled and urged on her 10 children as they grew up and competed in track. But when she retired, it struck her that she wasn’t ready to sit back and relax. And she has some impressive medals to prove just how unrelaxed she is these days.
In February, she went to the USA Track and Field Masters Indoor Championships in Gainesville, Fla., where she competed in the long jump and the 60-, 200- and 400-meter runs, earning a silver medal in the 60. But she came very close to medaling in the 200 where she came in fourth and in the 400, where she finished fifth.
“I made the finals of every event,” she said.
Liddell, who turned 69 in March, works with Coach Louis Moss, who has an AAU club. Moss, who has described Liddell as someone with a competitive spirit, puts her through the paces on most days of the week at the rarely used high school track.
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“He builds speed and endurance,” Liddell said. “You will rarely see me run a 400, but he will have me run three 120s, three 180s and three 250s, with short breaks between them, to get me ready to run one.”
A month later, she went back to Gainesville to compete in the 2025 World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships. The competition attracted 4,000 athletes from close to 100 countries for the various events. While there, she picked up a bronze medal for the long jump and felt fortunate to have nabbed that, given that her hamstring in her left leg became sore.
In preparation for the event, Liddell had reserved the services of a physical therapist, a trainer and a chiropractor, all of whom were at the event.
“After the 200, I went straight to the massage therapist, who did acupuncture and who gave me the best massage I’ve ever had in my life,” she said. “When they got through with me, they said I’d be fine, and I was. I ran a faster 200 than I had before and won the bronze in the long jump. So that was a fast recovery.”
Asked what keeps her motivated to compete, Liddell said it was her “passion for the sport and the fact that I enjoy it.”
“I hope it encourages other people to and tells them that they can still be active and do things and enjoy life,” she said. “And I know it has inspired people when they come up to me at these events and say they are going to start running or doing things on their own that they thought they were too old to do. I even inspired my 33-year-old daughter to start competing again.”
When she’s not working out, she is part of a “prayer force” at her church, the Pine Bluff Assembly of God, and she teaches piano lessons to a handful of students.
But for Liddell, as for any other athlete, there’s always the next competition. In her case, it’s the National Senior Games in Des Moines in late July that will, according to the association’s website, attract 100,000 athletes.
For that competition, she had to qualify for the events, and she did that at competitions in Arkansas, where she qualified for the long jump and 100, and in Oklahoma, where she qualified for the 200 and 400.
To get ready, she continues to work with Moss and a physical fitness trainer, and she’s added a strength and conditioning coach to help her strengthen her core.
Moss says he stays mostly amazed at Liddell’s grit and determination.
“There are people in this world who are hard and people who are soft,” Moss said. “Vickie is hard. She is a fighter. She is a competitor. She wants to win and succeed. I wish more people were like her.”
Moss said Liddell inspires the younger tracksters to excel.
“They know if they aren’t giving it their all, Liddell might just pass them,” Moss said, speaking of the older runners. “They don’t want that to happen.”
On a recent outing at the track, Liddell had with her the medals she’d recently won. The youngsters gathered around to admire the shiny awards, and their jaws dropped when it was explained to them that Liddell had been up against people from all over the world when she won them.
But enough of that, she said, channeling Moss, who was running a bit late to practice. “Arms out, knees high,” she said as she lined them up. And then Liddell, her own arms outstretched, kicked her knees high as she followed right along.
