Fueled by fearlessness, a “Kobe Bryant mentality” and comparisons to an Olympic legend, Natalie Dumas has taken the track world by storm.
What began as a way to spend more time with her older sister, Kadence, before she graduated from Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees, NJ, has turned into much more for Dumas.
“I started track with not really much of an intention to do it all four years of high school,” Dumas told The Post. “Then I saw my times getting better. … It got me interested to see what times I can hit if I ran faster.”
To say she “ran faster” from then on is an understatement.
As a junior, Dumas shattered records, including marks set by New Jersey track legends.
Dumas, 17, won three national titles in June at the New Balance National Championships, nabbing first place in the 400-meter, 400-meter hurdles and 800-meter — and setting meet records for all three.
Dumas ran a 51.14 in the 400, which beat her own state record that she shared with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, a four-time Olympic gold medalist.
“A lot of people love comparing me to Sydney McLaughlin,” Dumas said. “I think my thing is, I feel like she is one of my competitors. I find her more of a competitor than a comparison.”
Dumas recognizes that a 26-year-old world record holder isn’t going to view the high schooler in the same regard just yet, but it’s this type of fearlessness that has set Dumas apart in her young track career.
“I honestly don’t fear losing … I have that motivation that not as many kids would,” Dumas said. “I don’t think I’m capable of losing … I’ll go out there and I’ll be like, ‘I don’t wanna lose this race no matter what,’ so I put everything on the line.”
She did just that when with her record-setting 400-meter race at the national championships when she fell across the finish line for the win.
“My legs were just so tired to the point where I literally wasn’t gonna be able to finish the race. I’ve never ran that fast before,” she said of her wild race-defining moment. “My legs just gave out because they were so exhausted, and I just fell over the line.”
On top of her historic 400-meter performance that ranked No. 6 in U.S. high school track history, Dumas ran a 55.99 in the 400 hurdles and a 2:00.11 in the 800, making her the first girl in U.S. high school history to run sub-52, sub-56 and sub-2:01.
Her 800-meter time broke the New Jersey high school record set in 2011 by Ajeé Wilson, a two-time Olympian.
Dumas has caught the track world’s attention, and still has her senior year in front of her to improve — which appears fairly likely with the way she trains.
“It’s hard to find athletes that will train with me,” she told The Post. “It’s hard to find [teammates] to run with me every single day.”
Dumas has recruited her parents to run some legs of her training sessions.
“She’ll joke, she says, ‘Oh yeah, I don’t work that hard,’” her father, Robert, told The Post. “We were doing a workout two weeks ago and it rained from like 5 to 10. … We went out there on the track from 11:30 to 12:30 at night just to get the workout in.
“She’s putting in the hard work, and that’s what you see between the mental work and the physical work. She’s doing it all.”
The physical regimen keeps her in racing shape, but ultimately her and her father’s words kept coming back to the mental side of the sport.
“I’ll send her Kobe Bryant videos — that’s the mentality that she reminds me of,” Robert said. “She’ll find a way to fit in a workout. There’s no one that’s going to outwork her … Then to see it pay off when you look at somewhere like the [New Balance National Championships] and it was tenths of a second for all three races — but the difference is that extra workout or that extra bit of work.”
Dumas has narrowed her college choices to Arkansas, Miami, Florida, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Duke and South Carolina, she recently announced on Instagram.
And her aspirations go beyond that.
“I am looking to definitely go pro,” she said. “I want to go pro, I want to go to that next level and I hope to have everyone see me in the Olympics one day.”