This is the latest in UTA Athletics' 'Mav Spotlight' series which tells the written and visual stories of some of the department's best moments and features both past and present. Click on the links to the right for previous stories.
 
Jared Connaughton first caught a glimpse of his future self as an 11-year-old in Canada perched in front of his television intently watching the awe-inspiring 1996 Olympics unfold before his pubescent eyes.
 
It was in that moment when Connaughton ultimately found the inspiration which allowed him to use his speed around the track as the driving force in his life – eventually taking him on a path to lead UT Arlington to an outdoor track and field conference championship in 2007 before finally punching his ticket to the Beijing and London Olympics as a member of Team Canada.
 
Yet the road to his illustrious career wasn't made easy on the island he grew up on in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada.
 
"Not until two years after my college eligibility was up in 2009 did they finally build a track on Prince Edward Island," Connaughton said. "So, growing up we used a running trail and counted the telephone poles for every 50 meters, and that's how we measured our track.
 
"In the winter time we actually trained at a vocational college," Connaughton said. "We used to go in after hours to run up and down the hallways. I think it was a stretch of about 150 meters where we'd run past welding shops, cosmetology centers and people learning IT and places like that."
 
Connaughton continued to find ways to conquer the obstacles he faced living in a place not known for producing track and field athletes, eventually using these restrictions – among other hurdles – as motivation to make it to the next level.
 
"The real turning point for me was when I competed as a 15-year-old in a 23-and-under event known as the Canada Games," Connaughton said. "I got absolutely smoked."
 
From that point on, Connaughton's dedication to his craft led him on an upward trajectory when it came to finding success from the starting block. He officially arrived on the scene when he went on to win the Canadian Junior Championship as a 16-year-old – his first gold medal among the multiple national meets he competed and medaled in as a teenager growing up in Canada.
 
As a junior going into his senior year of high school, the former UTA track star's focus became fixated on wanting to compete at the next level – the NCAA – and Connaughton loved the idea of running collegiately in Texas.
 
"I was a subscriber to Track & Field News magazine, and every April through May was called their Texas edition," Connaughton said. "Some of the times these high school kids were running in Texas would have been the fastest in North Canada, so I was like 'wow, if I could get in the mix with those types of athletes – day in and day out – I could set myself up to ultimately become an Olympian.'"
 
Not before long he and his parents started to record footage of himself on mini digital video cassettes and began sending the highlight reels in manila envelopes to different universities across the states.
 
"Back then I had a sprint coach named Kyle White who got in contact with [Jared] via email and they started talking," said UTA's Head Track & Field Coach John Sauerhage when asked about how he recruited Connaughton. "Jared had a really good 60-meter time and that attracted us, so we brought him down for a visit and he liked it; and I guess the rest is history you could say."
 
As a matter of fact, one could undeniably call it a rich history as their decision ended up being a rewarding one from the get-go after Connaughton went on to win the Southland Conference Freshman of the Year honor in 2004.
 
Although he got his Maverick career off to a great start, the sprinter's time at UTA wasn't always sunshine and rainbows. Heading into his sophomore campaign coming off his first-ever national team appearance for Team Canada at the World Junior Championship in Grosseto, Italy, Connaughton stopped contributing to the team and seemed to hit a proverbial wall when it came to finding the same success he obtained as a freshman. So much so that Sauerhage had a sit-down with him at their annual end-of-the-year exit meeting to discuss the possibility of letting him go.
 
"I could have transferred or I could have hung it up and said 'track is not for me,' but I begged him," Connaughton said. "I literally begged him to keep me on [scholarship] and for him to go out on a limb and say we're going to keep you on board with the expectation now set way up here; it changed the rest of my life … sometimes you need to get a wakeup call and get a fire lit under your butt in order to keep on track to your potential, and that's exactly what happened."
 
It sure did as that meeting set the wheels in motion to what would be a triumphant next two years for the team, and much more for Connaughton. The Canadian-born sprinter did not disappoint as he came out of the gates scorching fast in his junior year. He won the gold medal in both the indoor and outdoor 200-meter event and the outdoor 100-meter contest on his way to being named the 2006 Southland Conference Track and Field Athlete of the Year in both the indoor and outdoor seasons.
 
"I won't take the credit for Jared's improvement in any way, shape or form," Sauerhage said. "Jared got better because he was determined. If I ruffled his feathers and got him fired up to take his game to another level, it was probably going to happen anyways; and it did happen."
 
Connaughton stood by his word with the performance he put on throughout the 2006 season, but he still had a way to go when it came to backing up the entirety of the promise he pledged to Sauerhage at the end of his sophomore campaign.
 
"I basically wrote a contract saying I will accomplish X, Y and Z in my junior and senior years," Connaughton said. "And for my senior year, honestly, it was pretty prophetic, but I guaranteed a team-title win."
 
Once again, Connaughton came through on his commitment as he had his team in position to win a conference championship when he got set in the starting block with his team trailing UTSA by just three points heading into the final race of the 2007 Southland Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championship – the 4x4 relay event.
 
Just as he did earlier in the day in the 4x1 relay race, Connaughton jumped out to an early lead and UTA never looked back, defying the odds to win its first conference championship in over a decade.

For a much more detailed look at that final race, watch the full video feature below:
   
"I was so proud of those guys," Sauerhage said. "We've won a lot of championships, but that's a really special one. I bet six months doesn't go by without me finding that old video and watching it on YouTube. It always puts a smile on my face and a feeling of pride in my soul that we had kids that wanted to win for UTA as badly as I did for them."
 
The former Mav played a huge role in UTA's title by winning the 200-meter event and the two relay races, accounting for 35 of the 128 total points the Mavs accrued over that championship weekend.
 
"Because of my three gold medals I was named Athlete of the Meet," Connaughton said. "But much sweeter was when the SLC Commissioner handed me the conference title trophy, which I hoisted high above my head and celebrated wildly with my jubilant teammates."
 
"It was just so awesome to go out like that," said Koby Styles, who accounted for 15 points as a member of the 2007 SLC Championship-winning team. "There's no better way to end your collegiate career. We were on cloud nine the whole time and the entire trip home was just crazy."
 
As both of their collegiate careers ended on a high note, Connaughton was not done running competitively just yet.
 
"I wasn't really going around telling people I was going to be an Olympian, but that was in the back of my mind knowing that, that's what I thought through four years of development at UTA I could wind up becoming," Connaughton said.
 
He was right as his hopes and dreams of one day becoming an Olympian came to fruition the following year when Connaughton punched his ticket to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
 
"I went into Beijing and ran really well," Connaughton said. "I made the semi-final in the 200 and our relay team punched through and made the final and placed 6th."
 
Although he felt like they underperformed to a certain degree, the next few years Connaughton continued to hone his craft and did so in impressive fashion as he was once again named to the national team going into the 2012 London Olympics.
 
The then-27-year-old once again had to square off in both of his events against the fastest man in the world – Usain Bolt. Connaughton placed 11th in the 200-meter semifinals event, but his 4x1 relay squad crossed the finish line in third just after Bolt's Jamaican team set the new world record.
 
"We got about halfway through our victory lap when the results screen went black," Connaughton said. "The results got posted again about 30 seconds later and it indicated that the Canadian team had been disqualified for a lane violation."
 
Although it took only half a minute to have their bronze medal stripped away, it's taken some time to live that moment down for Connaughton. Yet eight years later he finds satisfaction in knowing their overall performance in the London games has had a huge impact on the Canadian track and field program.
 
Now at the age of 34, the two-time Olympian can be found in Roanoke, Texas, where he lives with his two children and wife Tamesha Graves – a member of the 2005 UTA women's basketball SLC Championship-winning team.
 
All in all, Connaughton won a total of 19 medals outside of his collegiate career and officially announced his retirement from the sport in 2014. He's now an athletics coach at Fort Worth Country Day School where he coaches cross country and track and field.
 
"The year I retired they named the 50 greatest Southland Conference track & field athletes and I was considered one of them," Connaughton said. "Knowing how I started off running on gravel and in hallways, to being considered one of the best sprinters of all time in the conference is pretty special to me; but hoisting that conference championship trophy remains my fondest memory as an athlete."