Vandy coach remembers former track star: “She was formidable” REBECCA CARDENAS
By REBECCA CARDENAS
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WSMV) — A former Vanderbilt track coach remembered a former track star who tragically died over the holiday weekend.
“She was formidable.” Beauty, brains, and talent. D’Andre Montgomery said Teegan Hill had everything going for her. “When it’s time to step to the line, Teegan was ready to go, and you could feel it. You didn’t even have to look at her. You could just feel her presence when she stepped to the line before, when she took off.”
Hill was a sprinter on the track and field team at Vanderbilt University from 2009 to 2012. To this day, she ranks among the school’s all-time top 10 in four events. Montgomery was Vanderbilt’s head track coach at the time, and recruited Hill herself out of a high school in Texas.
“She wanted to be great and she wanted to be something great at Vanderbilt,” Montgomery said, “and she truly, truly was all of those things.”
Sunday, while celebrating her 31st birthday, Hill and her sister were thrown overboard a pontoon boat into a Texas lake, where they drowned. Montgomery learned the news on social media the following day. “By the time I got to the end of [the post] I literally could not breathe. ‘I just saw her last night, they just posted.’”
Montgomery kept up with Hill over the years, checking in as she excelled through all of life’s milestones. “As a coach, they all become your kids,” she explained. “The joy of social media is that you get to see them move on with their lives and have families and lives and everything that they accomplish, and know that you had a very small, small part of that.”
She hopes Hill is remembered for her joy and her drive. “She was she was everything that you see in every picture of her. She was a light, and she was a force, and she could not be stopped… She is gone way too soon.”
According to a spokesperson for Vanderbilt’s athletic department, Hill is No. 10 at Vanderbilt in the outdoor 200 meters and sixth all-time in school history in the outdoor 400 meters (when she graduated, she ranked second at Vanderbilt in both those events). She is also still No. 8 in school history in the indoor 60 meters and ninth in the indoor 400 meters.
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