Candace Hill is a model professional. She’s just a very young model.
The Asics sprinting star is now 18, but is still waiting to cross a stage and become a high school graduate. She attends Rockdale County High School in Conyers, Ga., and starred at every level of competition available to her. She was the Gatorade National Girls Athlete of the Year and American Family Insurance ALL-USA Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year while still a sophomore in 2015. She won the world title in the 100 meters at the World Youth Championships in Columbia in 2015 and turned professional four months later, while still a junior in high school. She signed a 10-year professional contract with Asics and never looked back.
Candace Hill (Photo: Asics media)
While Asics refrained from rolling out heavy marketing of Hill in the months after she signed her deal, they aren’t holding back now that she’s technically moved on from high school.
On Thursday, Asics rolled out a national email campaign introducing customers to Hill and her training favorites. Her 2015 time in the 100 meters remains the quickest for a high school athlete in recent years.
What Hill is asked to do, and where she is asked to compete, in the years to come may depend in large part on Asics’ own expectations of her. That’s what makes her existence difference than her peers who currently compete for colleges across the nation.
What won’t be different is her own expectation for her performance, or her speed.
“When I’m running at my top speed it,” Hill told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a 2016 interview. “It feels like I’m running on clouds. I feel like I’m flying down the track.
“Until 20, no 18, that’s the age. Then I will be like, ‘I was the Fastest Girl in the World. Now, I have to be the Fastest Woman in the World.”