Los ANGELES — She is haunted by the conversation she never had.
Maybe if they had talked, USC hurdler Nia Ali can’t help thinking.
Maybe if they had connected then, maybe now two years later the words she never got to speak wouldn’t echo through her.
For more than two months in early 2009, Ali’s father, Aleem Ali, a Philadelphia human services supervisor, tried unsuccessfully to reach Nia, then living in Los Angeles. Nia was one of several people Aleem Ali failed to connect with as his life unraveled leaving his daughter and many others to only wonder what finally led him on the morning of April 21, 2009 to drive to his mistress’ home and shoot and kill her in front of her 11-year-old daughter and then turn the gun on himself.
The murder-suicide left three families and a city devastated and a trail of questions for family members and police to wrestle with.
“He had been trying to contact me so that’s why it was really hard on me,” Nia Ali said.
She became so overwhelmed with grief and second-guessing in the months following the tragedy that she shut herself off from the rest of the world, crawling inside her emptiness, all alone except for her demons.
“Everything just seemed like terrible for me,” she said. “Gloomy.”
Nia Sifaatihii Ali has re-emerged from the darkness this spring as one of the world’s top hurdlers. The Trojan senior enters the UCLA-USC dual meet at Loker Stadium on Sunday with the nation’s top college 100-meter hurdles mark this season, 12.89 seconds, the fourth best time in world in 2011, with the promise of faster times to come.
Both Ali and her coach, Trojan assistant Dr. Tommie White, believe she can challenge the collegiate record of 12.48 seconds set by USC’s Ginnie Powell (now Crawford) in 2006.
“Nia could be in the (12.50s) very soon,” White, a former world class hurdler, said. “If she stays on track she could be one of the best.”
Ali’s promising career was nearly derailed in the wake of the Philadelphia tragedy. Her running suffered, so did her grades. Ali missed the 2010 season after being declared academically ineligible.
“I was just creeping through last year,” she said.
She has regained her stride inspired by the example of two strong women, her mother, Melita Johnson, the director of a special education school in Philadelphia, and her grandmother. Ali also found her way by following the guidance of White, a licensed psychologist and professor emeritus in kinesiology at Cal State Northridge, who considers himself more of a teacher than a coach.
One of the lessons White taught Ali is that life is much like the hurdles: both present you with a series of obstacles to overcome.
“Things didn’t make sense to her (after the tragedy),” White said. “She had questions ‘Why did this have to happen? Why did this happen to me?’ Everybody has those questions when they’re in a place that’s unfamiliar.
“You have to refocus, move through life with purpose. Every life has negatives. You have to get off the negative, even though some of the negatives are tragic.”
Johnson and Aleem Ali divorced when Nia was 11. He remained an influence in her life as she emerged as one of the nation’s top hurdling prospects, winning the 60-meter hurdles at the 2006 Nike Indoor National Championships.
“He was really into academics and so he always pushed that over sports,” Nia said.
Nia’s success on the track continued at Tennessee, winning the SEC heptathlon title as a freshman in her first-ever attempt at the event. But the city girl never adjusted to Knoxville’s slow pace and after a bitter dispute with athletic department officials, she transferred to USC before the 2008-09 academic year.
Aleem Ali remarried and then later began an affair with Angela Jefferys, a woman who at one point worked for Ali’s wife, also a city social services supervisor, according to police. Jefferys had tried to break off the relationship and on April 15 called police after Ali tried to forcefully enter her home. Police said they advised Jefferys she could obtain a restraining order against Ali. Jefferys did not pursue obtaining the order.
Less than a week later Jefferys was in her car about to take her daughter to school, when Ali pulled in behind them, shot Jefferys several times through her car window and then shot himself in the head.
The incident rocked Philadelphia. Mayor Michael Nutter asked the city to pray for the families. It would be months, however, before the full impact of the tragedy hit Nia Ali.
“It didn’t really hit me until the fall of 2009,” she said. “I started grieving a lot after the fact. I just couldn’t believe it. I had a hard time focusing. I just felt like life was just happening to me. My grades really suffered in the Fall of ’09.
“It was just me coming to reality with the situation. Everything was moving fast. You want to give up. I would just feel so empty.”
And so in late 2009 into 2010, Ali shut down.
“She’s a tough kid, and sometimes it’s hard to get through to her,” USC coach Ron Allice said.
Especially when she shut out the rest of the world.
“I shut out a lot of people,” Ali said. “Usually, I would go for help but I didn’t. I just shut everybody out and felt as if I didn’t need anyone and they couldn’t do anything for me.”
Eventually White broke down the walls.
“I love Coach White,” Ali said. “We have a connection. He’s helped my growth a lot because you have to deal with the mental toughness of the world.”
And you don’t have to deal with it alone.
“Nia has what I call ‘it’, the talent to be one of the best,” White said. “But she’s also got a lot of baggage. And you’ve got to get rid of that baggage if you’re going to be the best and she didn’t know how to do that. Then she started trusting people.
“The bottom line comes down to one single question and it’s not an easy question. What do you want from life? What do you want from the hurdles? Then we work backwards. Is your behavior getting you what you want? And if not you’ve got to change that behavior. And we can solve it together.”
After tearing herself apart, Ali began putting her hurdling and her life back together. The months of soul searching in the wake of the Philadelphia shooting forced Ali to recognize of side of her that had undermined her on and off the track for years, a tendency exacerbated by the tragedy.
“I was able to pick myself apart and learn that I am my biggest (obstacle),” Ali said. “I will hold myself back. My mind is so strong and there has been so many times where I would just defeat myself before a race, before anything, before I got to the end, I would just defeat myself. So I had to learn how to get over myself to be successful.”
A new training partner this season provided Ali with another role model when her hero Ginnie Crawford resumed training with White. Soon after Ali arrived in Los Angeles in 2007 she found a photo of Crawford on an athletic department office wall, snapped a picture of it with her cell phone and made it her screensaver.
Two weeks ago Ali was in a photo finish with Crawford, the Trojan’s 12.89 clocking just three-hundreths of second behind the two-time U.S. champion. Behind Ali was Canada’s Angela Whyte, an Olympic finalist, and Lashinda Demus, a two-time World silver medalist in the 400 hurdles. Ali’s time is equal to the collegiate best of 2004 Olympic 100 hurdles champion Joanna Hayes.
Ali now has her sights set on Crawford’s college record.
“Next time I get out there my goal is to get under 12.50 and I’m going to keep that goal all year,” Ali said.
She focuses on the record and other barriers in front of her while trying not to trip on the second thoughts, and the conversation that replays in her head and heart. The conversation she never had.
She tries not to dwell on her confusion, choosing instead to remember the father she loved and loved her, and that she is no longer the person who curled up into the emptiness of her soul and the tragedy nearly two years ago. Mainly she reminds herself that at last she has been granted something Aleem Ali found elusive in this life.
Peace.
“He would want to be free, be positive, be peaceful,” Ali said of her father. “I’m able to move on.”
She pauses for a moment, recalling her dark year moving through the horror.
“I kind of felt I was freeing myself of what was going on,” she said. “I’m in a better place. I’m definitely in a better place.”
