AFA's Twin Hurdlers Make for Quite a Contrasting Pair

Fraternal twins Brittany and Dontae McGee will take the field at the University of North Florida on Friday with hopes of becoming one of the few, if only pair of twins to win state track gold medals, in the same events, on the same day. Brittany is a likely bet to win both the 100m hurdles and long jump with a good chance to win the Class A 300m hurdles as well. Dontae has a top three 110m hurdle time and a top seven 300m hurdle time. If the scenario is going to play out, it will likely be in the high(er) hurdles.

"The same day, the same school, the same events, it would be a fitting end to their high school careers," Dontae and Brittany's father, Thomas McGee said.

It would indeed cap a successful career for both athletes that might seem to have so much in common. Personally, even athletically in many ways, they are stark contrasts.

"For me, on the weekends, I like to sit back in my room, relax, catch up on some TV shows, Redbox, Netflix, all that," Brittany said. "Dontae is a social butterfly, he's always got friends over, always going out somewhere, always with someone, always has to be doing something."

The social dynamic comes from the athletic difference. Dontae started wrestling way before he started track and Brittany was competing in track and field from the time she was eight.

"I was shy when I was younger," Dontae said. "That's part of the reason why I got into wrestling was it helped me (socially)."

Dontae continued.

"Brittany is used to being by herself," Dontae said. "When you train for track, you train a lot on your own, you with just yourself more."

This is opposed to wrestling where you're typically in a small room with dozens of other athletes, mixing it up with them. As kids, as much as they sought to strive for their own identities, the comparisons came in waves.

"Even in middle school, people would say, 'oh my God, it's like you two are the same person,' and we would say, 'no, we're two different people,'" McGee said. "We still get comparisons today and neither of us likes it."

And so the twins took off on different paths after middle school at Williams in Tampa.

Brittany stuck to the club track circuit, even before middle school. She started out laying the foundation for the heptathlete she evolves more into every day. When she was still just eight years old at Seffner Track Club, she did a triathlon, which consisted of the 80m hurdles, shot put and long jump. When Brittany moved into the 10-12 age group, she started competing in pentathlons (80m hurdles, long jump, high jump, 800m and shot put). Once she hit 13, she moved up to the heptathlon, which adds javelin and 200m. Dontae competed in club track as well but wresting was his primary sport. Their competitive nature, which must have begun August, 30, 1996, the day they were born, is long-standing. Brittany is two minutes, the older sibling.

"We've always been competitive, we would argue about who has more medals (as kids)," Dontae said.

The arguments would turn into spats, spats into fights.

"We would go to the grocery store together and my mom would put us on opposite sides of the cart to separate us but we would run around it trying to get at each other," Brittany said. "We would fight a lot, even wrestle."

Brittany remembers getting an Xbox 360 for their birthday one year and then wondering where her present was.

"Video games make me angry," Brittany said.

Then a couple years later, they got a Playstation 3. Dontae immediately laid claim to it and Brittany indifferently acquiesced. Then a couple months later, Brittany got a pair of four-wheeled roller skates and finally felt as if her birthday wish had been fulfilled.

"I always wanted to go faster, whether it was roller skates, or bikes or scooters, everything," Brittany said. "My friend and I would race at Brandon Skateland for candy."

The contrast in personality was already beginning to blossom.

"Brittany doesn't like to lose at anything," Dontae said. "I'm more laid back."

They finally got a break from each other in the eighth grade when Thomas McGee got posted overseas by his job at Centcom and decided Dontae would do better at a five-day boarding school called Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg. Brittany, not thrilled about the track program at her locally zoned Brandon High School and having lost the lottery to land at a public school with an International Baccalaureate program, decided that Farragut or AFA was the right choice. The twins spent their ninth grade year together at AFA and ran into more of the social roadblocks of being twins.

"It was hard to decipher whose friends were whose," Brittany said.

Then they were apart again, with Dontae heading back to hometown Brandon, a school that currently boast a 15-year streak of team wrestling state titles, and is a nationally-recognized program, and Brittany staying at AFA. It gave the twins time apart to forge some of their own identities and friendships.

"Once we were away from each other, we started to like each other more," Brittany said.

As much as the distance did them good, the bond could never quite be shaken. Brittany would travel home to Brandon on the weekends and workout with Dontae on hurdling. Sometimes they could just work on the infield at Brandon High, sometimes they'd go and use the rubber track at nearby Armwood High School.

"That 10th and 11th grade year working hurdles together, that's when we really started to get close," Dontae said. "I'd drive to St. Pete to workout, I needed someone who knew how to do hurdles, it being still just my third or fourth year (doing them)."

As their independent friendship circles grew, so did their appreciation for what they had in each other.

"Now all that competitiveness has died down," Dontae said. "We both still want to be better than the other but now we're more supportive."

It would be Dontae that earned the first gold medal in high school. In 2013, Brittany went to the state track meet and took second in the 100m hurdles and third in the long jump, just missing that gold medal. In February of 2014, Dontae won his first gold medal in high school, winning the Class 2A state wrestling title at 170 pounds.

"Dontae came over and hugged mom, hugged dad, then went over to his sister and whispered in her ear, 'you're next,'" Thomas McGee said.

As quick as they were together out of the womb, Brittany was nearly as quick getting her first gold medal. In less than three months, Brittany swept both the 100m and 300m hurdles in the Class A state meet, netting her first two. In 2015, they stand a chance to don gold medals at the same competition, in the same event. They're as much a team now as they might ever be with Brittany moving to to Stanford U for track this fall and Dontae to Ohio U for wrestling. For now, they're re-united at AFA for one big, last hurrah.

"We cheer a lot for each other, AFA track has brought us together," Dontae said. "We both hate the 300m hurdles, they suck, but we figure we might as well cheer each other on."