Quick Chat: Anna Hall

By John Frierson
Staff Writer

Anna Hall grew up wanting to beat her older sisters at most everything. There's nothing too unusual about that, except the level of athleticism and competition in the Hall family makes winning any intra-family activity an impressive achievement.

Hall's father, David, played football, basketball and ran track at Michigan; her sister Kathryn played tennis at Michigan and sister Julia was running track at Michigan but is now joining Georgia's program as a graduate transfer. The competition has been pretty regular during the pandemic with everyone home, Hall said during a recent Quick Chat.

Hall, from Highlands Ranch, Colo., near Denver, earned second-team All-SEC honors and the SEC All-Freshman team for the indoor season after placing second in the pentathlon at the SEC Championships. She also ran a leg on the second-fastest 4x400-meter relay team in UGA history during the indoor season.

During our Quick Chat, Hall also talked about what she's been up to the past few months, how she looked up to Georgia multi-events legend (and seven-time NCAA champion) Kendell Williams, seeing the protests across the country and much more. Here's some of what she had to say:

Frierson: What have the last few months been like for you after having everything shut down so abruptly back in March?

Hall: It has definitely been really different just because I don't remember a time when I didn't have a schedule or something I needed to do or when I wasn't getting ready for something. This is definitely the first time in a long time that I've had time, which I don't really love. I like my schedule and am excited to get back to it, but I think this has been a good time to focus on the little things and build some better habits, getting healthy, all that type of stuff.

Frierson: How have you been filling your days? Have you picked up any new hobbies or are you working out all the time?

Hall: I'm taking two summer classes so those have kept me somewhat busy and then just working out and trying to stay active. I've gone on a couple of hikes with my sisters and I'm actually about to go back to Atlanta to do an internship, it's for a communications company. They basically build cell towers and sell the rights to them, so I'll be shadowing or an assistant or whatever they need.

I know of a lot of people's (internships) that didn't work out and I was definitely lucky that it kind of came together last-minute. It's good to have a summer to do that because most other summers will be too busy to be able to do something like that.

Frierson: Speaking of hiking, I've been doing a lot of it since I got to Colorado last week and I can feel the altitude affecting me when I'm out hiking. You essentially grew up doing altitude training, so has that helped you in your career?

Hall: I definitely think so in high school, it helped my endurance — I feel like my endurance training was farther ahead of where it would have been because every time you're running you have a little bit of resistance so you've getting a little more out of it.

You definitely readjust to wherever you are and when I moved to Georgia, after a couple of weeks I was used to it (the lower elevation with more oxygen in the air). When I come back here, I still notice it and it's harder to breathe here for a couple of days, and then I readjust again.

Frierson: Growing up in the mountains, did you do all the winter sports that are so big here?

Hall: I skied a lot for a long time when I was little and then as soon as I started doing indoor track is when I stopped because you could only do indoor track on the weekends or ski. I skied from when I was probably 6 to when I started high school.

Frierson: How did you get involved with the multi-events? Was there a particular catalyst for that or did you just realize you were good at a lot of different events?

Hall: When I was little, I started track by doing the high jump and then also running the 1,500, so that was kind of a weird combination but I liked them both. As I got older, my coach started being like, those two events don't really go together very well so you might want to pick whether you go to jumps or distance or sprints or something that you can train within. And I was like, no, I want to keep doing both.

I used to tell my dad that I wanted to be the first person to go to the Olympics in both the high jump and the 1,500, which, obviously, that's not going to happen, but the multis were a good compromise.

Frierson: Kendell Williams is one of the all-time great student-athletes at Georgia in all sports, so did you know much about her when you were coming up in the multis? Was she someone you looked up to in the sport?

Hall: Oh, yes, definitely. Right when I was getting into the multis and actually doing my first heptathlon was when she was on her rampage through the NCAA, just winning everything. I saw her on TV all the time and I was like, hmmm, Georgia? I never would have thought to go to the South, Georgia would have been just random for me coming from Colorado, so she kind of brought my attention there.

I met her on my visit, actually, and talked to her about (head coach Petros Kyprianou) and the training style and things like that. Looking up to her is what made the initial connection for me to come to Georgia.

Frierson: I noticed that you graduated magna cum laude from high school and that you're obviously a very good student, so where did that drive to excel at such a high level in the classroom come from? Or do you tend to approach everything you do intending to be the very best?

Hall: I've always been really competitive in everything since I was little. I think growing up, I was the third of four sisters, so my older sisters I was always trying to keep up with them or beat them at things. It was hard because they are three and five years older than me and I guess that kind of translated into school, too. I don't like when I'm doing something and I'm not giving it my very best.

Frierson: I'm guessing you come from a very competitive household given all of the great athletes in the family. Was everything around the house a competition?

Hall: Pretty much [laughs], even grades. We compete in just about everything, mostly with love though.

Frierson: Has that manifested itself during the pandemic with everyone home together?

Hall: We're all here and my sisters already had Apple watches for their graduation and for my birthday I got one. There's the calorie tracker thing on there and it's like, who can be the most active today and burn the most calories? We compete every day in that and who gets the best grades in online school [laughs].

Frierson: Given you're training, I would imagine you'd be hard to beat in the calorie count.

Hall: Some days — Julia does the 400 so she can get close if she has a really hard morning workout. Right now I've been resting up a little bit of a hamstring injury, so I've been close to as active but not quite.

Frierson: What's it going to be like having her on the team next year?

Hall: I'm so excited. I ran with her one year in high school and it was so fun, especially with her doing track. My other sister does tennis and Julia doing track all the way up, that was another way I competed against her. We'd be like, who was faster at what age? She's definitely pushed me to be as good as I can be.

Frierson: How's your tennis game? Did you play much growing up or was that just Kathryn's thing?

Hall: We left that to my sister. We played a little when we were little but she started tennis kind of late, actually, so we were all kind of surprised when she took to it so fast. We leave that to her, I don't think I could return a serve.

Frierson: What's something you could eat every day and never get tired of it?

Hall: Probably mac and cheese, just the Annie's white cheddar. I've had it since I was little and it's always my favorite.

Frierson: How have you experienced everything that's been going on around the country following the death of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement? Are you inspired at all by how widespread the protests and support for change is right now?

Hall: I would say that, yeah. I'm definitely happy about how many people now are paying attention to it and it hasn't become as much of a politically divisive issue, it's just, some things need to change and this needs to stop. That's definitely been inspiring, and seeing how people you maybe thought didn't care about that type of stuff have come out and talked about it, and how Georgia's handled it, just lots of different places that you support in everyday life. That's definitely been really encouraging, too.

(This Q&A was lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.

Players Mentioned

Anna Hall

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