Elgin nurse hopes to represent Puerto Rico in Rio Olympics

A pediatric nurse at Elmhurst Hospital will learn this weekend whether she'll be competing in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, representing Puerto Rico on the track team.

Elgin resident Emily Quinones, 26, was born in Chicago, but both her parents are natives of Puerto Rico, qualifying her to represent the U.S. territory during the games in Brazil next month.

She leaves Friday for Puerto Rico Friday, where she'll compete in the Puerto Rican national team's Olympic trials and learn her fate.

“It boils down to times ... but (the odds) are pretty good. I think she's going to make it,” said her coach, Olen McGhee.

Quinones started her running career at Conant High School in Hoffman Estates after a gym teacher suggested she try out for track.

“I said, ‘Who wants to run for fun?' It didn't even register. But I took his offer,” she said. “It changed my whole life. I don't come from a family with a lot of money, so I thought, ‘This is my way to win a scholarship and work my way up and go to college.' I am the first person in my family to attend college.”

Running scholarships helped Quinones pay for six years of college at Eastern Illinois University, where she double-majored in psychology and nursing while being a star runner on the track team. Even when she started working at the hospital two years ago, she never gave up on running competitively.

“I love trying to make a difference as well as achieving my own personal goals on the side,” she said.

McGhee has coached Quinones for the past 10 years, but for the past two, she's trained while holding down a full-time job at the hospital. She'll practice before work at 5:30 a.m. or after work at 6 p.m., for two to three hours, three or four days a week at Deep Impact Performance Training in Mundelein.

Quinones made the Puerto Rican national team in January and runs the “1-2-4” — the 100-, 200- and 400-meter races.

Her strongest event is the 400-meter, where she's now working to get her time under 51 seconds, about two seconds faster than her typical time. Being only 5 feet, 2 inches, she has to run faster than her longer-legged competitors.

“It's not easy. You can train an entire year just to take two-thirds of a second off your time,” McGhee said.

Quinones' greatest gifts are her laser focus on a goal and her work ethic, McGhee said.

This is the closest she's come to making the Olympic team, and she's both excited and nervous.

“My coach would tell you, ‘We don't train to lose. We train to be the best,' so I set different goals for myself every day,” she said.

And if she doesn't make it?

“Everyone thinks of the Olympics, but Worlds (competition) is every year, and I can compete in that,” she said. “I'm definitely not done.”