Arizona Wildcat Joseph Green a late call to compete for Guam's Olympic track team

Joseph Green actually missed one of the biggest calls of his life — a couple of times.

Finally, the recent Arizona track and field graduate answered his phone before the sun was up on July 10. His parents were on the other end to share the news that he would be competing in the Olympics in Paris representing Guam, where he is originally from.

“It was crazy. Because of the time zones I ended up getting the call at like 4 a.m.,” Green said. “I have a video on my phone ... I was jumping around. I was just excited. I couldn’t go back to sleep after that.

“It was just a big blessing at that time. It was completely unexpected,” he added. “It was the one night that I forgot to turn my ringer on my phone. I missed a couple of calls, and I woke up to my phone ringing. I thought it was an emergency. Since then, it’s been just crazy.”

Crazy, is right. With not all that much time to prepare, a little more than a week later, Green was on a plane to Paris.

First-round heats for his event, the men’s 100 meters, are Saturday at 1 a.m. Tucson time. Currently, heats of the men’s 100 are scheduled to air live on the E! cable channel (subject to change), or can be streamed via Peacock.

Track and field, which is part of the overall category of “athletics” during the Olympics, will be held in Stade de France, which is less than 30 minutes north of Paris. Most tracks are terracotta color, but the Olympic arena has been fitted with a purple, eco-friendly track made by synthetic track manufacturer Mondo.

A week after hearing the news, Green said it was still “surreal,” yet it was “slowly sinking in.”

It hasn’t been lost on Green that to represent Guam is even more special. With a population of only 173,000 people, Guam is a U.S. territory that competes under its own flag in international sports. While there hasn’t been many Olympic track athletes in its history. Guam has only participated in 10 Summer Olympic Games, with fewer than 100 athletes all time, across all sports.

Back in Guam, Green competed in soccer and track at Father Dueñas Memorial School. His original dream was to play in the Olympics for the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team, as Guam didn’t have a soccer team. He had been playing soccer since he was 3 years old, but when he was a sophomore in high school, he decided to go out for track as a “filler” sport, on a “whim,” and fell in love with running.

Green attended and competed for Minot State in North Dakota for two years before transferring to Arizona. In the spring of 2023, during the outdoor season he found his groove and started ticking off personal bests. In the past year, while competing collegiately, he went from running 11.25 seconds in the 100 at the 2023 Mt. Sac Relays to 10.87 seconds in this spring’s Jim Click Shoutout in Tucson.

At the World Athletics Championships in Budapest last August, he ran the 100 in 10.84 seconds.

In March, he set Guam’s 60-meter mark, at 7.04 seconds, at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow.

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“He works hard in training sessions, day in and day out,” said the UA track team’s associate head coach, Francesca Green, who trains the sprinters and relay athletes. “He just wants to be better every day. From Day 1, he’s really bought into the program — the training, all aspects of it. That’s really reflecting in in the times he’s running.

“He just works hard and he tries to be better (with) any instruction you give him, he takes it, he listens and he tries to execute.”

That approach has served him well not only in hitting these new times, but also in waiting since March to find out if he’d be in Paris competing for Guam in the Olympics.

Green said he just kept working hard over the last four months.

“It was better to stay ready than to get ready,” he said.

Guam’s criteria to make an Olympic team is based on points off individual performances. Green had enough points to qualify by March, but it was 50-50 as to whether he’d make Guam’s relatively-small Olympic contingent; Regine Tugade, who runs the women’s 100 and has two previously Olympic appearances, also had enough points for her event.

Instead of just picking one, Guam’s Olympic committee decided to take both athletes, bringing their total Olympic contingent to eight across all sports. Green is the only male athlete among that eight-person roster, which also includes two competitors in wrestling and one each in judo, triathlon, weightlifting and canoe. He also served as one of Guam’s flagbearers during Friday’s opening ceremony boat ride along the River Siene.

Even though this is his first Olympics, Green isn’t just happy to be there, competing in what is always one of the games’ must-see events. He’s laser focused on his goal of besting Guam’s national record of 10.66 seconds, which has stood since 2004 (by Philam Garcia at UC San Diego Triton Invitational). If he hits that in his first heat, that should get him into the next round.

In his last training session before leaving for Paris, Francesca Green, his UA coach, gave him some advice: keep that goal in mind and not get caught up in the excitement of being at the Olympics. She told him to “run it like you have every other race.”

She added that “to tamp that down a little bit — the nerves and all that comes with running at the Olympic Games — you also have to look at it and understand what you have control over.

“That’s yourself, and you have to execute. And then the fun comes when you do that.”

Part of that fun comes from his pre-race routine. The night before his races he eats ice cream. He prefers cookie dough or vanilla cake batter, but he isn’t too picky and will eat anything he can find around Stade de France.