‘In Ken We Trust’: How Auburn’s beloved assistant coach Harnden helped build national champions — using a process based on belief
“He means a lot to us,” Auburn’s national indoor champion said. As Auburn begins hosting SEC Outdoor Championships this weekend, here’s an inside look at how Ken Harnden elevated Auburn sprints.
Kayinsola Ajayi found the camera right after the race. He ripped off his bib, and turned it around to show off the message on the back: “IN KEN WE TRUST,” he had scrawled on it in permanent marker before the race.
That was at the SEC Indoor Championships at Texas A&M on Feb. 28. At that race, Auburn’s junior sprint star and former Olympian won the 60-meter sprint by tying the NCAA’s all-time record in the distance. In 6.45 seconds, he matched the NCAA’s record, matched the record for any African anywhere, and set a new national record for his home country of Nigeria.
He also won for Auburn the SEC 60-meter title for the third time in the last four years — all coming under assistant coach and sprint coach Ken Harnden, and coming after he joined Auburn’s coaching staff in 2022.
Two weeks later, at the NCAA Indoor Championships, Ajayi became the national champion with another 6.45 — and again, he revealed writing on the back of his bib, this time, two messages: “IT’S MINE” and “#IKWT,” again for “In Ken we trust.”
How did he know the championship would be his? He wrote the messages before the race. How did he know he’d win?
For Ajayi it’s simple: He’d already done all the preparation Harnden told him he needed to do to win the race, so, he already knew he’d win.
“We trust in him, like, ‘OK, if Coach Ken said do this, then if you do that, trust me, everything is going to work out good for you,’” Ajayi explained, back in March shortly after the SEC Indoor Championships. “If you trust in him and believe in him — then, yeah.
“If he tells me, ‘OK, Ajayi, do this,’ and then I do that, then everything is going to go perfect for me.”
Auburn’s season has since shifted outdoors, with the Tigers hosting the SEC Outdoor Championships starting Thursday at Hutsell-Rosen Track. Auburn may not throw everything it has at the SEC Championship, with a focus being on being rested and ready for the national championship meet in June — but who runs in what heats is all part of a particular plan, to get them ready for the national championships, and in the bigger picture continue to build some into their prime in time for the L.A. 2028 Olympics cycle.
The athletes have all bought into that plan.
There are different components to the process that have made it all work:
The clinical component
“My group for the last 25 years have created the peak in the weight room, not on the track,” Harnden explained.
A 6-foot-4 former Olympian from Zimbabwe, Harnden ran track for North Carolina before his coaching career brought him back stateside, and to the South. He coached at Florida State from 2003-15, then Georgia from 2015-18, then Tennessee from 2018 until he was hired by Leroy Burrell when he was assembling his staff at Auburn in 2022.
He sat and talked in an office during workouts in the old football indoor, while his athletes trained out on the turf and in the weight room attached.
“It’s a little more scientific in here,” he said.