World Championships relay medallist Charokee Young has severed ties with her long-time Coach Pat Henry and will be moving from her College Station, Texas, training base when she starts preparation for next year’s Olympic Games in Paris, France.

Young, who was a semi-finalist in the women’s 400m and part of the silver medal-winning women’s 4x400m relay team at the recent World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, earlier this year, made the announcement on her social media platform on YouTube on Monday.

She, however, left her more than 1,600 subscribers in limbo as she stopped short of saying who will be her next coach, only saying, “I will be leaving Texas”.

The former Hydel High standout has been under the guidance of Henry for the past four years, the first three as a member of the Texas A&M University team and last season, her first as a professional athlete after she signed.

Young described her decision to move away from Henry as “a really, really sad decision”, and went on to explain that given the coach’s responsibility as the head coach of the South-Eastern Conference (SEC) program, she made the decision to make the change.

While pointing out that most athletes were cautious to make a coaching change in an Olympic year, Young said the split was amicable and argued that she thought she made the best decision for herself at the time.

“I was very lucky to be around the same environment, the same coach, same people, but the main thing that really changes like my mindset, competition just like the overall thought process of being a professional athlete and what my body was used to be collegiate athlete, like the rounds and all of those stuff,” she said.

“So I guess that was one of the pros of being in that same area. It could have went other ways where I could have chosen to take in the typical path that everybody who goes pro does, which like you go pro, you change coaches, you change this, you change that. But I also believe in if something is not broken, why would you fix it?”

She described her first year of being a professional athlete and staying with her college coach as “a little bit of experiment for me, that year to see what things change, what would change, what I like it, what I not like it because hey, I could have stayed there and it could have been perfect and I could have like loved him like oh my god, I’m happy I didn’t change or it could be like you know what? I like my coach. I like everything but it’s just a little bit different whenever I’m professional athlete so with like all my experiences there. I feel like it’s just a little bit different.”

She admitted to being anxious about the unknown with her move. “Anxious. That’s the perfect word to describe. I’m really anxious about it, but I feel really positive. You know, I’m really, really excited for this new fresh start and I’m really fuelled from my first year of being pro, so let’s see what happened.”

Henry, she said, had offered assistance even as she made her decision to leave from under his tutelage and said because of their great relationship.

“I kind of like spoke to him on like what I was thinking while I was thinking about who to coach me, he gave me his opinion on what he thought and that kind of like helps me to like make my decision. You know?”

Young was grateful for what Henry had done for her .

“My coach has been like such a huge part of my journey in life like I just don’t feel like I can do anything and not involve him. I just feel like that’s not fair. Because majority of like where I am today is because of him. So he definitely gave me his little thoughts and then I did my research and then that’s kind of like what led me to my decision.

“But I’m really happy I left on a good note and he was just like, if anything is going on, you want to talk to me or anything you can always call me, so I’m really happy to hear that. And guys, I’m just so excited,” Young stated.

A major part of her decision she said was she wanted to be around more professionals, people who had the same goals she has.

“Like whenever I start thinking about like, do I want to change kind of like made me really sad because I love my coach. I love Texas A&M, I love the environment. I love the people around and sometimes change is hard but change is not always bad,” she reasoned.

“So, you know, knowing me and how I am, I definitely like started talking to my coach about what I think if we came to agreement, and he understood, like my reason everything, so even though it breaks our hearts, because I know he was definitely sad to see that I’m gonna be leaving,” Young ended.