His name wasn't splashed across any of the headlines when Grand Slam Track — the running league that was supposed to infuse cash into the sport and its athletes' bank accounts — declared bankruptcy, making it official that dozens of runners and even more vendors might not see any of the money they were promised.
But Eric Edwards Jr., an up-and-coming hurdler trying to supercharge his young career, really needed that money. He was going to use it to pay rent, put gas in his car and fund his training.
According to the league's bankruptcy filing, Edwards is still owed more than $19,000 — a relatively small entry among the list of more than 300 people and companies owed some $40 million by the league dreamed up by sprinting great Michael Johnson that has failed in spectacular fashion. But it's a big amount for a hurdler trying to make ends meet.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Edwards told of his initial reaction when he first heard about the $12.8 million in prize money and other bonuses GST was giving to some for simply signing up: “I'm like, y'all are crazy,” he said.
Now, a different sort of disbelief.
“I never thought a meet would not pay the money,” the 26-year-old Edwards said.
The Association of Athletics Managers — a group of agents that says it represents nearly four out of every five track and field athletes who won medals at the most recent Olympics and world championships — released a statement Friday saying they were shocked to hear that Grand Slam Track is moving forward with plans to restart the league later this year.
Part of those plans, according to the statement, is to set aside $400,000 for athlete recruitment for the 2026 season.
“This would all be funded prior to any other 2025 payments being made,” the statement said. “The AAM does not support this approach.”
The GST's president and CEO, Steve Gera — himself owed more than $170,000, according to the bankruptcy filing — did not return an email sent by the AP seeking comment.
GST's latest filing on the bankruptcy is due Friday. A hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday.
According to the filing, GST owes Johnson more than $2.2 million, the result of a loan he made in May, one week before the league's third event in Philadelphia that almost didn't happen.
The league ended up scrapping its fourth event, scheduled for Los Angeles in June.
Others owed big money include Olympic champions Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone ($268,750), Gabby Thomas ($185,625), Marileidy Paulino ($173,125) and world champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden ($175,375).
Those athletes were among those GST signed when it made a big splash with the promise that track, decades after it stopped being a marquee sport, would still grab eyeballs and pay good money to athletes even when the Olympics were over.
The league quickly ran into problems, with reports surfacing as early as the first meet in Jamaica that athletes and vendors weren't being paid.
For the Thomases and McLaughlin-Levrones of the world, track is their only job, so while missing six-figure payments hurts, it does not stop everything.
Edwards' story, however, is more common.
Without a shoe deal, or any major sponsors, he needs every penny he can get to keep running. Though he did receive about half of what was owed him, the $19,000 is a meaningful chunk. He now has a part-time delivery job at Amazon to make ends meet while he continues training. He also moved back home to Houston to live with his family.
“When Grand Slam started up, I finished 15th in the world,” Edwards said during a phone interview from France, where he’s competing in indoor meets. “If you look at, like, the 15th-best wide receiver in the NFL, or 15th-best NBA player, they’re making bank. The 15th-best hurdler in the world can’t even pay rent. It’s crazy how that happens, but that was my reality."
His typical day when he's home starts with a 6 a.m. trip to his high school track to work out on his own, following instructions his coach curated and sent to him. He keeps his work uniform in his car — along with a protein shake — so he can go straight from the track to start a 10-hour shift for Amazon.
The Summer Olympics are more than two years away and that would be his ultimate goal, maybe even a path to riches. These days, though, he's living day to day — the dream of a big-money league coming to the rescue now nothing more than a far-off mirage.
“All I want is to be able to live comfortably off of all the hard work that I've put in," Edwards said. "That would be my dream — to be able to solely run track.”
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
FILE - Daniel Roberts and Cordell Tinch compete in the men's 110 meter hurdles semifinal during the U.S. track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., Sunday, July 9, 2023. Left is Eric Edwards. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Catherine O’Hara, a gifted Canadian-born comic actor and “SCTV” alum who starred as Macaulay Culkin’s harried mother in two “Home Alone” movies and won an Emmy as the dramatically ditzy wealthy matriarch Moira Rose in “Schitt’s Creek,” died Friday. She was 71.
O’Hara died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief illness,” according to a statement from her representatives at Creative Artists Agency. Further details were not immediately available.
O’Hara’s career was launched with the Second City comedy group in Toronto in the 1970s. It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator — and her “Schitt’s Creek” costar. The two would be among the original cast of the sketch show “SCTV,” short for “Second City Television.” The series, which began on Canadian TV in the 1970s and aired on NBC in the U.S., spawned a legendary group of esoteric comedians that O’Hara would work with often, including Martin Short, John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and Joe Flaherty.
O'Hara would win her first Emmy for her writing on the show.
Her second, for best actress in a comedy series, came four decades later, for “Schitt's Creek,” a career-capping triumph and the perfect personification of her comic talents. The small CBC series created by Levy and his son, Dan, about a wealthy family forced to live in a tiny town would dominate the Emmys in its sixth and final season. It brought O’Hara, always a beloved figure, a new generation of fans and put her at the center of cultural attention.
She told The Associated Press that she pictured Moira, a former soap opera star, as someone who had married rich and wanted to “remind everyone that (she was) special, too.” With an exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent and obscure vocabulary, Moira spoke unlike anyone else, using words like “frippet,” “pettifogging” and “unasinous,” to show her desire to be different, O’Hara said. To perfect Moira’s voice, O’Hara would pore through old vocabulary books, “Moira-izing” the dialogue even further than what was already written.
O'Hara also won a Golden Globe and two SAG Awards for the role.
At first, Hollywood didn't entirely know what to do with O'Hara and her scattershot style. She played oddball supporting characters in Martin Scorsese's 1985 “After Hours” and Tim Burton's 1988 “Beetlejuice” — a role she would reprise in the 2024 sequel.
She played it mostly straight as a horrified mother who accidentally abandoned her child in the two “Home Alone” movies. The films were among the biggest box office earners of the early 1990s and their Christmas setting made them TV perennials. They allowed her moments of unironic warmth that she didn't get often.
Her co-star Culkin was among those paying her tribute Friday.
“Mama, I thought we had time,” Culkin said on Instagram alongside an image from “Home Alone” and a recent recreation of the same pose. “I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you."
Meryl Streep, who worked with O'Hara in “Heartburn,” said in a statement that she “brought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed.”
Roles in big Hollywood films didn't follow “Home Alone,” but O'Hara would find her groove with the crew of improv pros brought together by Christopher Guest for a series of mockumentaries that began with 1996's “Waiting for Guffman” and continued with 2000's “Best in Show,” 2003's “A Mighty Wind” and 2006's “For Your Consideration.”
“Best in Show” was the biggest hit and best-remembered film of the series. She and Levy play married couple Gerry and Cookie Fleck, who take their Norwich terrier to a dog show and constantly run into Cookie's former lovers along the way.
“I am devastated," Guest said in a statement to the AP. “We have lost one of the comic giants of our age.”
Born and raised in Toronto, O’Hara was the sixth of seven children in a Catholic family of Irish descent. She graduated from Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute, an alternative high school. She joined Second City in her early 20s, as an understudy to Gilda Radner before Radner left for “Saturday Night Live.” (O’Hara would briefly be hired for “SNL” but quit before appearing on air.)
Nearly 50 years later, her final roles would be as Seth Rogen’s reluctant executive mentor and freelance fixer on “The Studio” and a dramatic turn as therapist to Pedro Pascal and other dystopia survivors on HBO's “The Last of Us." Both earned her Emmy nominations. She would get 10 in her career.
“Oh, genius to be near you," Pascal said on Instagram. “Eternally grateful. There is less light in my world.”
Earlier this month, Rogen shared a photo on Instagram of him and O'Hara shooting the second season of “The Studio.”
O'Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, sons Matthew and Luke, and siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O‘Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.
Noveck reported from New York. AP Writers Lindsey Bahr, R.J. Rico and Leanne Italie contributed.
FILE - Catherine O'Hara arrives at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Sept. 14, 2025. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Eugene Levy, from left, Annie Murphy, Daniel Levy and Catherine O'Hara cast members in the series "Schitt's Creek" pose for a portrait during the 2018 Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 14, 2018. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Eugene Levy, left, and Catherine O'Hara appear at the 76th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles. on Feb. 29, 2004. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch, File)
FILE - Catherine O'Hara poses for photographers upon arrival at the UK premiere of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
FILE - Former cast members of SCTV, from left, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, foreground, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy and Martin Short, pose at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival on March 6, 1999, in Aspen, Colo. (AP Photo/E Pablo Kosmicki, File)
FILE - Catherine O'Hara, a cast member in the Apple+ series "The Studio," poses for a portrait on Thursday, March 20, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
