LA MARQUE, Texas — In the race called life, there are plenty of things that can hold you back.
"They just be like, 'Oh, my god, you're so small,'" Janeshia Dixon said.
Janeshia, also known as "Tiney," proves that nothing is going to slow her down.
"I proved them wrong ... they thought I would be slow," Tiney said.
At just 4 feet, 6 inches tall and 13 years old, she lives up to every bit of her name.
"I'm in the body of a 9-year-old," Tiney said.
Often -- if not always -- she’s facing bigger and stronger competition.
"I went to a meet and I’m just looking around, looking around and I see this small, small kid," H-Town Hurricanes Coach T said. "By the end of the race, it was, like, yeah, that kid’s special."
But for Tiney, who just started the sport in the spring, beating the odds is all she’s ever known.
"A lot of people know her story ... but they don’t know her story," Tiney's great aunt Shylece Seymore said.
Seymore had already raised two kids when Tiney -- whose mom wasn’t able to care for her -- arrived at her door.
"It was something that I never thought I'd be doing again at 40, 50, 60," Seymore said.
"I was like, what is that? Who's that?" she said.
Earlier this month, Tiney qualified for the Junior Olympics in Des Moines, Iowa, in four events running three different distances. Remarkably, she qualified for 4x100M, 1600-meter relay, 200 and 100-meter distances.
"It's just mind-boggling," Seymore said.
Seymore, whose health has had her in and out of the hospital, is trying to get Tiney to Des Moines, but money is tight.
"It's a lot for one person, you know, a single person. But some kind of way, I know God's gonna make sure that she goes," Seymore said.
With the chance to line up against some of the top runners in the country and the visibility that goes along with it, she’s hoping others will help make Tiney’s big dreams a reality.
"I think she has a God-given talent that she hasn't yet tapped, really, really tapped into. And once she figures out that she has really tapped into it and she's got it, there's no limits," Seymore said.