The Monday Morning Meathead: July 19th Edition

Good things come to those who wait…and wait. Your 2023 USATF women’s shot medalists: Adelaide Aquilla, Maggie Ewen, and Jalani Davis. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

Hurry up and wait

I once helped out at a middle school meet where the person in charge of the discus decided that after each throw, the athlete should remain in the ring until the measurement was recorded. This created much ridiculousness, as those who remembered to follow this new “rule” inevitably got in the way when the guy tried to pull and read the tape, and those who forgot and walked out after their disc landed had their throw nullified. 

I was among several coaches who tried to explain to the man that there was no “stay in the ring until after the measurement” rule and that he’d have a much easier time running the event the normal way, but he refused to listen. He had been put in charge and would manage the ring as he saw fit.

I thought of that gentleman as I watched via the USATF.TV webcast while officials made a hash of the women’s shot at the recent 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships. Much to the relief of my wife, I’ve reached the point where I expect and forgive the inevitable laser malfunctions and no longer feel compelled to scream, “Just use a damn measuring tape!” at my laptop while watching throws comps.

And there did seem to be laser-induced delays that night in Eugene, but it quickly became clear that something else was contributing to the glacial pace of each round. The camera angle used on the webcast made it possible to see the timer mounted near the ring, and for some reason the officials would not allow a thrower to step in for their attempt until the sixty seconds allotted to the previous thrower had expired. 

The existence of those timers has always struck me as extraneous. Why would a thrower, once their name is called, want to spend the better part of sixty seconds standing there thinking about throwing? That’s what NFL coaches force the other team’s kicker to do when he’s trying to make an important field goal, right? They call a timeout to give the poor bastard time to ponder and worry and get tight. That strategy is called “icing,” and again, it’s something you do to an opponent to mess them up. Why would an athlete want to ice themselves?

The answer is, they don’t. In a normal comp, each thrower is in and out of the ring in just a few seconds, except when the laser glitches and people like me start wishing they’d let the Amish run all major meets. 

But that night in Eugene, the athletes had no choice but to stand by awkwardly watching the timer tick down to zero before entering the ring, which made for a maddeningly slow competition. By my estimate, it took fifty minutes to complete the first three rounds, twice as long as normal.

Afterwards, I messaged a handful of coaches and athletes to ask if they knew whose idea it was to run the women’s shot that way.  

Kyle Long, coach of Maggie Ewen, said that Maggie told him an official showed up as the comp began and–for reasons unknown–ordered the person running the ring to wait the full minute between attempts. 

“We always prepare for something weird at every meet,” he told me. “But I had no idea why they were making everyone wait so long between throws.”

Fortunately, Maggie smashed a 19.76m opener, which made it easy to stay in relaxo mode the rest of the comp, and ended up producing the most consistently excellent series of her career: 19.87m, 19.54m, 19.80m, 19.48m, and 19.92m.

John Smith, who was there coaching Jalani Davis, thought the slow pace was per request of the TV folks, but like Kyle, he had no hard feelings as Jalani’s fourth-round toss of 18.62m earned her a ticket to Budapest.

Kara Winger, who worked all weekend as a member of the broadcast crew, said afterwards that TV did not dictate the pace of the shot comp, which made sense because…have the TV people ever wanted the throwing events to last longer? Not in my lifetime.

Strangely, though, Kara had heard that an official visited the call room prior to the event and asked the putters if they wanted the full minute between each throw. She also pointed out that most throwers would be so focused on themselves and their cues while sitting in the call room that they probably would not have had enough available brain space to process what the official was actually asking them. 

We may never know the true explanation behind the Great Shot Put Slowdown of 2023, but fortunately all the other throwing events were run at the normal pace. Now, if they would just ditch the damn lasers!…Sorry, honey.

Jalani Davis. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

Leveling Up

After winning the NCAA weight title in March, Jalani Davis headed into the outdoor season looking to do some damage in the hammer and shot put. And for a while, things went as planned. 

She finished second at the SEC Championships in both, with throws of 67.27m and 17.94m, and seemed ready to contend for podium space at the NCAA finals in Austin. 

Then regionals happened.

The University of North Florida, site of the East Regional, had recently redone their cage, and in the remodeled version the hammer ring was placed in front of the discus ring. Because of this, the cage door felt closer than normal for the hammer throwers, which bothered some, Jalani included. She lost her rhythm and maybe her composure, and finished eighteenth with a throw of 60.89m.

Jalani’s disappointment carried over to that night’s shot comp, where her best effort of 16.15m put her nineteenth.

Coach Smith assured Jalani that every thrower has tough days, and the experience would benefit her in the long run. “I told her,” he recalled recently, “the more battle scars you accumulate the better you will be in the end.”

A week later, she bounced back, going 67.00m and 18.64m at the Music City Track Carnival. 

Based on that performance, and on the potential he’d seen Jalani display in training, Smith believed she had a chance to make the squad for Budapest.

But he did not say that to Jalani.

Smith worried that any talk of competing for a spot at Worlds might make it impossible for her to relax and find a flow. “Throwing,” he says, “should be a reaction. If you walk into the ring and try to think through a throw, you’re done. You’ve got to learn to be on autopilot, or you’ll never survive in a high-pressure situation.”

Luckily, Jalani went into USAs with the best U23 hammer and shot put marks in the Western Hemisphere, which made her nearly a lock to qualify for the U23 NACAC team. Smith told her to focus on that and never mentioned the possibility of qualifying for Budapest.

He also tried to put Jalani into autopilot mode during practice by having her throw into a net or over a set of bleachers that blocked her view of where the shot landed.

Blinders come in many forms: the shot ring at Ole Miss, with bleachers in place. Photo courtesy of John Smith.

Smith estimates that Jalani launched eighty percent of her practice attempts over the bleachers in the runup to USAs, including every throw during her final training session before heading to Eugene.

Smith’s plan paid off when, after fouling her first attempt in the competition, Jalani belted an 18.53m second-rounder that put her into third place. In round four, she improved to 18.62m. And then, she started to get suspicious.

“I knew,” she said later, “that to make the U23 team I only had to beat one other U23 girl. But then, after my fourth throw, I asked Coach if I’d make the team for Worlds if I stayed in third or fourth place. He didn’t say anything, so I knew that was a ‘yes.’”

The 18.62m held up for third place, so Jalani will be heading this week to Costa Rica for U23 NACACS before returning home to prepare for Budapest.

Not bad for an athlete who was not recruited out of high school. Jalani got herself on the Ole Miss squad by showing up at a practice one day with her father and convincing Smith to give her a chance. 

“I was mad at walk-ons at the time,” Smith recalls. “I’d just had one who had been a problem. But I liked what Jalani’s father had to say. He’s a military guy, she’s a military kid, and they both impressed me.”

Four years later, Jalani is on the team for Worlds. She has also become the first woman ever to throw eighty feet in the weight and sixty in the shot, though Smith says she is still in the developmental stage. “She’s only been spinning in the shot for three years,” he explained. “And it usually takes four years to click. Right now, she can throw 18 meters from a non-reverse, but she’s still getting comfortable with reversing. Year four is when Jessica Ramsey broke through to 20 meters. So, we’ll see.”

In the end, though, the hammer might be her best event. 

Jalani’s current PB is 69.53m, but according to Smith, she is poised for a breakthrough there as well. 

This season, after three-and-a-half years of training the hammer, Jalani threw the 3-kilo implement 82 meters in practice. Smith has had other athletes reach that distance with the 3k, including 2019 World Champion DeAnna Price, 2017 US Champion and two-time Olympian Gwen Berry, and 2013 World Championships finalist Jeneva Stevens, but none did it as early in their career. 

Will Jalani some day follow DeAnna’s path to a World Championships podium? Maybe, but that’s something to think about at a later date. For the rest of this summer, she’ll be on autopilot mode.

Daniel Ståhl in London back in 2017 showing off his first World Championships medal. Photo courtesy of Arwid Koskinen.

Big Man Update

Daniel Ståhl is having a hell of a season with four meets over 70 meters so far, including a best of 71.45m. After a tough 2022 campaign where he finished out of the medals at Worlds and Europeans, what more could you ask?

“I’d like,” Daniel’s former coach Vésteinn Hafsteinsson told me via a Zoom call last week, “to see him throw far outside of Sweden and Finland, which are his favorite places to compete, and to see him beat Kristjan at least one more time before Worlds.”

That would be defending World champ Kristjan Čeh, whose 71.86m toss at the Heino Lipp Memorial gave Daniel the honor of owning the farthest second-place throw (the aforementioned 71.45m) in history. 

Daniel had tagged Kristjan with his only loss of the season three days earlier at the Paavo Nurmi Games, but outside of that comp the big Slovenian had been untouchable. 

Then came last weekend’s Gyulai István Memorial in Hungary, where Daniel defeated all three 2022 Worlds medalists–Kristjan, Mykolas Alekna, and Andrius Gudžius–while taking the win with a throw of 68.98m. 

Right now, Daniel is flourishing under his new coach, Staffan Jönsson, and the men’s discus final in Budapest should be hellacious.

We hope to have Vésteinn’s book about his years with Daniel available later this summer. Maybe just in time to celebrate another World Championships medal.

2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships Preview: Women’s Hammer Contenders

DeAnna Price is a big reason why the US has come to dominate in the women’s hammer.

The United States is stacked in the women’s hammer. How stacked?  A top-30 ranking is enough to qualify an athlete for the World Championships in Budapest, and 11 of the women on the start list for today’s 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships are in the top 30.   

Because Brooke Andersen was nice enough to win the event at last year’s Worlds in Eugene, the United States gets to send four women’s hammer throwers–Brooke and three others–to Budapest. The competition for those three spots begins at 4:00pm Pacific time today, and it will be fierce. Let’s take a quick look at the contenders.

 The Veterans

Several of the athletes in today’s comp have made senior international teams in recent years, and three have gotten on the podium. Among them is defending World champ Andersen, whose Budapest bye allowed her the freedom to spend two weeks competing in Europe in June rather than staying home to prep a mini-peak for USAs. 

Brooke Andersen. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

While across the pond, Brooke competed in four meets in four different countries, and won them all. The prize money from meets like those along with support from USATF and Nike have allowed Brooke to quit her job at Chipotle and finally devote herself full time to training. While she probably misses the employee discount, Brooke has performed at an extremely high level all season and on May 20th became the third woman ever to crack the 80-meter barrier, something which she may well do again today in Eugene.

Janee’ Kassanavoid took the bronze at last year’s Worlds, and is a favorite to grab one of the three open spots on this year’s squad for Budapest. After smashing a 78.00m PB in 2022, Janee’ has shown consistency in 2023–three comps over 75.00m–but has yet to hit the Big One. The USATF Championships has been known to bring out the best in the women hammer throwers, though, so this might be the day. 

Speaking of hitting the Big One, two years ago at the Olympic Trials, 2019 World Champion DeAnna Price set the current American record of 80.31m before falling afoul of the hip and foot injuries which derailed her hopes of medaling in Tokyo and made 2022 all about rehabbing. The good news for hammer fans is that she’s baaaaack, and in spite of a small issue with a benign growth on her foot earlier this spring, looks a lot like her old self. She, too, has been over 75.00m three times this season, with a best of 77.25m at the Ironwood Classic. As to her ability to make the team and contend for the podium in Budapest, DeAnna’s husband/coach JC Lambert says that “it will ultimately come down to staying healthy. She had a couple of training PBs this year for the first time since 2021, so if she can get enough high quality reps in training this summer, I won’t rule out another 80-meter throw.”

Annette Echikunwoke. Photo courtesy of USATF.

Another veteran looking for a return to PB Land is Annette Echikunwoke, who was twelfth in last year’s Worlds. Annette posted her all-time best of 75.49m in 2021, and came close to equaling it in Tucson this May, hitting an even 75.00m at the USATF Throws Festival. That was her only comp of 75.00m or more this season, and she’ll need to throw at least that far to make the Budapest squad. But if you know her story, you know that the challenge of popping off a season’s best at the USATF Championships will not intimidate Annette. She is tough, determined, and battle-tested, and unlikely to wilt under the pressure of today’s comp.

Maggie Ewen, who dominated in the shot put last night, made the US team for the 2017 Worlds as a hammer thrower, but largely set that implement aside after finishing 4th in the shot at the 2019 Worlds.

In the fall of 2021, just after Maggie won the shot at the Diamond League final, I asked her coach, Kyle Long, if they’d ever go back to trying to compete in both events. He described a shot/hammer double as possible, but expressed concern that trying to compete at a world class level in both would be tricky. “It would take a lot of experimental training,” he cautioned, “and the result might be mental exhaustion. The women have pushed the event so far, it might be disrespectful to think ‘Oh yeah, we can do both.’”

But he and Maggie agreed that she had a lot of untapped potential in the hammer, and focusing only on the shot made Maggie miss her days at Arizona State where she won NCAA titles in both (and the disc as well).

They started training hammer again in 2021, but competed only three times. This year, Maggie has thrown the hammer in five comps, and launched a 75.10m PB in Tucson. And, funny thing, splitting her time between the two events has made her a better shot putter.

For one thing, Kyle says, “the hammer is a good specific strength exercise. It trains the dynamic aspect of throwing and is a heck of a workout for Maggie, so even if she doesn’t make the team for Budapest, we’ll keep throwing it in practice.”

Then, there’s the mental aspect. It turns out that training the same implement every day might have caused Maggie to overthink, and certainly made it harder to shake off a bad performance. 

“When she was throwing three events in college,” Kyle explained, “it was easy to move on from a bad day or a bad session because there was always another event to focus on.”

Maggie has described the hammer as a “stress reliever” and after winning the shot title last night with a remarkably consistent series (4 of 6 throws at 19.76m or better) should be in great spirits as she tries to earn a second slot in Budapest.

The Up-and-Comers

So far this season, Rachel Tanczos has been an exception to the rule that throwers always struggle during their first year as pros. Rachel has done the opposite of struggling, instead surpassing her 2022 PB in seven of eight meets as a pro. In her most recent outing, at the Ironwood Classic, she blasted a 73.87m toss that stands as the ninth farthest throw in the world this year.

Rachel Tanczos celebrating her PB earlier this season. Photo lifted from Rachel’s Instagram page.

How did this happen? 

According to Rachel, “it’s a combo of things. When I was in college at Notre Dame, I competed in shot, disc, and hammer, so I just did not get a ton of reps as a hammer thrower. Now, I don’t have to worry about training three events or going to classes. And I’m really happy to be working with AG Kruger at Ashland University.”

Rachel recently made another change that should help her effort to make the podium today. 

“Until a couple of weeks ago,” she says, “I was waitressing at a local brewery, so some days I’d throw, lift, then work five hours on my feet. And I also had to decline a couple of opportunities to compete because I couldn’t get out of my weekend shifts. Finally, I decided that I didn’t move to Ashland to be a waitress.”

Will the additional rest allow Rachel to get near her 73.87m PB and get in the hunt for Budapest? 

“Me being a first-year pro, I don’t feel like I have too much pressure, “she explained. “I’m not sure if I’m on too many people’s radars, but hopefully I can be someone to apply some pressure and maybe come out and make some noise.”

Another rookie on the pro tour hoping to get in the mix today is Jillian Shippee, whose coach, Amin Nikfar, describes her as a “talented athlete, who has developed a lot as a hammer thrower lately.” Jillian demonstrated that development when she PB’d by nearly three meters this season, hitting 73.01m in April.

Jillian Shippee after her big PB. Photo stolen from Jillian’s Instagram page.

The secret to her success? Time on task, according to Coach Nikfar. “We just throw a lot,” he told me recently. “Jillian is really good with consistency, and also with being bold on throws. If you can be bold in competition, a lot will come your way.  I always tell my athletes, the meek might inherit the earth, but they ain’t gonna get six throws.”

Look for Jillian to get the full six tonight, and if any of the Big Guns falter, to make a play for the podium.

Erin Reese showed boldness at the 2021 Trials where she blasted a PB of 72.53m. A lousy 2022 season ensued, but she is back in form this year and has gone over 70 meters six times, including a 73.47m bomb in April and a 72.48m toss at Ironwood. She’s tough under pressure (you can read more about her exploits here)  and like Jillian, looks ready to barge her way into the conversation at USAs. 

Another up-and-comer, Maddie Malone, smashed a 72.37m PB to take second at the recent NCAA meet in Austin. That was her first time over 70 meters, and though she may not be quite ready to compete for a Worlds spot, the experience she gets tonight will serve her well as she embarks on her own career as a pro.

Janeah Stewart, the 2018 NCAA champion, hit 75.43m in 2019 but took time away from the sport to become mother to a little girl named Ja’Myri, who can of late be found running around at practice harassing coach John Smith. “She’s a pickpocket,” he said recently. “She’ll grab your keys or phone if you’re not looking. Great kid, by the way.”

Smith says that it has taken two-and-a-half years for Janeah to finally get back to her old strength and performance levels, but that just in the last thirty days they are again seeing training PBs. 

Stewart has been remarkably consistent this year, throwing between 70.00m and 71.63m in six of seven comps. And Smith is a legendary master of the art of peaking, as evinced when Jalani Davis came up big last night in the shot and made the squad for Budapest.

With Smith in her corner, Stewart cannot be counted out.

Another exciting young hammer thrower, Alyssa Wilson, will sadly not be competing tonight. Wilson caused a sensation at the 2021 Trials when she launched a 73.75m PB in qualification, and followed that with a remarkable 2022 campaign during which she went 74.78m to take second at the NCAAs and 71.73m for sixth at USAs. Unfortunately, a back injury has put a premature end to her first year as a pro. 

Time to get this posted before the comp starts! 

2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships Preview: Adelaide Aquilla

Adelaide on tour with her fellow pros. Photo courtesy of Adelaide’s Instagram page.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Adelaide Aquilla is one of the world’s best shot putters. The 19.64m PB, which is an NCAA record. The four NCAA titles. The third-place finish at the 2021 Olympic Trials. The second-place finish at the 2022 USATF Championships. The recent 19.17m toss at the Bislett Games to score her first Diamond League points in her first year as a pro.

That would be enough to convince just about anyone, except maybe Adelaide herself, who still sometimes grapples with “walk-on imposter syndrome.” 

She was, in fact, a walk-on at Ohio State University coming out of high school, but quickly proved she belonged in DI athletics by making it to the 2019 NCAA finals in Austin, Texas, as a sophomore. She threw a PB 16.29m there to finish twelfth, the first of many occasions that the NCAA Championships would bring out her best.

The following February, Adelaide threw another PB, this time 17.82m, to win her first Big 10 indoor title just before the world closed up shop. When the world opened up again a year later, she earned her second Big 10 indoor title, and first NCAA indoor crown, the latter by tossing a PB of 18.12m. 

She smashed a 19.12m PB to take the 2021 Big 10 outdoor meet, and followed that up with a win at the NCAA Outdoor Championships and, shockingly, that third-place finish at the Trials which put her on the Olympic team at the age of twenty-two. 

Adelaide had a great time hanging out at the training center the US established in Tokyo to keep the athletes Covid-free during the Games, and tried to approach the qualification round with the confidence she’d shown at the Trials, but after throwing 18.95m in Eugene to make the team, she topped out at 17.68m and did not advance to the final.

Adelaide had a remarkable NCAA career, including two indoor titles. Photo courtesy of the Ohio State track site.

That resurrected some of the old doubts about whether or not she really belonged at the top level of the sport. “There was,” she recalls, “a big adjustment period coming back from the  Olympics. I wasn’t happy with my performance, and I had to realign how I looked at myself and to realize I performed well at a bunch of high level meets in 2021, so one bad meet–even if it was the Olympic Games–did not define me.”

Adelaide also had to adjust to working with a new coach, as Ashley Kovacs moved on to Vanderbilt and was replaced by Travis Coleman.

There was a period of adjustment as she and Coleman got to know each other, and at the same time Adelaide was learning to deal with the expectations she perceived others had for her now that she was an Olympian.

That proved to be not so easy, and after opening the indoor season with two meets over 19 meters and taking her third consecutive Big 10 Indoor title, Adelaide struggled to a best of 17.95m at the NCAA Indoor Championships, which consigned her to second place. 

Her slump continued outdoors, and she did not reach 19 meters during March or April. 

Then, one day at practice, she had an epiphany. “One of the guys on the team was throwing a light ball and talking trash to me, as you do in practice,” she recalls. “And he said ‘I bet I can throw this thing farther than you can throw your four-kilo shot.’ This was like twenty minutes after I was done throwing for the day, but I put on my shoes and just got in the ring and beat him. And I was like, this is what’s missing! I need to have fun and be confident in meets just like I was that day in practice. It was a big mindset shift for me.”

Her new attitude paid off big at the NCAAs as she opened with that 19.64m PB and NCAA record. Two weeks later, she reached 19.45m to take second at the USATF Championships and qualify for Worlds.

Adelaide struggled in qualifying there as she had at the Olympics, but enjoyed the experience and looked forward to the 2023 indoor campaign, which would end her college eligibility.

Adelaide with Travis Coleman and Ohio State head coach Rosalind Joseph. Photo courtesy of the Ohio State track site.

She and Coleman had developed an excellent working relationship by then, and preparations for her final tour as a Buckeye were going well, until one day she called in an order to a Starbucks near her house. 

“I went down there to get my coffee,” she recalls, “but I was walking downhill and it was icy. All of a sudden, I was sliding down the hill, and about to fall against a car–a Porsche, actually–so to avoid it, I fell backwards and hyperextended my ankle. That was not surprising for me. I’m very athletic in the ring, but that’s where it ends.”

Adelaide was not allowed to throw or lift for a month, and when she made her season’s debut at the indoor Big 10 meet, she fouled every attempt.

Next came the NCAA Indoor Championships, and her first four attempts there went 15.92m, 17.26m, 17.81m, and 17.17m. Her fifth throw was a foul.

“My throws at the Big 10 meet were out of the right sector,” she explained. “So at NCAAs I was worrying about getting them in instead of relaxing and having fun. Then, on my last attempt, I realized this was my last throw ever as an NCAA athlete, and somehow, I relaxed.”

The result was a 19.28m bomb for the win.

But that was it for college, and her experience this season as a pro has reminded Adelaide of when she was a freshman. 

“I had to find my place in the NCAA, and I eventually proved that I belonged. Now, I have to do it again. All the girls on the tour have been welcoming to me, offering advice and encouragement, and that gives me a lot of hope. But I have to keep reminding myself that these girls have been pros for five or six years, and this is my first season. I’m just trying to prove to myself that I belong.”

The hardest part of life on the circuit?

Traveling alone and not having Coleman at meets to consult between throws. 

That’s one reason Adelaide says she is excited about Saturday’s competition. 

“It will be the first time outdoors that my coach will be there,” she says. “So at least if I think something is wrong, I have a second set of eyes to help me. And I have a level of comfortableness throwing at Hayward. I’ve had a lot of success there, and I know exactly what the ring feels like, so it’s easy for me when I do my visualization to imagine making a perfect throw.”

A perfect throw might not be in the offing, but competing at the USATF Championships has brought out the best in Adelaide Aquilla for the past two years. Will she capture the magic again on Saturday?

The women’s shot final begins at 6:15 pm Pacific time. Tune in and find out.

2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships Preview: Maggie Ewen

Maggie Ewen celebrating her victory and world-leading throw at the LA Grand Prix meet in May. Photo courtesy of USATF.

Look up “huge breakthrough” in any dictionary worth its salt and you’ll find a link to the video of shot putter Maggie Ewen launching a 20.45m rocket earlier this year at the LA Grand Prix

She added another 20-meter toss that day, and in her next four comps went 19.61m, 19.26m, 19.52m, and 19.68m.

Keep in mind that her previous outdoor PB was 19.47m.

According to her coach, Kyle Long, the impetus for this Great Leap Forward can be traced back to the 2021 Olympic Trials where Maggie threw 18.92m and missed making the squad by three centimeters. During that comp, she had a front row seat as first Raven Saunders then Jessica Ramsey produced historic distances for female rotational putters. Saunders’ 19.96m blast briefly put her second all-time behind Jill Camarena-Williams on the list of rotational women. A few minutes later, Ramsey went 20.12m to become the only female spinner besides Camarena-Williams to surpass 20 meters at that point.

Camarena-Williams threw her 20.18m PB in 2011, and as is often the case with visionaries (Did you know Ben Franklin invented swim fins in 1717 at the age of 11?), the world was not quite ready to follow her lead. The glide technique continued to predominate among women for another decade, until the success of Saunders and Ramsey heralded a major shift in the event.

In 2022, Chase Ealey (20.51m), Jiayuan Song (20.38m), Sarah Mitton (20.33m), and Jessica Schilder (20.24m) all breached the 20-meter barrier using the rotational technique. Each of those ladies also finished ahead of Maggie at the 2022 Worlds, as did two more up-and-coming spinners, Jessica Woodard and Maddie-Lee Wesche.

Maggie too had always been a rotational putter, and a successful one at that. She won the 2018 NCAA title in the shot while competing for Arizona State, and that same year raised the NCAA record to 19.46m. 

After graduating that spring, Maggie, according to Coach Long, “seemed to be in a great place. She chipped away and got points at Diamond League meets. She finished fourth at the World Championships in 2019 (with a throw of 18.93m). But when Ramsey threw 20.12m at the Trials, and then Chase threw 20.49m at Worlds last year, it was a reality check. The women’s shot put world had moved forward, and Maggie could either move forward as well or be left behind.”

Kyle noticed when they began training for the 2023 season that Maggie was on a mission. “She has always wanted to do her best,” he says. “But now, she’s focused on making sure her best puts her up there with the world’s best.”

So far in 2023, mission accomplished. Maggie’s 20.45m PB has her ranked number one in the world. 

Going into Saturday’s USATF women’s shot comp, Maggie says she is in a good place. 

“After the season ended in 2022,” she said in a recent appearance on the Throw Big Throw Far Podcast, “we made some changes to my strength training, and Kyle got the job as throws coach at the university of South Dakota, so we moved to Vermillion. The move helped give me a fresh start in a new place, and now I’m in a much better place in my life and my mindset…a place where I have the ability to thrive and accomplish the things I want to accomplish.”

First on that list of accomplishments will be securing a spot on the squad for Budapest.

Chase has a bye this year after winning the 2022 Worlds, so three spots will be up for grabs with Maggie, Woodard, and Adelaide Aquilla as the favorites.

The comp will begin at 6:15 pm Pacific time.

2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships Preview: Chase Ealey

Chase Ealey prepares to drop the hammer at the 2022 Worlds in Eugene. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

Chase Ealey kicked a lot of butt last year.

After blasting a 20.21m PB to take second at Indoor Worlds, she was literally unbeatable outside where she opened with 18.74m in Great Britain, 19.51m in Qatar, 19.76m in Germany, and 19.98m in the Netherlands–all wins. Those comps were just a prelude, though, to an historic summer during which she ripped off a run of seven consecutive 20-meter performances, including a 20.49m gold-medal-winning toss in Eugene to earn her first World title.

Her best mark from last summer, a PB of 20.51m at the 2022 USATF Championships, stands as the farthest throw ever by a female shot putter using the rotational technique. 

It was a stunning turnaround after a long bout with long Covid wrecked Chase’s 2021 season and had people doubting if she’d ever reach the potential she’d flashed while winning her first USATF title in 2019. The story of her climb back to the top of the sport is a good one (you can read about it here), and her success in 2022 got Chase and her coach Paul Wilson looking for larger hills to summit.

Defending her title at the 2023 Worlds and fighting for an Olympic gold medal in 2024 loomed as the next challenges on the horizon, but Chase and Coach Wilson also began speaking openly of conquering the Everest of women’s shot putting–Natalya Lisovskaya’s 22.63m World Record. 

That mark has stood since 1987, and modern anti-doping protocols seemed to have rendered it untouchable, but speaking last fall, Wilson said that advances in the rotational technique have put the record in play for athletes like Chase. “The rotational technique will finally give a clean athlete the chance to break the record” he opined. “It has already made twenty meters like nineteen meters used to be for the women. With an athlete as talented as Chase who has only been rotating for a few years, we don’t know what her boundaries will be, but I’d say the sky’s the limit.” 

So far in 2023, though, Chase’s path up the mountain has been neither straight nor easy.

Just before the start of the indoor season, she pinched some rib cartilage on the left side of her torso, which made throwing painful. That led to results of 18.61m and 17.90m in her first two meets, though she then popped off a 20.03m toss at the Millrose Games, a testament to her toughness and formidable physical gifts.

Paul says he wanted to pull Chase from those early indoor meets but she insisted on honoring her obligations. “She feels like she will be letting people down if she drops out of a comp,” he explained. “And she does not like letting people down.”

Over time, the injury healed, and Chase was throwing pain free by April. 

She has yet to find her groove outdoors, though, at least in part because of technical adjustments she and Paul have made with an eye on Budapest, Paris, and Lisovskaya.

Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

Paul says that after watching Ryan Crouser throw at the Millrose Games, Chase wanted to experiment with using her left arm the way Crouser does in order to create a more “wrapped” or coiled position at the front of the ring. This could potentially add power and distance to her throws, but technical changes require patience–it can take time before they translate to farther distances.

“A lot of it,” says Wilson, “is that she has to be confident with her technique during competitions. She has to commit to it. It’s still not second nature to her, so her timing is off and she’s been skying throws near twenty meters. But once she gets everything connected and gets the delivery going forwards, she’ll be untouchable again.”

(Note: Paul was not kidding about Chase “skying” throws near 20 meters. I was at the LA Grand Prix, and her 19.98m there was a moonshot.) 

Because of Chase’s hectic travel schedule, Wilson estimates they’ve only had half a dozen “proper technical sessions” together the entire summer. But after USAs, she’ll head back to their home base in Great Britain for five solid weeks of preparation in advance of Worlds. 

“The way her season has gone so far with only one throw over twenty meters outdoors,” he says, “has probably given her competitors a false sense of security.  But once she starts reaping the rewards of the things we’re working on now, she’ll be tough to beat.”

As defending champion, Chase has a bye into the 2023 Worlds, but you can bet she’ll be fired up to defend her US title this Saturday in Eugene.

Will that be the day when her technical adjustments click and she moves a little higher up the side of Mt. Lisovskaya?

Tune in at 6:15 pm Pacific and find out!

Will Chase create another happy Hayward Field moment on Saturday? I wouldn’t bet against her. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships Preview: 5 Questions about the Men’s Disc

Sam Mattis with his coach Dane Miller on a day when Sam definitely did not throw like poop. Photo courtesy of Sam’s Instagram page.

Can Sam Mattis stop throwing like doo-doo and win his second national title?

In 2022, Sam Mattis showed himself to be a legit world-class discus thrower by…

  1. Making the finals at Worlds
  2. Finishing fourth at the Diamond League final
  3. Throwing really far (67.19m) in a place that is not California, Arizona, or Oklahoma (he did it in Croatia)

Those three items make Sam’s resumé unique among the current crop of American male discus throwers, and would have denoted him as the clear favorite at the 2023 Toyota USATF Championships held this week in Eugene had he not fallen into a month-long slump.

“He’s been throwing like beep,” Sam’s coach Dane Miller told me recently. “Probably because of the travel.”

Sam’s success in 2022 got him invited to 2023 comps in places as far afield as Qatar, Morocco, Norway, and Finland and, according to Miller, “Sam is so dialed into his patterns of lifting, sleeping and whatever, that it always takes him a while to get back in a groove after he comes home from overseas.”

Luckily, Sam will have had three solid weeks of stateside training by the time the men’s discus comp kicks off at 3:30pm Pacific on Thursday. Dane says that Sam is once again “slamming it” and looks forward to competing for a spot on the US squad for Worlds. 

Prediction: Sam will, in fact, find his mojo and come out on top at the USATF Championships for the first time since 2019.

NCAA discus champ Turner Washington in a serene moment. Photo courtesy of the ASU track page.

Will Turner Washington lose his shirt?

The most memorable moment of the recent NCAA track championships came when Arizona State’s Turner Washington launched a 66.22m missile to win the men’s discus comp, ripped off his shirt, and sprinted over to the stands to celebrate in front of some Arkansas fans who had been razzing him throughout the evening. 

It was a remarkable comeback for Turner who, discouraged by injury and lack of progress, had retired from throwing a year earlier. Luckily, former shot put great Ryan Whiting took over the ASU throws squad and coaxed Turner back into the sport. Now, if he can reach anywhere close to his NCAA-winning mark, he will secure a spot in Budapest.

I have generously offered to travel to Eugene and trash talk Turner during Thursday’s comp to help fire him up, but I have not yet heard back from Whiting or his representatives. Nor have I received an airline ticket from them. 

But I’ll keep checking my inbox.

Prediction: With or without me there slinging insults, Turner will finish in the top three, make his first Worlds team, and celebrate shirtless.

Brian Williams after qualifying for the 2022 Worlds. Photo courtesy of Brian’s Instagram page.

Will throwing fixed-feet fix Brian Williams’ feet?

After hitting 66.14m in 2022, Brian Williams’ best mark so far this season is the 63.54m he threw at the Ironwood Classic last month. He and his coach Ryan Whiting have been working on technical adjustments, and so far they are having more success when Brian stays on the ground as he finishes his throws. This is something that all discus throwers do in training, but most throw farther when they “reverse” or jump on their follow through. 

In Brian’s case, he has occasionally reached 65 meters in practice without reversing, only to suffer a loss in distance when he jumps into his finish.

If Sam Mattis and Turner Washington are on their game, they will likely battle for the top two spots at USAs, but after that the field is wide open. Don’t be surprised if Brian goes fixed-feet for at least one or two rounds in an effort to get into the 64-meter range, which would likely secure him a spot on the team.

Prediction: Brian will eschew the reverse, hug the ground, and make the team.

Wow, and I thought the guys throwing at NCAA’s were old! Nik Arrhenius and child. Photo courtesy of Nik’s Instagram page.

Why is a former Swedish champion throwing in this meet?

That would be Niklas Arrhenhius, a fifteen-time former Swedish champion–five in the indoor shot, three in the outdoor shot, seven in the disc. 

But he was born and raised in the United States, and has long contemplated the idea of competing at a US championships.

“Throwing,” he explained recently, “was always a Swedish thing for me because my dad competed for Sweden. I’m proud of my heritage, and was always glad to represent Sweden at the World and European Championships.”

But there was something about the Olympic Games that got him thinking stars and stripes.

“At the 2008 Olympics,” Nik recalls, “I remember seeing the Dream Team in the cafeteria at the Olympic Village and I thought, ‘I’m not that Swedish. I was born in America. Maybe I should represent the US?’”

If it were only that simple. Nik began seriously pursuing a change of allegiance in 2016, but then the IAAF froze all applications. He filed again in 2019, hoping to qualify for the 2020 US Trials, but found out that competing for Sweden in a dual meet versus Finland that August put the kibosh on the process for three years. 

Now, he’s finally eligible, and on Thursday will make his US Championships debut at the age of 40.

His goal in the comp?

“I’d like to get a season’s best and qualify for the full six throws. With my athletes (Nik coaches at Brigham Young University) we talk about having a ‘fearless goal.’ There’s no point in going into a competition with a goal that makes you anxious, so just pick one that you know you can reach and build from there. For me, that’s getting a season’s best and earning six throws.”

Right now, Nik’s SB stands at 61.72m, the twentieth year in a row he has hit the 60-meter mark.

Does that make him old? Maybe. Determined? Certainly. Worth watching on Thursday at 3:30pm Pacific time? Absolutely.

Prediction: Nik goes 62 meters and celebrates with a nap.

Dallin Shurts will try to make a second surprise podium appearance at USAs. Photo courtesy of the BYU track page.

Speaking of the Swedish guy, how is he at double-tasking?

As mentioned, Nik coaches at BYU. His best thrower is Dallin Shurts, who pulled off a shocker last year by taking second in this meet.  Dallin, an extremely large and affable young man, is in the field again, and Nik is hoping they end up in the same flight. 

“If they split up the field and he’s in the first flight and I’m in the second, I won’t be able to coach him because I’ll be in the holding area waiting to compete. If it’s the other way around, I’ll have to throw then run over to the coaches box. So, I’m hoping we end up together.”

Can Dallin, who has been hobbled by plantar fasciitis much of the season, make another run at the podium? 

“I think he can,” says Nik. “I just want him to hit his cues, and if he does he can go 63-plus, which might be enough.”

However the comp goes for them on Thursday, Nik and Dallin plan to be back in the mix in 2024. 

Nik’s first big senior-level meet was the 2006 European Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, the site of the 2024 World Masters Championships. 

“It might be fun for me to have my first and last championships be in the same city,” he says.

Prediction: The big blonde will throw well and just miss the podium. Nik will still be proud of him.

2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships Preview: Brooke Andersen

Brooke Andersen at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA

If you want to be the best hammer thrower in the world, you’ve got to start with some innate talent, and Brooke Andersen had plenty of that. 

Nathan Ott, her longtime coach, says that when he first began training Brooke at Northern Arizona University in 2014, he knew she was special. 

“I thought she could be the American record holder someday,” he recalled recently. “She was like the perfect block of granite or lump of clay to an artist. She was quick and dynamic and very coachable.”

Brooke threw 59.37m during that first season with Ott, and by 2018 had improved to 74.20m. At the same time, her event was becoming more and more competitive in the United States. In early June of that year,  Gwen Berry pushed the American record to 77.78m. Three weeks later, at the 2018 USATF Championships in Des Moines, DeAnna Price raised it to 78.12m.

As talented as Brooke was, she and Coach Ott quickly realized that in order to compete with the best in the US, she had to develop the mental strength necessary to throw well under pressure, something that, according to Ott, is harder than people think.

He says that many people mistake determination–the willingness to run through a brick wall–for mental toughness. But the kind of mental strength Brooke needed was more subtle.

“You can’t win in a high-pressure competition,” he explained, “by trying to crush your throws. You have to be able to stay within yourself and throw with some finesse. That’s not easy to do when there’s a lot on the line, and I was in many competitions with Brooke where she tightened up and underperformed.”

A big breakthrough came at the 2019 USATF Championships, also in Des Moines. Early on in that comp, Maggie Ewen, a rival of Brooke’s from their college days, hit a PB of 75.04m. With Price and Berry also in the field, it seemed likely that Brooke would have to find a way to beat Maggie if she wanted to finish in the top three and make the squad for the 2019 Worlds.

Earlier that season, Brooke had thrown 76.75m at the Ironwood Classic, but that was a comparatively low key comp. Could she answer Ewen’s PB with a spot at the World Championships on the line?

It turned out she could. Brooke reached 75.30m in round three, and that was enough to get her on the podium behind Price–who extended her American record to 78.24m–and Berry.

Looking back, Ott says the 2019 USAs represented an important moment in Brooke’s career. 

“She was always in Maggie’s shadow during college,” he explained. “Then when Brooke finally beat her, she was like, ‘I can beat Maggie now. I can do this!’ It was a turning point.”

The next pivotal moment would come at the 2022 Worlds in Eugene, but first Brooke had to endure some painful lessons about competing on the sport’s biggest stages. A tricky thing about professional athletics is that as you climb the ladder of success, the pressure to succeed can seem to grow and mutate like Ursula, the evil octopus lady in The Little Mermaid. In college, an athlete’s first NCAA Championships can feel nerve-wracking. Later, it’s their first USATF Championships, or at least the first one where they have a chance to make an international team. Then, when they get past that hurdle, as Brooke did in 2019, they show up for their first Worlds or Olympics and there’s Ursula sitting by the cage looking bigger and badder than ever. So it went for Brooke at the 2019 Worlds in Doha, where she finished twentieth with a best throw of 68.46m.

Two years later, at the 2021 US Olympic Trials, Brooke finished second to Price with an impressive 77.72m toss, a distance that would surely get her a medal in Tokyo if she could replicate it there. But she couldn’t. 

She made it through the qualification round with a throw of 74.00m–a big improvement over her Doha performance–but could do no better than 72.16m for a tenth-place finish in the final.

When the 2022 season began, Brooke quickly demonstrated that she’d become the best hammer thrower in the world by raising her PB to 79.02m and routinely surpassing the 77-meter line. 

In June she won her first US title with a 77.96m bomb, and in July she and Ott traveled to Eugene for the 2022 World Championships, which she had a great chance to win–if she could throw to her potential.

Brooke made it through the qualification round easily, but got a little jumpy during warmups for the final and blasted her only two practice attempts into the cage. 

“Hey,” Ott told her as the competition began in earnest, “you’re in great shape. Be patient, put one into the field, and you’ll be fine.”

Her first-round throw of 74.81m gave them both a chance to breathe, but she fouled in round two and reached only 72.74m in round three. Meanwhile, Canada’s Camryn Rogers took the lead with a toss of 75.52m. She was followed by Janee’ Kassanavoid, who put herself into the medal hunt with a second-round throw of 74.86m.

There is always a short break after three rounds in a major final, as the lineup is reordered to reflect the current standings. When the comp resumed, it could have gone either way for Brooke. If she gave into her anxiety and tried to smash her final three attempts, her odds of winning were not good. If she regained her composure and threw like she had all season, she’d be tough to beat.

In Des Moines in 2019, after she’d qualified for her first Worlds team, Brooke told me that when she needed to find her rhythm she would tell herself to just make the hammer go 62 meters. That helped her to relax and throw easy which, paradoxically, often resulted in bigger distances.

I’m not sure if she used that cue on her fourth attempt at the 2022 Worlds, but when the hammer landed, it looked to have gone somewhere between 75 and 80 meters.

Unfortunately, the ring official raised a red flag signaling a foul.

Brooke begged to differ, and calmly walked over to the scorer’s table to file a protest. They were already examining the video, and assured her that the call would be overturned. A few minutes later, she was credited with a distance of 77.42m.

Take that, Ursula.

“Ok, that looks far!” Brooke at the 2022 Worlds. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

Now securely in relaxo mode, Brooke improved to 77.56m in round five and finished with an emphatic 78.96m to take the title over Rodgers and Kassanavoid, who did not improve upon their earlier marks.

Ott, understandably, was proud. “To have her be in that state of mind where she was pressing, but then break out of it…It would have been so easy to stay on that path, but she found a way to relax. And once she found that comfort zone, she wasn’t going to lose. You could see it in her eyes. If Camryn or Janee’ had made a big throw, Brooke was ready to respond.”

Brooke and Coach Ott at the 2022 Worlds. Photo courtesy of me!

Brooke has continued to improve this season, and after opening with marks of 79.80m and 78.69m at her first two meets in April, in May she became the third woman ever, after DeAnna Price and Poland’s Anita Włodarczyk, to throw 80 meters. 

Is the World Record–82.98m held by Wlodarczyk–a possibility? 

Brooke is, according to Coach Ott, still developing. “We don’t know her ceiling,” he says. “She keeps getting better, and has not plateaued. I know what she responds to in training, and her technique is getting sharper. She still moves quickly and is dynamic, and she’s got more there. The World Record has always been a crazy dream, so we’ll see.”

The women’s hammer at the 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships will be contested on Sunday at 4:00pm Pacific time. 

Tune in. You never know when something crazy might happen.

2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships Preview: Erin Reese

Erin Reese hopes to show up big under pressure this Sunday in Eugene.

Every summer, legions of coaches, trainers, and sports psychologists do their best to help throwers hit PBs at major championships, and every summer they largely fail. At the 2022 Worlds in Eugene for example, 235 athletes spread across the four throwing events produced a total of seven PBs, proof that it is not easy to execute smooth, rhythmic throws when your dreams hang in the balance.

And yet…

Going into the 2019 NCAA Championships, hammer thrower Erin Reese–a senior representing Indiana State University–had a PB of 65.33m, which ranked her twelfth in a field of twenty-four. In order to realize her dream of reaching the podium, she first had to secure a spot in the final, which would likely take a throw in the 67-meter range–in other words, a substantial PB.

Unfortunately, when the competition began, Erin fouled her first attempt. Her second measured just 59.64m.  After three rounds, the field would be reduced to nine throwers, so the challenge going into her third attempt was clear: hit 67 meters or hit the road.

She was not exactly brimming with confidence. “I went up to my coach, Brandan Bettenhausen,” she recalled recently, “with tears in my eyes and said, ‘I can’t believe this is how my college career is going to end!’ Then I started really crying.”

Bettenhausen was having none of it. 

“He looked at me and said, ‘Are you kidding? You’ve put in too much work to go out like this. You are going to get in there, you are going to throw far, and you are going to make the final!’”

And she did. With one last do-or-die attempt remaining, Erin smashed a three-meter PB–68.36m, to be exact–which lifted her into fourth place.

“After that,” she says, “I was like, ‘Okay! Great way to end my career! Let’s pack it in!'”

Once more, Bettenhausen begged to differ.

“Get in there,” he told her. “And do that again.”

In round four, Erin improved to 69.55m. In round five, she broke the coveted 70-meter barrier by 46 centimeters. She finished with a fourth consecutive PB, 71.06m, to take second behind Cal’s Camryn Rogers, who also produced a lifetime best–71.50m–that day.

“All year,” according to Erin, “Coach had been telling me that I was capable of throwing 70 meters, but I didn’t believe him. Finally, in the finals at the NCAA Championships I decided to trust him and trust myself, and it happened.”

Prior to that comp, Erin had considered the possibility of embarking on a pro career in the hammer, and her performance at NCAAs gave her the “clarification” she needed to take that step. 

Erin chose to stick around at Indiana State as a volunteer assistant in order to continue training with Bettenhausen. She also began working full time as a mental health case manager for middle and high school students, which meant holding training sessions before and after work. 

Then 2020 happened. During the lockdown, the only place Erin and Bettenhausen could find to throw was a junkyard. One day Erin broke her foot on a piece of junk.

A less determined person might have reconsidered their life choices at that point, but Erin persisted and came out smoking in 2021, surpassing 70 meters in three of her first four comps. 

At the Olympic Trials that year, the prelims and finals in the throwing events were held on different days as they would be in Tokyo, and Erin blasted a PB of 72.53m on her second attempt in qualification. That got her into the final two days later, but qualification marks did not carry over and the best she could muster there was 67.88m for a seventh-place finish.

Up to that point, Erin had been a three-turn hammer thrower, but she and Bettenhausen decided that if she was going to be able to keep up in what was becoming one of the most competitive events for US women, she needed to make the switch to four turns.

Throwers who have tried will tell you that making a major technical change as a pro can be tough. It is extremely difficult to throw well under pressure if your technique feels unstable, and when you are fighting to make teams and qualify for funding, every competition comes with pressure. So it was not surprising when Erin struggled to reach 70 meters in 2022 after hitting it repeatedly in 2021.

Not surprising, but also not easy.

“I came back from every meet,” Erin says of that season, “and cried and asked Brandan, ‘What am I doing?’”

It turns out what they were doing was laying the groundwork for a solid 2023 campaign. 

Comfortable now using four turns, Erin has been over 70 meters at six of nine competitions this season, including a PB 73.47m at her opener in April and a solid 72.48m at the Ironwood Classic in June. 

Erin says she “dreams all the time” about making the team for the 2023 World Championships, but knows it will not be easy even with 2022 gold-medalist Brooke Andersen receiving a bye into Budapest.

That leaves three spots up for grabs at the 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships, but among those competing for them will be Worlds bronze medalist Janee’ Kassanavoid, 2019 World Champion DeAnna Price, 2022 Worlds finalist Annette Echikunwoke, and former NCAA hammer champ Maggie Ewen, who also happens to be the current world leader in the shot put.

Erin is one of a half-dozen young throwers who, in addition to the ladies mentioned above, could conceivably challenge for a spot on the team in what may be the most competitive event of the entire US Championships.

But making the squad will likely require another PB at the most pressure-packed moment of her career.

Erin welcomes the challenge and says she expects this to be the “funnest” competition ever.

Prelims and finals will not be separated this year as they were in 2021, so you can see the whole comp in one chunk on Sunday. The fun will begin at 4:00pm Pacific time.

The Monday Morning Meathead: June 26th Edition

Photo by me!

Two walks

“Everyone you meet here is someone.”

That’s what my friend Sean Denard, the throws coach at UCLA, told me one morning recently as we sipped iced tea in a hotel lobby in Austin, Texas.

We were in town for the 2023 NCAA meet, Sean to coach, me to spectate, and we’d found a pleasant place to relax during the heat of the day.

I’d been telling Sean about my walk home from the track the night before. Mike Myers stadium was a straight shot from our hotel, maybe a twenty-minute stroll along one of the avenues that connect the University of Texas campus with downtown Austin. 

But I have a terrible sense of direction, and after getting up at 4:30am for my flight, then scrambling around in the sweltering heat all evening covering the men’s hammer, javelin and shot comps, I found myself at 10:30pm wobbling along a nearly deserted street unsure of whether or not it would lead me back to the Westin. 

Luckily, I was not completely alone. There was one man walking in the same direction about twenty meters ahead, and a traffic light delayed him long enough for me to catch up. 

“Hello!” I said  “Is this the way to the downtown area?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I think so.”

That was invitation enough for me, and I fell into step alongside him.

I assumed he too had come from the meet, and he had. It turns out he coached at Maryland, so we spoke about their shot putter Jeff Kline who had finished 19th in that night’s comp. We spoke about the ways that joining the Big 10 Conference had changed Maryland athletics, and how the addition of USC and UCLA might cause further changes. We spoke of the difficulty universities face in balancing athletic opportunities for men and women. We spoke of the problem of homelessness that plagues Austin and so many other American cities. Before long, I’d forgotten about feeling tired and lost.

Then a car passed us and stopped at a light. 

“Hey,” my new acquaintance exclaimed. “That car has no driver!”

My first thought was, “Well, I’m not the only one delirious from the heat.” But I looked and saw he was right. It was a medium-sized car, white with cameras attached to the roof and nobody behind the wheel. The light changed and off it went, as did my new friend when he spotted his hotel one avenue over.

“He was a really nice guy,” I told Denard the next day. 

“That was Andrew Valmon,” he informed me. “You were walking with an Olympian.”

Denard was right. Andrew Valmon was not only an Olympian but, according to my Google machine, a two time gold-medalist in the 4×400 relay. He also helped set a World Record in that event at the 1993 World Championships.

Which got me thinking. Coach Valmon is a World Record holder, and I was able to catch up to him on our walk from the stadium. And not many people know this, but a couple of years ago I defeated 2016 Olympic discus champ Chris Harting in a spirited game of air hockey. Was this a trend? Could it be that I am just now entering my athletic prime?  Something to contemplate.

The second walk took place two days later. My wife Alice accompanied me on the trip to Austin but stayed back at the hotel on the first two nights of competition as she is averse to watching strangers run, jump and throw in 95-degree heat. The night of the discus final, though, was also the night of the men’s 5,000 meters, whose field included Parker Wolfe, the grandson of my wife’s beloved cousin. 

Parker ran a great race, so Alice was in fine spirits on our walk back to the Westin after the meet. The only thing that could make the night even better for her was making new friends and telling them about Parker. 

That’s how we ended up talking with Andrew Ferris, a distance coach at Iona. He happened to be walking in the same direction. He happened to pause at the same intersection. He happened to look like a distance guy. He stood no chance of avoiding us.

Before the light changed, Coach Ferris knew all about Parker, and we knew that Coach Ferris was originally from Australia. And you know how Australians are often stereotyped as good, friendly people? Coach Ferris fit that mold. When he found out I was a throws guy, he told me about his home club and how it served as sort of a throwing hub in Australia. 

“Lots of throwers stop by to train,” he said. “Koji Murofushi did a camp there once.”

Speaking of Australian stereotypes, I couldn’t resist asking him about another.

“I have to know,” I interjected as we resumed our stroll. “How in the hell do Australians survive when just about every creature there wants to kill you?’

“Ah, we’re used to it,” he replied, with a laugh. “But, you know which animal kills the most tourists?”

My wife never passes up a chance to disparage snakes, so that was her guess. I went with crocodiles.

“Nope. Conch shells.”

We were shocked.

“Yep. Tourists see a conch, they reach down to pick it up, but they don’t realize the creature inside of it is poisonous. Touch one, and you’re dead in fifteen minutes. Can’t get to a hospital in fifteen minutes, can you? Here’s my hotel.”

We wished Coach Ferris good night and good luck for the rest of the meet and on any future visits home as well. He shared one more quick story before we parted.

“When I was a little kid,” he told us, “maybe seven or eight years old, I was riding my bike and saw what I thought was a stick poking up from the ground. I smacked the stick with my hand, but it turned out to be a snake, an eastern brown snake, the most poisonous in Australia. I smacked it right in its head, but for some reason it didn’t bite me. I’d have been a goner if he had, so I’m lucky to even be here. Nice meeting you!”

With that, Coach Ferris disappeared into his hotel. But he wasn’t the only one feeling fortunate. Sometimes it takes a close encounter with a poisonous snake or killer conch to make a guy appreciate his luck, but for me walking hand in hand with my favorite person towards a cold beer on a sweltering night was reminder enough.

All in due time

This was Cal shot putter Jeff Duensing’s meet progression during the 2023 outdoor season:

18 March: 18.75m

1 April: 18.91m

15 April: 18.06m

29 April: 18.81m

13 May: 18.94M

24 May: 19.80m

7 June: 19.98m 

The 19.98m was more than a meter farther than his 2022 outdoor PB, and he hit that big throw when it counted the most: at the recent NCAA Championships.

Jeff Duensing competes in the Men’s Shot Put during the 2023 NCAA Track & Field Championships in Austin, TX. (Photo credit: Brendan Maloney / KLC fotos)

Every thrower dreams of having a huge breakthrough at the most important time of the year, so when I saw Jeff’s coach, Mo Saatara, the next day I asked him how they’d managed it.

“He finally believed me that he could throw far with rhythm,” Mo replied, and we shared a nice laugh but I needed more detail. Inquiring minds and all that. So I called Mo a few days later and he filled me in. 

“Every year,” he told me, “I sit down with my throwers and say ‘Okay, what is the next thing we need to improve?’ For sure, everyone can keep getting stronger each year, but it may be that a thrower needs to change their approach in certain ways. We try to target areas where they have the most room to develop and focus on one main thing. This year with Jeff, we decided to work on rhythm and timing.”

The effort Mo and Jeff put in during the fall and winter seemed to pay dividends right away as Jeff opened his indoor campaign with a 19.39m PB. At his next comp, though, he fell back to 18.09m, an indication that more work was required before the changes they’d made would hold up in competition.

At that point, they agreed to “sacrifice the beginning and middle of the outdoor season” and go back to working meticulously on Jeff’s rhythm. 

Mo says they “had to keep the training volume higher than normal” as the outdoor season began, “and this kept his performances low. We looked at what parts of his throw were off, and the main factor was the timing of his delivery. Working on that required a high volume of throwing, so we knew Jeff would not be in his best competition shape early in the season. But, one thing I’ve learned over the years is that in a technique event like the shot put, which takes a long time to master, you have to be willing to spend a longer time in certain training phases. A lot of people think you have to change the training stimuli every three-to-four weeks or even every two weeks, but to achieve results that last you have to give the athlete a chance to adapt. Sometimes, that means spending ten or twelve weeks in a phase of training.”

As you can see from the numbers cited above, Jeff’s competition results were not outwardly promising during March and April. 

But, Mo says Jeff showed definite signs of improvement at the Pac 12 meet in May, and his training numbers indicated he was rounding into form as regionals approached.

“We keep records of training results,” he explained, “and one thing we look at is performance trends in training because they indicate what you can do in competition. It’s not necessarily a direct correlation because in a competition you have a lot more adrenaline, so you don’t have to throw seventy feet in practice to throw it in a meet. But Jeff’s training results were getting better, and going into regionals I thought he could do somewhere between 19.60m and 20 meters. The 19.80m gave him confidence that he could compete with the best guys, and that really helped him in Austin.”

Going forward, Mo believes that Jeff will continue to improve.

“He gets overlooked sometimes because he’s only six feet tall, and he’s not flexible, so he doesn’t necessarily hit beautiful positions. But he’s explosive and coordinated, and he works really hard on technical mastery. And now, he understands the value of rhythm.” 

Victories, large and small

Annette Echikunwoke at the 2023 USATF NYC Grand Prix. Photo courtesy of USATF.

Two years ago, Annette Echikunwoke was napping in her room at a training center in Kisarazu, Japan, when she was awakened by a knock at her door. The visitor turned out to be a coach from the Nigerian national team there to inform her that because the Nigerian Federation had failed to administer the required number of drug tests in the weeks leading up to the Olympic Games, Annette and several of her teammates were no longer eligible to compete in Tokyo. It was her twenty-fifth birthday. She had been scheduled to make her Olympic debut three days later. 

One year ago, as the 2022 USATF Championships approached, Annette once again found herself in a precarious situation. After the Olympic debacle, she’d applied with World Athletics to switch her allegiance back to the United States. A week before the USATF Champs, she had still not received a definitive answer. 

“I would come out of practice,” she said recently when asked to reflect on those days, “and cry in my car because I felt so overwhelmed by all the uncertainty.” 

The Sunday before the hammer comp, Annette sat in church praying with one of her religious mentors. “She reminded me that it is up to God to open some doors and shut other doors, and if competing at USAs was meant to happen, it would happen. That prayer touched me and helped me handle the stress of not knowing.”

That Wednesday, Annette woke up at her place in Cincinnati where she lives and trains and saw a message on her phone informing her that she was cleared to compete. The hammer comp was on Thursday. In Eugene.

Somehow, she arranged a flight, made it through processing, tossed an SB of 73.76m and earned a spot on the US squad for Worlds.

The challenges Annette has faced this summer, so far anyway, have been much less dramatic. 

Last weekend’s USATF NYC Grand Prix meeting for example, was scheduled at 9am, and Annette says “it rained all day on Friday, then into the competition on Saturday morning until ten minutes after we were finished. Then it stopped and the sun came out. But it was no problem. I’m used to throwing in the rain in Cincinnati.”

And she’d heard in the days before the meet that the ring at Icahn Stadium was “not the most even surface, so the rain probably balanced it out in our favor.”

Annette ended up being the only hammer thrower among the men and women who made it through six rounds without fouling, and she won with a series (69.70m, 68.36m, 69.15m, 68.72m, 70.69m, 71.11m) that showed remarkable consistency. 

But, as in most of her comps this year, Annette was frustrated by her inability to hit a big throw. 

Her season’s best remains the 75.00m she tossed at the USATF Throws Festival in May, and in June she knocked out her best throw ever in Europe–73.66m at the Irena Szewinska Memorial meeting in Poland. “But,” says Annette, “I’m stronger this year, so there is more to come out in terms of distance. My goal is still to distinguish myself as one of the world’s best hammer throwers.”

She might have taken an important step in that direction in New York. It was the first time this season that Annette’s longtime coach, Susan Seaton, was able to see her throw in person, and afterwards she told Annette that she knew “exactly what we have to do going forward.”

According to Annette, one key to unlocking some big throws might be to give herself more grace when struggling at practice.

She says a “tiny part of the reason I haven’t thrown as far as I could this season is because I’m so self-critical. In just about every throw, I’m very aware of what’s going on with my technique, and I’m always telling myself I’ve got to do better.”

To encourage Annette to be a little more patient with herself, Coach Seaton shared an interview Ryan Crouser gave after breaking his own World Record at the recent LA Grand Prix. In it, Ryan reflects on a difficult period he went through in 2018, and explains how he climbed out of a technical rut by focusing not on the many things he thought he was doing wrong but on one simple thing each session that he was doing right.

Annette says that since watching the video, she has done her best to “believe in practice and not be so self-critical in practice, and to encourage myself in practice rather than just trying to be positive in meets.”

Bottom line, “we have to remember to applaud ourselves when we do something right.”

Her next competition will be on July 9th at the 2023 USATF Championships when she will take on a stellar field that will include 2022 World champion Brooke Andersen, 2022 World bronze medalist Janee’ Kassanavoid, 2019 World champion DeAnna Price, former NCAA champ Maggie Ewen who set a new PB of 75.10m in May, and first-year pro Alyssa Wilson who has a PB of 74.78m. 

As defending champ, Brooke has a bye for Budapest so Annette’s job will be to finish ahead of at least one of the other contenders from the above group, although she reminded me that someone unexpected might make a run for the podium as well. 

“Anything can happen,” she cautioned. “There are the marks on paper, and then there is what is actually going to happen in the competition. Look at me last year. I don’t think a lot of people even knew I was trying to switch my allegiance, so when I showed up at USAs, people were probably like, ‘What the heck is happening?’”

However things turn out in Eugene, Annette will stay positive going forward.

“I know my future is bright” she says. “I’m here for a reason, and I’ll keep working hard until God says ‘Do something else!’”

The Monday Morning Meathead: June 19th Edition.

I’ve been traveling a lot and also contemplating how to make progress on a ten-year plan to paint our house, which is now entering it’s thirteenth year. The plan, I mean. But, I’m ready to commit to a weekly piece on the throws which, as is the case with this inaugural edition, may not appear until Monday evening each week. But “Monday Evening Meathead” doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

This photo of, from left to right, a person unknown, Kristjan Čeh, the great Estonian raconteur Raul Rebane, Robert Urbanek, and Daniel Ståhl at the recent Heino Lipp Memorial meeting is courtesy of Robert’s Instagram page from which I stole it.

The Big Man is Back

IN 2019, a year during which Daniel Ståhl was nearly unbeatable, he averaged a best throw of 70.15m in his first six competitions, if we forgive him a No Mark at the Paavo Nurmi Games, which we will. At the end of that season, he was World champion.

In 2021, on the way to Olympic gold, he averaged 68.23m in his first six comps.

Last year, as Daniel turned thirty years old and had to deal with the emergence of Kristjan Čeh (expected) and Mykolas Alekna (not so much) as full-fledged phenoms, that number fell to 67.45m. Unfortunately, those first six meets were a harbinger of things to come as Daniel finished fourth at the 2022 Worlds and fifth at the European Championships.

Will his first six comps of 2023 be a harbinger as well? If so, it might be tough to keep Daniel off the podium in Budapest as his average so far this year is 69.68m.

What accounts for this revival? “He’s having fun again,” says his former coach Vésteinn Hafsteinsson. “Last year, it was hard for him getting beat by Kristjan. Now, he’s over it, and he just wants to do his best to irritate the young guys.”

Also, like real estate, throwing well can sometimes be a matter of location.  Four of Daniel’s first six comps were held in places where he is very comfortable. Two were in Sweden. One took place in Finland, where his mother was born and, according to Vésteinn, “Fourteen thousand people show up to cheer for him.” His most recent outing was the Heino Lipp Memorial in Estonia where Daniel also loves to throw at least in part because, according to his manager  Hans Üürike, Estonians appreciate his sense of humor.

They also appreciate fine discus throwing, and there was plenty to go around at the Heino Lipp. Daniel tossed an SB of 71.45m, the fifth year in a row he’s breached 71 meters…and he finished second.

Kristjan won with a new PB of 71.86m, making Daniel’s 71.45m the farthest second-place throw in history. Finishing third was Fedrick Dacres, who has been on his own revival tour in 2023. He tossed 66.12m and did not come within five meters of the top two spots.

It’s been an exciting season so far for discus fans, with five guys (Daniel, Kristjan, Mykolas, Alex Rose, and Lukas Weißerhaiding) already over 70 meters, and having Daniel back to his old laughing, dancing, bomb-throwing self bodes well for the summer ahead.

And don’t get me wrong when I refer to “location” as having contributed to Daniel’s hot start. As far as Vésteinn knows, none of Daniel’s comps this year have featured especially favorable wind conditions. In fact, on June 11th, he hit 70.93m in a pronounced tailwind in Sollentuna.

Vésteinn, now the Head of Elite Sports in his native Iceland, has always marveled at the Big Guy’s propensity to throw well in any conditions. “When I was competing,” he said recently, “I hated throwing in a tailwind. But guys like Daniel, and Virgilius Alekna when he was at his best, throw the same no matter what. I used to wonder why Daniel didn’t throw 75 meters when I got him into meets in California, but the wind never seemed to help him much. I guess that’s why he doesn’t have the world record and Virgilius doesn’t have the World Record. But they have Olympic gold, and that’s something, isn’t it?”

And Daniel, now training with Staffan Jönsson in Malmö, Sweden, seems determined to have a say in who wins the next one.

Photo courtesy of me.

Stand by Me

I’ve been a high school throws coach for thirty years, and I’m still trying to figure out the ideal way to interact with my athletes during competitions. 

There have been rare occasions when one of my kids has made a lousy throw and come to me for advice and I’ve said exactly the right thing.

 “Get off your left!” or “Run away from the disc!” 

They’ve followed my suggestion and crushed their next attempt and I’ve walked away wondering if I am in fact the Greatest Coach Ever.

Usually, though, my mid-comp suggestions seem to do more harm than good and I walk away wondering why I didn’t just keep my mouth shut.

A decade ago, I came across a book by Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist and currently the president of Dartmouth College, titled Choke: What The Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To. In it, she explains the impediments that keep us humans from performing at our best when we want to the most. After reading Choke, I decided that the best thing I could do for my throwers during meets was–as I’d suspected–to leave them alone. Any spontaneous bits of advice I might throw at them, no matter how well-intentioned, were likely to get them thinking rather than flowing and thus make it more difficult to produce an optimal throw.

But, around the time Choke came out–again, we’re talking maybe ten years ago–I had the opportunity to attend the NCAA Championships, and I noticed that most throwers there spoke with their coaches between every attempt. I saw this again when I traveled to New York for the 2013 Adidas Grand Prix meet and watched Sandra Perković interact with her coach, Edis Elkasević. As with the NCAA throwers, Sandra checked in with Edis after every throw. Once, she had to just about steamroll an official who tried to prevent her from crossing the track to reach Edis. The official wisely backed down, and Sandra ended up throwing 68.48m that day. Later in the season, she won a World title to go with the Olympic gold she’d captured in 2012, so it seemed like she had a pretty good idea of how to “get it right” when it counted most.

This confused me.

On the one hand, Sian Beilock presented a compelling case against giving an athlete technical advice during a comp. On the other hand, Sandra Perković was ready to truck an official if she had to in order to confer with her coach between attempts. So, was there an ideal way to interact with athletes as they competed? Should I leave mine alone? Or should I talk to them between every attempt? And if I do, is there a certain kind of advice or way of delivering advice that works best?

I thought about these questions again last month at the 2023 USATF LA Grand Prix. As you may have heard, that Ryan Crouser fella had a pretty good day in LA. He came in wanting to break Randy Barnes’ Ducky Drake Stadium record of 23.12m, set in 1990, which had also been the World Record until Ryan went 23.37m at the 2021 Olympic Trials, and he ended up doing much more.

Ryan had been experimenting with his technique a bit over the past few months, and he was certainly not attempting to peak in May with the World Championships three months away, but remarkably, he’s at a level where knocking off Barnes’ stadium record seemed like a reasonable early-season goal in spite of the fact that only three humans–Ryan, Barnes, and Joe Kovacs–had ever thrown that far.

As warmups for the shot played out on a beautiful LA afternoon at the Ducky, I noticed that Mitch Crouser, Ryan’s father and coach, was present, and that Ryan ambled over to speak with him regularly.

I really wanted to eavesdrop on their conversation to get some insight into how Mitch interacted with Ryan during the comp, but politeness dictated that I keep my distance.

Mitch and Ryan discuss. Photo courtesy of an unidentified stalker.

The one comment I heard clearly was by Ryan after he took out Barnes’ record on his first attempt with a 23.23m bomb from a static start.

“Well,” he said as he approached his father near the stands along the right foul line. “I just did everything wrong that I’ve been working on in practice.”

Whatever corrections he and Mitch made seemed to work, as Ryan improved to 23.31m on his next attempt, which got folks wondering if he might just bang one off the wall at the back of the landing pit–a distance of 24 meters.

He fell off a bit in round three with a pedestrian 22.94m, after which he and Mitch again conferred.

Then Ryan got back in the ring and launched a new World Record of 23.56m. Funny thing, the laser had it at 23.58m, but apparently World Records still have to be measured Amish-style with a steel tape, and that knocked off two centimeters.

A photo showing the distance between Ryan’s new World Record toss and the wall at the back of the shot put landing pit courtesy of UCLA throws coach Sean Denard.

Either way, it was an historic performance, and I was dying to get Mitch’s take on it, particularly regarding his interactions with Ryan during the comp.

He graciously agreed to a phone call a few days later, and one thing he emphasized right away was that he and Ryan do not have a typical coach/athlete relationship. 

“I started coaching Ryan when he was in grade school,” Mitch explained. “Then all the way through junior high and high school. And when he was looking at where to go to college, that was part of the equation. Wherever Ryan ended up, they had to be comfortable with me being involved.”

Believe it or not, that was a dealbreaker for some programs, but the Texas staff agreed, and during his time in Austin, Ryan would regularly send Mitch videos of his practice throws.

“Then, when Ryan moved to the Training Center at Chula Vista, he worked with Mac Wilkins, and I know Mac really well, so I’d go there and work with Ryan for maybe a week at a time.”

Bottom line, being Ryan’s father and coaching him for something like two decades has given Mitch what he terms a “deeper understanding” of Ryan than most coaches have of their athletes.

Another unique aspect of coaching Ryan is that, in addition to his remarkable talent, he has developed his own thorough understanding of the event and what he needs to do to make the shot go far. Actually, “understanding” is probably not the right word. For sure, Ryan is a dedicated student of the sport, but it’s his feel of what works and what doesn’t that sets him apart.

“The great throwers,” says Mitch, “each have their super power. For Joe, it’s his strength. With Tom Walsh, it’s his incredible speed. But for Ryan, it’s his instant recall of the feel of every throw. Because of his ability to feel what went right and what went wrong with each attempt, and because we’ve worked together for so long, at meets I’m more of a sounding board for him than anything else.”

There was a time earlier in Ryan’s career when Mitch found himself offering Ryan different bits of advice during competitions, but that is no longer the case. 

“With so many distractions at big meets, it’s not a good idea to say too much. Sometimes, I’ll suggest one simple cue, which can be valuable because it can help focus you and, if it’s the right cue, it can fix so many other things. But Ryan is to the point now where there aren’t usually a lot of things to fix.”

According to Mitch, Ryan’s comment after the 23.23m opener was indicative of this. “Five years ago, if he felt like a throw was way off, it probably was. But now, his technique is so stable that if one little thing is off it might feel like a lot to him, but it can still be a pretty good throw.”

One change they made after the 23.23m was for Ryan to switch immediately to full “Crouser slide” mode, or as Mitch calls it his “step across” technique.

“Our plan going in was to take two or three throws with a static start, but after his opener we jumped right to using the step across. He’d never fully clicked with it in a meet, but after he went 23.31m he told me it felt good and there was more there.”

On the 23.56m, Ryan knew he was in business as soon as he shifted left. It was the same feeling he’d had on his first World Record in Eugene in 2021.

The aspect of Ryan’s development that Mitch seems most proud of is his ability to produce big throws during competitions. “In college,” he says, “Ryan couldn’t do that. He’d have big practice throws, then throw poorly in a meet. It’s taken him a long time to develop the skill of throwing his best in competition.”

One key has been endless hours spent building stability in his technique. Now, according to Mitch, Ryan will sometimes put a cone at 20 meters and “drop a dozen throws on it.” 

As to the future, Mitch refers to the current situation in the men’s shot as a “perfect storm.” 

“Joe, Tom, or Ryan by themselves probably wouldn’t have pushed the event to the level they have. But together, they’ve made 23 meters like 22 meters used to be. I wonder if ten years from now, people will look back on this time and be amazed.”

That seems likely. In the meantime, it seems the key to knowing what to say to an athlete during a competition is to build a relationship with them that allows you to give them what they need, whether that be a simple cue or just a sympathetic ear.

A Shameless Plug

Full disclosure, I have a selfish reason for rooting for Daniel Ståhl. My friend Roger Einbecker and I have collaborated with Vésteinn on a book about the Big Man’s career from the time they started working together through the Olympic triumph in 2021.

A possible cover for our upcoming book.

Daniel is a remarkable dude, and I think throws fans and sports fans in general will enjoy this inside look at one athlete’s path to the top of his sport. We hope to make it available soon as both an ebook and book book.

Stay tuned!

by Dan McQuaid & friends