Dealing with injuries comes with the territory of being an athlete.
And being sidelined sucks, no doubt about it.
But if there’s anything worse than being injured, it’s the disruption of my schedule that bothers me the most.
So, when I hurt my ankle pretty badly halfway through the indoor season last year, I didn’t really know what to do with myself.
I did know, however, that I needed to find something to prevent me from going stir-crazy.
I remember going to the store and buying a few canvases to paint some pieces to put up in my apartment.
With school and track, I don’t have a whole lot of time to tap into my creativity, so this was the perfect opportunity to do that.
And I needed it more than I ever thought.
When I returned to competition, they taped up my ankle, and I jumped the best mark I had all season.
It was an eye-opening experience for me.
Because I was forced to step away and focus on something besides pole vault and track, I genuinely feel like I became a better athlete.
It reminded me that I must prioritize other outlets in my journey as a student-athlete.
On a whim
Sports has always been a central focus in my life. I started competing in gymnastics when I was just three years old.
For the next 11 years, I was flipping and tumbling my way through life and having the best time doing so.
But as I was about to enter high school, I had a difficult choice to make.
I’d been living in the gym up until that point in my life, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to dedicate the entirety of my high school career to it.
I ultimately decided to pursue a more well-rounded high school experience, but that didn’t mean I was finished with athletics.
On the first day of spring sports, I made a last-minute decision to try out for track instead of tennis.
I suppose you could say I chose pole vault because of the jumping and body control that go hand-in-hand with gymnastics, which was what I’d known my entire life.
But, truthfully, I more or less tried out for pole vault on a whim.
By the end of my freshman year, I placed third at the Nebraska State Track Meet.
Everyone was wondering who I was and where I came from.
It was a whirlwind, but I knew this was just the beginning.
Raising the bar
It’s crazy to reflect on my pole vault journey.
I essentially just got thrown into the event without having the slightest idea what I was doing, but I just kept steadily improving each year.
Now that I’m in college vaulting at Nebraska, it’s been fun to look back at my progress and how far I’ve come.
I’m on Nebraska’s outdoor top ten all-time list, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make it on the indoor list as well before my career is over.
A perfectionist at heart, I’m extremely goal-oriented and always looking to improve my jumps, but I also love scoring points for my team.
Track and field is unique in that it’s an individual sport with a team aspect.
While setting PRs is amazing, what motivates me even more is earning points for my team so we can bring home a trophy.
We were so close to winning a conference championship last spring, and being at my best to help my team be in a position to win is what drives me more than anything.
There was a time in my life, especially with my gymnastics background, when I believed practicing and training 24/7 would be the best thing for me and take me where I needed to go in my athletic career.
Don’t get me wrong, I still work and train very hard, but I would soon discover that understanding my identity outside of pole vault would amplify my success far beyond my wildest expectations.
I remember going to the store and buying a few canvases to paint some pieces to put up in my apartment. With school and track, I don't have a whole lot of time to tap into my creativity, so this was the perfect opportunity to do that. And I needed it more than I ever thought.
A creative approach
While I’ve always established an identity in sports, I found my artistic side in high school when I took an AP pottery class.
Don’t ask me how or why I was in that class, but throughout the semester, we were required to submit our work to an art competition.
I didn’t even attend the competition, but to my utter disbelief, one of my pieces won best of show.
Since then, I’ve always enjoyed painting and ceramics and exploring my creative potential, but once I got to college, I didn’t always have time for it.
As I mentioned before, it wasn’t until I got injured last year that life forced me to kind of slow down and take a breath.
As athletes, we can get so wrapped up in records, wins, trophies, etc., throughout the course of the season that we sometimes forget that we are people first, athletes second.
Perfectionists — like myself — gravitate toward sports like pole vaulting because it’s such a challenging event that’s hard to master with a crazy amount of details and technique.
Then, when you do finally ‘master’ it, reaching new PRs can become incredibly addicting, sometimes in the worst ways.
So to have a creative outlet that allows me to take my mind off track has been unbelievably important to my career and helped me discover an identity outside of the pit.
Athlete empowerment
thlete identity has become such a focal point in my own life, but I want it to be a focus in other athletes’ lives, too.
I’m a part of SAAC (Student-Athlete Advisory Committee) on campus at Nebraska, and it’s been so rewarding to get together with other athletes to help them find their identity outside of their sport.
Even after I graduate, I’d love to continue to be a mentor to athletes.
It’s easy for people to lose interest in you once you graduate and are no longer a part of the team. But if you can get people to buy into you as a person and what you represent throughout your collegiate years, people will still be invested in you long after you graduate.
That’s my ultimate goal for any athletes I’d have the opportunity to work with.
As athletes, sports are often the center of our world, but it’s important to remember that it’s a big world out there.
Don’t forget to take the time to paint your own canvas and establish a life-fulfilling identity that will complete you and make you whole.
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