Powell finds perfect end point as a Ram

The response was completely understandable.

As a freshman at Western Colorado University, Hunter Powell had spent his season running the 400 meters. It was what he specialized as an athlete at Fort Collins High School and nothing had changed. Then three days before the conference meet, he was informed he was entered in the decathlon.

Powell's reply was, "What?"

The team needed points and he needed events. Forget the fact the only one of the 10 he'd ever competed in was the 400. He placed third.

Then he transferred to Baylor University, a school known for developing runners in the 400. Good, because he wanted nothing to do with the decathlon. Two months into training there, he was a decathlete.

"It was a little crazy. The only event I had actually done was the 400," said Powell, now a senior at Colorado State. "I had never done the 100, never had done the distance races, never done any of the jumps or the throws. It was chaos, but my training partner while I was there was amazing, and it turned out to be a lot of fun."

He competed again at UTSA as a Bear, and two weeks later, the event he wanted no part of was all he wanted. He'd found his niche in a place he never looked. The Fort Collins native never expected to be at Colorado State, but here he is. And the event he tried to avoid led him to the meet he always wanted to participate in, the NCAA Track & Field Championships, set for June 5-8 in Austin, Texas; he starts competing on Wednesday in the first half of his event.

It's been a rather circuitous route, but it has brought him to the perfect end point. Each step of the way has proved beneficial to him.

WCU gave him a chance, one he actually wanted to originally be – of course – at Colorado State. Powell was not turning any heads while he was a Lambkin, which he admits, but he believed there was potential in him. When he contacted the Rams, he was sent to voicemail. Twice.

When he went to Baylor and finally locked into the decathlon, an assistant coach had him on the right path. Then the next year, the coach was no longer training decathletes, and Powell found frustration.

He also found Colorado State had a trio of decathletes scoring better than 7,000 points, and two of them were headed to the NCAAs. When he came home for Christmas one year, he worked out with some of them and tried to find a way back home.

"In the end, it's been good. Leaving, I remember when I was here in high school, I wanted to get out," Powell said. "When I went to Western, I thought about going out of state, and going to Texas, I loved it. Then I get there I find out CSU is killing it. I'm like, man, I don't want to go back. I love Fort Collins to death, but I've been there my whole life, I want to do something different. I remember even telling (CSU assistant coach) Ryan Baily, if you were anywhere else, I'd already be here."

In Bailey, he found the right fit and the perfect style of training.

"I believe you need to train it all. I train the decathlon as one event, and I train kids to think like that," Bailey said. "The focus has to be as such the event is one event, even if they have 10 disciplines to carry it through.

"We train three or four events every day, typically. I get criticized by some of my peers, but we try to get a lot done in a short amount of time. We hit on everything simultaneously. In the decathlon, you do an event and get a 30 minute break. In practice, we can do three or four events in four hours and we're really going to dial in and focus on those certain events. It's always quality over quantity."

Powell had already had some experience with a few coaches of his own, two of them at Baylor who viewed training in an opposite manner. He was going to have to sit out one year at CSU, which wasn't ideal for a competitor, but proved to be fruitful in his development.

Baily feels the key to developing a decathlete is creating a bond. That's what happened.

"I mean, I say this to everybody, he's the best coach in the nation. Without a doubt in my mind," Powell said. "I have yet to meet another coach that not only knows the stuff he knows but is able to connect with his athletes. That's the thing that's so special about here, a lot of schools they'll have the funding to have the crazy facilities, like Baylor did, but they didn't have anything for coaches. Then I've seen places that have really good coaches, but the coaches don't connect with their athletes at all, they don't get to know them, don't work with them. They just grind them through and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

"He gets to know everyone. The same thing with coach Brian Bedard. Both of them get to know their athletes so well, not only do they have a great program, but they know how to adjust the program for each athlete, where it's going to work best for them."

30740

The payoff for the Rams has been multiplied. There are the numbers, for sure. In his one season he's had two strong performances, with the 7,386 points he scored to win the Mountain West title enough to land him fourth on the school's all-time list and land him the final qualifying spot at the NCAAs.

The points for him and for the team were nice, but he overall affect he's had is what Bedard appreciates most. As he did interviews with his athletes over the past two weeks, the name associated most with leadership on the men's side was Powell.

"I think he emerged as a leader, one because of his work ethic. Every athlete and every coach saw that every day at practice," Bedard said. "When I did athlete interviews, about 40 over the last two weeks, Hunter was by far the overwhelming favorite on the men's team. Some of it was the fact he had transferred and saw what it was like at other places. When he settled in here at Colorado State, he was very thankful for the situation. He knows how hard our coaches work, how good our support staff is and his teammates. I think he really appreciated the position he was in, and he was going to do everything he could to elevate our program."

In his travels, Powell has been told multiple things he's found to be untrue. One was people who can only do one event end up doing the decathlon. He'll tell you that statement has no factual basis.

The other is teammates, no matter where you go, will do their own thing regardless. He is proof positive the statement is too general. He made it a point of trying to make a difference, and to hear his teammates felt he did made him happy.

Happy is when he's at his best. If you have watched him compete, you can tell he has fire. If you look closely, you'll see he's having the time of his life.

"That's really how he feels. When he does a decathlon, he's at an amusement park," Baily said. "For him, it's so exciting for him to do all these different events and then see the rewards of all his hard work. Out of high school, he ran the 400 meters, and that was the extent of his knowledge. As far as he's been able to come in the other 9, it was pretty exciting."

Not just competition, but also at practice. Powell found if he shows up in a good mood, he's going to have a good day of work. Flip the mood, the workout tanks. So when he's in a meet, he's up himself, but also encouraging those he goes against. In an event where the points come from the mark hit, not the place held, it makes sense to encourage others to push your own performance.

At the Mountain West Championships, Powell won the 100 and pole vault, taking second in the javelin, discus, 400 and the shot put. His goal for Austin is to hit 7,600 points as his collegiate career comes to an end.

What an ironic ending, too. None of it escapes him, which makes the story he'll tell that much better down the line.

"I was telling Baily it's almost perfect I'm going to be going back to do my last college decathlon in Texas wearing a CSU jersey," Powell said with a grin. "It's pretty cool."

Calendar

Upcoming Events

Recent Results

Players Mentioned

Hunter Powell

Upcoming Events

Recent Results

Colorado State University Athletics