Rams Get Jump on Competition at Max Invite

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – At the end of the day, she still had enough energy to jump up and down. Or lean. Or stretch. Whatever movement Maria Creech's mind told her was necessary for the moment.

They all see it, the jumpers she coaches at Colorado State. It makes them smile. Let's them know the self-professed spaz is as involved as they are in their pursuit.

A track meet is a unique ecosystem, a flurry of activity in individualized pockets throughout the facility, Saturday's being the Jack Christiansen Track for the Doug Max Invitational.
Everybody is off doing their own thing. People ran around while others threw things. Folks soaring up and over as another group sought to fly an incredible distance.

The meet was small (just a handful of teams), coming at a point in the season where teams are looking at winding down the prep in order to gear up for the conference push. The Rams, who also celebrated Senior Day, won a bundle of events no matter where you looked, regardless of gender. The women won 11 events, the men capturing nine.

Even deeper, others went about their task one way, while others approached it from another angle. It all depended on where each Ram saw themself on the postseason spectrum. It was all about making gains with different rulers. Confidence was on tap for some, technical polish for others. Improved marks are always a positive step, but not actually necessary.

The jumpers are no different, a few of the pockets, but then again, they're not alike, either. Nobody will confuse Sharde Johnson's event with what Allam Bushara does, and while his event – the triple jump -- looks eerily familiar to what Cierra Gonzalez was doing in the long jump, they are not the same.

Just ask Rhys Travis.

Saturday, he became the first Ram to have done all three jumps in competition, asked to try his hand at the long jump. It goes back to the whole conference-team concept and finding the right pieces, and the most valuable ones are athletes who can score in multiple events. That's the way he approached his, his college foray into the long jump world, and it was a blast. Without practice, he broke off a respectable 21-11.5, good for fifth and matching what he had done previously in high school, back when he actually practiced the event.

"It was pretty crazy. I've done triple jump and high jump for a while, so coming over here wasn't too big of a change, but it was fun more than anything, to have a new event like that," Travis said. "I trust my coaches to handle it correctly and that's what we got done.

"I didn't even practice it, so I was like I'll just go out with no expectations."

He did it because Creech is looking for depth on the conference team and all avenues are being explored. If Travis, a true freshman, can add that kind of depth, it's best to find out now. After what he did, he will now start adding practice to the event to his workload.

Not only that, Creech, who worked with him as a prep at Poudre, knew he could handle it physically and mentally.

"To be able to tell Rhys you need to go out and you need to execute this right now, here, I trust he will go do that," she said. "It's how I see his athleticism really shine through as a true freshman. He didn't go out there and freak out. You're an athlete. Be an athlete, be strong and do your best. He didn't go out and act like a spaz."

As established, she has that part covered.

From here on out, dividing his time effectively will be up to both of them. There are subtleties to each event – Travis feels the high and triple jumps require more mental fortitude – but what parts can carry over translate well from event to event. If it gives him a shot to travel, all the better.

"That's my angle, to do all three jumps at conference and try to score points in all three of them," he said. "I think of myself as the multi-jumper on the team. The thing is, going from high jump to triple jump, they are so technical, and you have to be very body aware. Long jump does not have a lot of body awareness, just cues in what I do in high jump and triple jump."

The cues are all over. From the stands on the west side of the facility, it is likely hard to see the markers up and down the runway. While events are being run on the track, nobody really pays attention to the pre-event work the jumpers do. The multiple runups they take to the board, getting their footwork comfortable so they can set the piece of tape on the side that tells them where to start.

It's a start, but it may lead to an adjustment. For Gonzalez, she eventually moved back a foot, her energy and adrenaline in the event requiring the alteration. What doesn't change is her pre-run setup. She's superstitious about hers, and each jumper has their own routine. Some have Michael Jackson-level choreography while some just get up and go.

Also a true freshman, Gonzalez has gone from a multi as a prep to focusing primarily on the long jump, and the CSU jumping community has been perfect for her, a mix of instructional and hype. At the meet, she reached an outdoor personal best of 18-4.5, yet looking at her face on most of her six attempts she looked disappointed.

"I'm really hard on myself. I expect myself to perform pretty well every time, so if I am not jumping well, I have that look on my face," she said, finally smiling. "My coaches tell me to shake it off, that I'm fine. I'm competitive. I want to go to conference so I'm very competitive with that. I want to make the team for that, so I expect myself, especially today, to make it."

The reason Creech moves so much while she's watching is her body is staying as involved as her mind. The men and women long jumpers competed simultaneously, side by side. She was watching five CSU women compete as well as four men. In her head, she had an idea of what she wanted each of them to focus on for the day and those nuances ran across the board and through her mind constantly.

Moving physically keeps her in tune mentally. With someone like Gonzalez, she's trying to push across the point little victories must be celebrated.

"You have to accept your PRs and your small victories. You have to accept you might not be hitting the mark in the sand, but we're finally taking off behind the board or on the board or off the board," Creech said. "We are executing other aspects of the jump that right now may not show the distance they want, but they're young and they need to build these elements for it all to come together. The younger jumpers come in and they have a lot of spice and pop, and it's almost like reigning them down and controlling them so they can be more effective later on.

"Cierra took off the board better than I've seen her. She's working on a fancy landing mechanic which she does very well, but I thought Cierra came to the board and took off the board better today than she did last week."

The frustration Gonzalez showed on her face was a direct result of the internal pressure of trying to perform and earn a spot on the conference team. In her mind, the Max Invite was viewed far differently than the approach Allam Bushara took earlier in the day during the triple jump.

He literally had half of the approach.

The why was easy. The conference leader in the event, Creech has the NCAA West Regionals as his aim, because that's the next level where he needs to pop. Not that the Mountain West Championships – May 11-13 in Fresno, Calif. – are not important, but if Saturday was an indication, he'll be just fine.

Using a trimmed down approach, he still sailed 47-8 to win the event.

"Even though conference is important, and the win is important for him and probably a PR, his next step is that NCAA level. He needs to hit that mark on the NCAA day, so I'm going to taper him for that meet more so than I'm going to taper him for conference," she said. "Instead of using today as a meet, let's use today as a very intense practice session. We're going to do a half approach. We just modified his entry into approach; we did a skip-in entry into approach versus a status start. We just started that this past week to give him a little more power in his approach, and for me, I wanted that to be dialed. I wanted it consistent and effective, and he needed to do that entry four-to-six times as similarly as possible and as consistent as possible, and he did that. He was great on it. He only took 10 steps and still jumped great."

She definitely enjoyed that, but not as much as Hari Brogen did clearing 6-8.25 in the high jump. You take confidence where and when it comes and noting breeds it more than a personal best heading into the championship season.

His first attempt didn't go well, but as Creech and Ryan Baily watched, Baily told Brogen to think up before over. Easy enough.

So, he put that in his mind at the start of his approach first, then had one final thought before taking off.
"At the start of my mark, I look at the bar and think of all my cues that will get me over the bar. When I start running, I hope they all hit and I execute," he said. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

"Then I'm thinking clear the bar. Every time. Clear the bar. Then you're safe and you get to jump more, and I love jumping. Clear the bar, you get to jump more."

As he reached the pad with the bar still, he looked toward that stands and held out his arms. It was his elation, but he wanted to share it, but he also thinks his sport needs a bit more pizzaz.

"It just feels amazing. It really does," Brogan said. "I had a really dodgy indoor season. Now that I'm finally getting to the heights I should be doing, I feel electric. I really do.

"It's joy when it all comes together. I feel like it's a bit of release, and I want to do some crowd work, because that's pretty fun, if that's what you call it. (Gimbo) Tamberi, he's an Italian high jumper and an absolute hero, and he has amazing crowd work. Every time he has a jump, he looks at the crowd. Track and field, it's not like a lot of other sports. I'm trying to get the crowd involved."

Noting wrong with a competitor leaning into the moment whenever the moment is right. Or a coach, for that matter.

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