All-Around Greatness for the Good of the Team
Kovatch embraces lofty goal of scoring in four events at conference
Braidon Nourse
For as long as she could remember, Klaire Kovatch has been all about the team.
As a multi-talented thrower for the Colorado State track and field program, her newest goal reflects her stance: score (place eighth or better) in all four outdoor throws at the Mountain West Championship meet.
Growing up in Seeley Lake, Mont., a small town of just more than 1,500 people, putting in her contribution for the greater good of the group has always been more important than putting all the eggs in one basket as an athlete.
In her high school track days, small town meant small track team, meaning if you were good enough to score points at a meet, no matter the event, you were going to do so.
She’s strictly a thrower now for Colorado State, but she also competed in the 4x100 meter and 4x400 meter relays, along with the 300 meter hurdles, just to name a few. Her senior year, she won state championships in both the relays and in discus. She took home second place in the javelin and shot put — her lowest spots on the podium that year.
In two short years as a Ram, she’s already thrown herself into the history books, holding the fifth-furthest javelin throw in CSU history at 149 feet and the 11th-best mark in the discus at 182 feet, 4 inches.
Now, she’s become one of a rare breed of athletes who compete — and excel — in all four outdoor throws: shot put, discus, hammer throw and javelin. Before this outdoor season, Rams coach Brian Bedard sat down with the redshirt sophomore and planted a seed in her head.
“He mentioned it to me at the beginning of the year, he was like, ‘hey, you do realize that because you do all four events, you have the opportunity to score in all four,’” Kovatch said. “So, I said, ‘Yeah, there’s no reason that shouldn’t be a goal of mine.’”
She jumped all over the idea. Way more than individual championships, she covets team titles. And just like she was raised to do, she’s putting the interest of the team above all else, just with the touch of it being her own personal goal.
Bedard was careful in the timing of mentioning the possibility to her. He didn’t want to put too much pressure on a budding young thrower. Like most things, Bedard is very calculated in almost every move he makes as a coach.
Giving an athlete a goal to reach seems simple enough, but there are plenty of things in the background he’s trying to keep track of when it comes to Kovatch.
“She’s multi-talented, so I think she has the tools to help us in all of those events. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have put it on her radar,” Bedard said. “My only concern with doing that — I put it out there as a challenge — is if she has a particular event or two that starts really rising to the top, I don’t want to neglect those events. … So, I have to be careful with that.
“We’ve got to watch the overtraining component, too. But she’s done a good job of managing her schedule and her energy levels, and she can honestly talk with me about how her gas tank is every day and so we can manage the volume of training, intensity and that sort of thing.”
But for the most part, she’s used to the constant training in multiple different disciplines, which is part of the reason Bedard is comfortable putting the weight of four events on Kovatch’s shoulders.
In fact, she’s exactly the kind of athlete he looks for when he recruits: people who have done a little bit of everything. Further, he said he doesn’t always think it’s a good thing for kids to compete in track and field year-round before college.
Yeah, there’s no reason that shouldn’t be a goal of mine.Klaire Kovatch
When he found Kovatch, who excelled in sprints, throws, volleyball and basketball, he had to pounce on the opportunity to bring an athlete like that to his program. With team championships as the goal, he knew early on Kovatch would contribute in a meaningful way from multiple events.
“Any time you have an athlete who can score in multiple events is great,” Bedard said. “Let’s say you want a championship. We try to recruit athletes who can do that instead of a one-event wonder. That’s great for maybe nationals or NCAA qualifying, but if you want to win championships, you need to have athletes who can do more than one event.
“I love recruiting athletes who do other sports. It’s just a good indication that they’re pretty talented.”
Her being an athlete who wants almost solely to add to a team’s championship pedigree from multiple angles, it was a perfect fit.
Jackson Morris is the only other current member of the team who holds spots in CSU’s top-20 all-time lists in javelin and another throw. He has the school record for javelin and the seventh-best discus throw.
Both Morris and Kovatch know they’re part of a rare demographic of athletes, able to excel in two disciplines which on paper seem similar but are actually quite different.
After all, only a handful of states allow javelin in high school. Then, a lot of the time, once the best throwers hit college, they tend to lean towards javelin or towards the other throws.
“I think people are just naturally better at one versus the other. Like me, I’m just naturally better at javelin, I just have thrown discus for so long that I can still do it well,” Morris said. “Mentally, it’s pretty tough. It’s so different — positions feel so different day to day, especially in javelin.”
For Kovatch, the main difference is the approach to the throw. In hammer, discus and shot put, you stay in one spot and generate power from spinning in a circle.
In javelin, the approach is much more linear, which is why she relies so heavily on her past experience in the sprints. The overhead motion of the actual throw puts her time as a middle blocker in volleyball to effective use.
“So much of javelin work is focused around running, skipping and crossover work,” Kovatch said. “Doing running events in high school has translated to me having better technique in the running part (of the throw). Even with discus, hammer and shot, my goal is to be explosive, be fast and be dynamic in my movements.
“I think the biggest help in having a volleyball background is that you understand how to have fast arm movement overhead because that’s really all it comes down to -- how quickly can you fling your arm through the air to get the implement going. It’s very much the same with volleyball because to have a good swing, you’re really encouraged to have a really relaxed hand on the ball. Javelin is the same; you want to be very loose and noodley in your movements.”
Kovatch’s diverse background in multiple track events and sports like volleyball drew Morris toward a comparison to former Rams thrower Tarynn Sieg, who also did all four throws from 2017-22.
Like Kovatch, Sieg also played volleyball in high school, which for Morris was the most obvious correlation between the two other than their throwing abilities.
When Sieg’s career was done, she found a spot in the top 20 all-time for all four events. She remains the only athlete currently on all four lists.
Kovatch and Sieg, or “Mama T” as Kovatch calls her, were teammates for a single year at the end of one career and the start of another. Sieg was riddled with injuries at that point, so they didn’t train all that much together, but the lessons Kovatch learned from her are still in use today.
“She was the type of person where you show up every day to get it done. She wasn’t going to let anything stop her, which is something I admired her for,” Kovatch said. “She was a huge mentor in her last year being here as far as giving advice on how to approach throwing mentally and what things needed to look like in the ring. Plus, just life in general and college life because she had already lived it all.”
But even Sieg never scored in all four events in the same outdoor championship meet. The closest she got was in 2019, when she scored in all but the hammer throw, where she fouled out of the competition.
Last season, Kovatch took fifth and scored four points in discus, which was the only event she qualified for in the championship meet.
Still early in her career, she knows she has plenty of time to achieve the goal she and Bedard set out for her before this season. Then again, there is only one outdoor Mountain West Championship per year.
Becoming good enough to score in all four disciplines will be tough enough. Stringing together top-of-the-conference performances for all of them in the same meet, though, is a different beast.
Anything for the good of the team.
“I love team championships. The more points I can contribute to the team, the better chance we have of winning that way,” Kovatch said. “What would mean the most is to just showcase the possibility of it. It’s one of those things where it’s really cool to score in all four because not a lot of people do it and it’s kind of a cool little bragging right, too.”