Nationals Up Next for Rams Now in the Professional Realm

With the next step, there are questions. Sometimes it feels as if they're piling up faster than they can be answered.

"Now that I'm done with school, it's how do I make this my lifestyle, just being an athlete," Mya Lesnar said. "That will take a transition, but it's always what I wanted to do. It's fun and it's rewarding. I love working hard and being disciplined and I have big goals, and the goals never stop. I don't ever get to where I've accomplished everything I wanted, You can always grow; there's always something to achieve."

Lexie Keller, also a former standout Colorado State track and field athlete, fully understands what Lesnar is going through, having done so herself. Both of them will continue to chase down those targets this week in Eugene, Ore., as the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships take place at Hayward Field from July 31-Aug. 3.

Lesnar, the NCAA outdoor champion in the shot put, will compete on the third day. Keller will compete in the heptathlon the first two days. Both have been there before – for Lesnar, it will mark three consecutive meets she's competed at the venue.

It is where she won her outdoor title, the one she can pair with her indoor title from 2024. It is also the place where she debuted as a professional during the PreFontaine Classic on July 5. It wasn't the introduction she hoped for in terms of performance, which is understandable considering she didn't receive her invitation to compete more than a handful of days prior. Even still, the trip proved valuable in terms of knowledge, especially once she took a step back and dissected the experience.

"I learned so much. It was probably the biggest learning curve yet in my career," Lesnar said. "I was in a packed stadium with what was the most decorated field outside of maybe the Olympics. The whole thing, I was a little overstimulated, but I thought I handled it pretty well.

"I came down from a high. You can't just stay at that level and expect to grow and mature and constantly be at a peak. I took more away from the whole experience than the throwing part of it."

As she noted, being a college athlete provides a lot of comfort. Trainers and strength coaches to work with consistently, a coach who is vested in the performance, teammates to hype you up and work out with. Throw on a cap and gown and all of that is gone.

It's a lot, and CSU track and field coach Brian Bedard has seen it before, and he expected Lesnar to feel it for herself.

"She's learning that through a firehose right now. You almost have to have an agent to get you into meets," he said. "She's working on sponsorship deals, and she's going to have to handle more of the logistics and communicating that with her agent and staff. In college, there's so much support staff and management that takes care of those things to lessen the load of the athletes. She's going to have to take a bigger role, but I think she's ready for that.

"A lot of it is the school of hard knocks and learning as you go. She's done a good job of reaching out to friends who are already in the pro world, what's it like, what do you do, what don't you do. It's good she's done that, because that's one of the best ways to learn is have some mentors who have done this, done that."

While at the PreFontaine, she had a chance to not only speak with other athletes – including Olympic medalist Joe Kovacs – they all stayed at the same hotel like a team. Bedard watched Lesnar find some calm as she took in all the information they were all willing to share, namely the idea that no matter how successful they were at the moment, it all came with some turbulence.

That can help lead one down a better path, which is what Keller found on her own.

Lexie Keller

The CSU record holder in the heptathlon and pentathlon, she is now working out at Duke in North Carolina after spending the year prior in Fort Collins, basically on her own. In her current situation, she has a training partner in Erin Marsh and is working with coach Shawn Willborn.

Additionally, she's landed a sponsorship with VS Athletics, which provides her with competition gear and covers entry fees, and Keller works for Onform, a company which created a video app for track coaches, one she uses in her training.

The company understands her pursuits, giving her time to work and train. It just took a few years to find a comfort level, one which has led to her setting a personal best of 6,027 points this season.

"I would say the biggest thing is the people surrounding you. In college, you have all those resources," Keller said. "You have your trainers, your coaches, your teammates, everything set up for travel. The biggest difference is trying to create that environment on your own. Finding the help where you need it, training partners and even finding meets. Doing everything on your own.

"I feel I've started to create that environment here. Theres a group of post-collegiate athletes here, some sprinters, and a lot of my friends here are professional track athletes. It helps having other people around me, and the people I surround myself with now want to see me succeed and want me to achieve those goals. I had to create that space. The biggest thing was changing everything in my life. My life it centered around track, where last year I was trying to squeeze it in. The first thing is finding a space that was going to help foster all the things I'm doing."

Lesnar will keep working with Bedard as her coach as a professional. They have developed a rapport she doesn't want to abandon. For her, it's a key piece of this starting point as everything else changes a bit, because the throwing aspect is the biggest piece.

With that partnership set in stone, the rest she feels will fall into place, bit by bit. Not worrying about her training is a huge weight off her shoulders.

"The throwing part, nothing is going to change. The lifting part stays the same," she said. "Now it's learning how to mentally jump up to this next level and understand I should be there. I'm just like one of those girls and not thinking I don't deserve to be at that level. There's this learning curve now of how I'm back to being the youngest.

"The good thing is I do plan to stay with Bedard. That's No. 1. We know each other, we trust each other, and we've been through a lot together. I want to work with him, and he wants to continue to work with me."

Having known she was going to nationals has Lesnar feeling better prepared for this meet. As for Keller, her confidence stems from hitting multiple personal bests in events this season after just missing out on qualifying for the Olympic Trials last year.

Whether he's still working with the athlete or not, Bedard is always proud to see Rams continuing to compete at the highest level. He intends to track down Keller at the meet, which should be easy, since she'll be looking for him, too.

"I think it's cool to see. It's a tough transition moving from a collegiate athlete to post-collegiate," he said. "Not everyone can make that transition and do it well, but it seems like Lexie has kind of cracked the code. She has good training partners and good coaching. She has a good fit, which I think is critical for any athlete."

As they've both found out, taking steps they hope will lead them down the right path, understanding an occasional backtrack isn't necessarily the setback it seems to be at the time.

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