Anxiety Turns to Elation in a Single Heat
Carpenter, Givens push limits to qualify for NCAA Outdoor Championships
Mike Brohard
He’s the math guy on staff. The one who does the projections for scores at conference, and those abilities came in handy for J.J. Riese in Fayetteville, Ark.
Colorado State’s sprints coach, Riese had two of his entrants at the NCAA West First Round meet in the same position, one which comes with a bit of anxiety. He felt it for both of them but only shared the feeling of tightness in the chest with one.
After two heats of races – the 100-meter hurdles in the case of Trenton Givens, the 400 for Kenny Carpenter – both were on the cusp as conditional qualifiers, sitting in the final spot with a heat remaining. The top three in the next race would automatically earn a spot at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, but whoever finished fourth could bump them.
“They're both the last small ‘q,’” Riese said, referring to how the meet marks who is advancing and who is not -- a capital letter automatic, the smaller version for those via time. “And at that point, you're just hoping the fourth-place time in the third heat is not faster than what they ran really, and you're just crossing your fingers and hoping.
“I think Trenton knew, but I don't think Kenny was aware because Kenny had gotten, I remember, fifth in his heat. I mean, you can obviously be fifth and technically you could be sixth and qualify. Trenton was fourth, so I think he knew he had a really good shot, but I think when Kenny got fifth, he probably was like, well, that's that, you know? He was sitting in the tent. I think Trenton stayed on the track and watched the next heat.”
The hard part became picking out the right mark. Most people naturally look for the fastest time, but neither cared about that one. It came down to the fourth-place finisher.
As a coach, Riese had posted up at his spot at the side of the track, which was allowed. After running, competitors were asked to leave. Carpenter did.
“I walked back to right behind the stands and the officials were like, ‘hey, once you're done, you got to go back and grab your stuff.’ I did not leave the track. I was waiting. I was like, no, I have to see this for myself,” Givens said. “I ended up staying pretty much right off of the track and the emotions started to come, and I was like, man, this is … It really comes down to this. This would be a huge accomplishment either way, if I don't or if I do make it, because I was able to run a personal best. I was just trying to be thankful for what I did do and not necessarily be so hyper-focused on what could go wrong or what would happen if I didn't make it.
“I ended up watching the race and I was glued to number four, because I'm like, OK, the top three guys are going to qualify. Whoever is number four, he has to be slower than my time, otherwise I don't go. I was watching it and there's a little bit of a gap between three and four. Third ran this time and I'm just looking, staring, staring, and it just felt like it was so long before they posted that number four time. I saw that it was a tenth slower than mine. I just immediately started jumping up. I started screaming. It was so dope. I had an old teammate from my other school right by me in the stands and he was like, ‘dude, you made it.’ I was screaming.”
He was on his way, the second of Colorado State’s five qualifiers for this week’s meet at Hayward Field – Track Town, USA – in Eugene, Ore. Makayla Long was the first in the women’s shot put, with teammates Catherine Garrison (3,000 steeplechase) and Klaire Kovatch (discus) earning invites the final day. Carpenter would follow Givens not long after on the final day of men’s competition, more shocked than elated given he had basically ceded hope.
While Givens did the math for himself, Carpenter had to have the information relayed to him.
“I saw I was fifth in my heat, and I was like, oh, that's it. So I walked back to the tent,” he said. “When I got to the tent, I grabbed my phone to see where I was at, and I checked my phone and I was the last ‘q,’ I was like, oh, there's still one more heat. The chances are kind of slim, but maybe.
“Then I'm walking out, I get all my stuff, I walk out to the track, and my girlfriend (Grace Lanfear) comes around the corner. She's like, ‘you made it, you made it!’ She was in tears, and I was like, what? I was literally surprised. So it was an interesting moment for sure.”
To be able to be at the national meet with a school record, a conference championship, it genuinely feels like a storybook ending. I could not have asked for more things to go right.Trenton Givens
Interesting in a myriad of ways for each of them. Neither was projected to qualify, where only the top 12 go to nationals. Carpenter went to Fayetteville ranked No. 67 in the country. But in track, where the top times are separated by tenths and even hundredths, a misstep can alter a race.
It also means somebody on a hot streak can provide a jolt in the field, which was the category Riese placed both into before the week started, and for good reason.
Heading into May, Givens had been running times in the high-13s. At the Mountain West Championships, he started to shave down to the mid-13s. Carpenter had been steady, but Riese also knew untested, at least since the indoor conference meet. He just kept winning unchallenged with no push.
“They're both in that kind of puncher's-chance category,” Riese explained, both sitting around No. 20 in a field of 48. “I would say they both could feel good they had a chance, but they both could feel good they had basically house money to play with.”
Carpenter reached the semifinals by breaking the school 400 record – one which had been held by Drew Morano since 2008 – clocking a 45.47. In the semis, his 45.61 was just enough – by .02.
Being pushed made a definitive difference in his mind.
“I didn't think I was actually going to be top 12, but definitely all year I would say I needed some people to push me. Pre-meet, the day before my prelim, just seeing all those bigger guys and bigger names definitely got me excited,” Carpenter said. “I was like, ‘oh yeah, I'm ready to compete.’ I'm going to really bring it to them the following day. I think it was just mentally I knew I can compete with these guys and I can definitely be top 12. So I think it was just getting some different competitors for sure.”
Playing with house money was the story of Givens’ season. It was his first year with Colorado State, having come from Northern Arizona where his junior year ended with an Achilles tendon injury. He basically missed his senior year there, then transferred.
He spent his time with the Rams building back and hoping for the best, not exactly expecting the perfect script.
“It is an unbelievable year. There's really not a lot of other ways I can describe it,” he said. “I came into this school and when I had my meeting with coach, I was like, yeah, I, you know, just want to prove that I can come back from this Achilles injury. I want to try to make an impact on the team, and I didn't have goals higher than that. I kind of just left them open because I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna be able to pull out of myself.
“I'm going to give it my all and I'm going to try to do everything I can. From week one, I've been in the training room every single week with (athletic trainers) Sam (Konrath) and Mackenzie (Campbell) dealing with something. So it was, I want to be able to just end my career on my terms was the biggest goal of this year. To be able to be at the national meet with a school record, a conference championship, it genuinely feels like a storybook ending. I could not have asked for more things to go right.”
It had felt like forever since he’d hit a PR, but at the conference meet he ran a 13.55, a drop of nearly .4 from his prior race two weeks earlier. It came out of the blue and tied the school record set by Hall of Famer Trevor Brown in 2014, but the wind didn’t qualify the mark as such. In Fayetteville, he kept it going with a 13.57 in the prelims, then broke out a 13.49 in the finals.
Riese, anxiety and all, just took it all in, amazed by the way Givens’ past two meets unfolded.
“That was a pretty big breakout at conference. You never know how guys are going to come off that kind of physical output,” the coach said. “He had a big meet. He ran the 4x1, he ran two rounds of the 400 hurdles, he won the high hurdles. So he had a really big meet.
“So you never know how people's bodies come off of that, but he's a total gamer. I know he's going to be up for the moment emotionally, mentally, so I figured if he could replicate his conference mark, he would have a really good shot. And he did better than that. And he needed to, because if he only did his conference mark, he wouldn't have made it.”
But he did, extending his college career and reaching the point he hoped to reach when it all started years ago. It meant he had to call Houston to delay the start of his summer internship by a week, which the business was more than happy to oblige considering the circumstances.
It was the same goal for Carpenter, the timing giving him a jolt for what can come next season.
Up next is a trip to a track mecca, a place where they expect excitement will erase those anxious moments they felt. Or in the case of Carpenter, bypassed altogether.
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