By MARK MOSCHETTI
Seattle Pacific Sports Information
 
SEATTLE – It's the last event of a rapidly warming mid-April Saturday in Ellensburg. Renick Meyer is on the track, one of 11 competitors awaiting the call to get on the starting line for the 800 meters.
 
They're all wearing different colors. Meyer, of course, is in her Seattle Pacific maroon, along with teammates Kellie May and Abby Kauffman. There's one in Western Washington powder blue. Three others in the black and red of Western Oregon. Another pair in the all-black of Central Washington. And two in Northwest Nazarene red.
 
If this was almost any other race, all of them might be off by themselves, getting into a competitive mindset.

 

But it isn't almost any other race. This particular 800-meter run is the last stage of the women's heptathlon, a seven-event, two-day test of body and mind, competitive spirit and athletic soul.
 
So rather than avoiding eye contact with their fellow competitors or trying to pretend that no one else is there, many of them – including Meyer – are chattering away with one another.
 
"We're all going through such a challenging event together that you just kind of trauma-bond with each other," Meyer said with a bit of a laugh. "We're all good at different things, so we really support each other because we're all in each other's shoes."
 
The Falcon senior has been in those shoes more than most. On that particular Saturday – April 17, to be precise, at the CWU Wildcat Invitational – Meyer was completing her eighth career heptathlon, and wound up winning for the third time.
 
On Monday and Tuesday, she'll be back at that same Central Washington Recreational Sports Complex for her ninth hep and going for her fourth title, this one at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Multi-Event Championships.
 
Competition starts at 10:45 a.m. on Monday with the usual Day 1 docket of the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, and 200-meter dash. It resumes at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday with the long jump, javelin, and 800.
 
Meyer scored 4,629 points in the Wildcat Invite, getting onto the NCAA Division II provisional qualifying list. That currently ranks No. 22. Because of the pandemic and financial issues, the nationals have been reduced in size this year. Only the top 13 heptathletes are guaranteed a spot, although meet officials could add between one and four more vif space is available.
 
Heading into the GNAC event, the No. 13 national score is 4,902; the No. 17 total is 4,797.
 
Either way, Meyer needs some more points. While there are no guarantees of how many she'll score, SPU head coach Karl Lerum can guarantee that Meyer – who has battled back into contention after contracting covid earlier this year – will leave everything she has out there.
 
"She's incredibly talented and has a lot of skill," Lerum said. "We all wish she had more time (to get ready). But what Renick has that you can't replace is the confidence of having been there. She knows how to do it. I know she's going to put herself in the best position she can over the next couple weeks."
 
LEAVING THE HEPTATHLON DOOR OPEN
Even when she started dabbling in track during her middle school years ("My siblings did it, so I did it."), Meyer actually started out as a distance runner. She did cross country all four years at Barlow High School in Gresham, Oregon, calling it "a gnarly, gnarly sport that takes some guts."
 
 

She eventually transitioned into the hurdles, sprints, and long jump – although ironically, the same Renick Meyer who would become the first woman in Great Northwest Athletic Conference history to go 20 feet in the long dropped that event from her high school repertoire after her sophomore year.
 
"When I was choosing schools, I was considering doing multis at other schools," she said. "But for SPU specifically, I was just thinking I would be a hurdler or a sprinter."
 
Lerum, who has developed and worked with numerous national-caliber multi-eventers during his 16 years at the Falcons helm, was thinking that, as well.
 
But even then, he was pondering the possibility of Meyer becoming a heptathlete.
 
"I think like anyone who comes into our program who can do a couple events of the heptathlon, we're just going to kind of explore and see where it takes us," he said.

 


HOW LONG IS LONG? TRY 20 FEET
After doing one indoor pentathlon as a freshman in January 2018, Meyer did her first hep in the Hornet Invitational at Sacramento State in mid-March. She had some solid marks, including a winning time of 25.15 in the 200-meter dash portion, but no-heighted in the high jump and wound up with 4,105 points.
 
A month later at the Bryan Clay Invitational in Azusa, California, she won the 100 hurdles, won the 200 – and got over the high jump bar at a respectable 4-10½, She won her division with 4,852 points.
 
"Everything else went pretty well in Sacramento except for the no-height, so I knew I could do it," Meyer said. "I knew there were just certain things that I needed to pull together. From that point, every hep I would go into, it was like, 'You can do this. Just focus on one event at a time and piece it all together.'"
 
Just a couple weeks later, all of the pieces truly did come together when Meyer racked up 5,114 points to win the GNAC heptathlon, taking the 100 hurdles, the 200 . . .
 
… and, in eye-popping style, taking the long jump. It was on that day – May 1, 2018 – in Nampa, Idaho when Meyer went 20 feet, 5 inches. It came on her third and final attempt after going 19-9 ¾ on the first, then fouling on her second.
 
No one in GNAC history and only two others on SPU track and field history had popped a 20.
 
"I don't think any of us expected that big of a jump," said Meyer, recalling that she did have some wind at her back. "That was probably the perfect jump. I was on all of the board. Everything that could have gone right went right."
 
'I FIGURED OUT THAT I COULD BE GOOD'
Everything kept going right. Just more than a week after winning the hep, Meyer won the GNAC 100-meter dash and led off the meet record-setting 4-by-100 relay. She went on to become a double All-American at the NCAAs, placing seventh in both the heptathlon and the long jump.
 
Meyer won the GNAC Freshman of the Year award for both the indoor and outdoor seasons and was Co-Field Athlete of the Meet for outdoors.
 
 

"I don't know if I expected it," she said of getting her college career off to such a sterling start. "But I think anytime you work super hard and give it your all, you can at least be happy with the results that you got, no matter what they are. I was just happy that I felt I gave it my all that year and I've been doing that every year since.
 
"It wasn't like all of a sudden I got good," she said. "It was like all of a sudden, I figured out that I could be good."
 
Meyer's hard work continued, although she didn't get some of the results she was hoping for during her sophomore season in 2019.
 
But Meyer was back on track, so to speak, early in 2020. She went an indoor personal-best 19 feet, 1¼ in the long jump at the GNAC Championships, taking third place. She also set an indoor PB of 4-8 in the high jump.
 
Then, the pandemic hit. After the outdoor opener on the first weekend of March everything screeched to a halt.
 
"She was absolutely ready to return to some of the marks she was accustomed to making," Lerum said. "She was really trending in a nice direction – then everything shut down."
 
BOUNCING BACK TO GOOD HEALTH
Meyer ultimately took an entire month off early last summer.
 
"I just told myself, 'Stop!'" she said. "Then I slowly started building back up and felt really good by fall. It's my last year. I figured one more year of hard training, 'You can do it, finish it out, have fun with it.'"
 
And Meyer was having fun with it – until just after the 2020 holiday season when she contracted covid. She was flat on her back for two weeks, then during the next month started building up again: 10 minutes on the bike, then walking.
 
"When we had our first meet (March 6 at the PLU Open), I hadn't even done a real workout, like a full sprint workout," she said. "I was doing half workouts, splitting it up."
 
The 21-year-old Meyer says she's now feeling "10 times better." She went 18-11½ in the long jump on March 27 at the Ed Boitano Invitational. Her 100 hurdles time of 14.55 at the Wildcat Invite hep on April 16 was her fastest in four tries this spring.
 
"She contracted this terrible sickness and it's an understatement to say it affected her athletically as well as emotionally," Lerum said. "All I can say in hindsight is she approached her training and her technical work with as much as she had – and that has always been Renick. She brings the best she has each day. … I'm really proud of where she has willed herself to be at this point in the year."
 
ENJOYING THE RIDE BEFORE IT'S DONE
Where Meyer has willed herself to be is contending for GNAC titles – specifically the long jump and 100 hurdles – next week in Monmouth, Oregon.
 
But first, the heptathlon on Monday and Tuesday in Ellensburg.
 
"The hep is so mental. Obviously, it's physically grueling," she said. "But if you're thinking about the next thing, you're not going to do well in the event you're currently doing. You've just got to fully commit to one thing at a time."
 
Toward that end, Meyer said she and Lerum, himself a decathlete in college, are just the right coach-athlete fit.
 
"He knows the game," she said. "I think it goes past the specific event training that he does so well. Karl is really good about mentally being there for us during the meet. He helps keep us level-headed. Neither of us is very high-strung in that regard.
 
"It's very easy to be coached by him," Meyer added. "It's just, 'Hey, have fun with this.' And I'll be like, 'All right, I'll do that!'"
 
An aspiring veterinarian whose ambitious to-do list includes both skydiving and attempting the Triple Crown of hiking (Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail, and Continental Divide Trail), Meyer's focus isn't just on titles during the final few weeks of her career.
 
Time with teammates is even more important to her.
 
"Even though track is really individual, our team has never been individual," she said. "I talk to girls from opposing teams, and they don't even talk to their distance team at all. Sprinters don't talk to jumpers, or whatever it is. But with us, it has always been, 'We're SPU.' I think it helps that we have such a small team. So if one of us is having a hard day, we all check in with that person.
 
"We have very reliable teammates, and that has been my favorite thing about this team."
 
For Meyer, there's checking in with other heptathletes, too, whether it's the first event or the last one.
 
"When it comes down to the 800, we're all beaten down," she said. "We've all done the same events together, so we're like, 'Let's get there together.' We'll say like, 'Hey, run with me and we can finish it together.'
 
"It's amazing. Everyone is so kind in it. I don't think you can be mean doing the hep because everyone else is doing the same thing."
 
In other words, they're all in each other's shoes. And with eight heptathlons already to her credit …
 
… Renick Meyer has been in those shoes more than most.