Harvard’s two senior national qualifiers Nicky Grant and Kart Siilats couldn’t have had more different perspectives entering last week’s NCAA Outdoor Championships in Baton Rogue.

Siilats, the NCAA indoor champion a year ago, is a seasoned veteran in elite competitions, having competed in the World Championships for Estonia before transferring to Harvard two years ago. Grant, on other hand, would have never imagined three months ago that she’d be at NCAAs, and World Championships are a distant dream for her.

The two had comparable national standings entering the meet—Grant 13th in the weight throw and Siilats 10th in the high jump. But it was Siilats’ who took home All-American honors from Baton Rogue on Thursday with a sixth-place finish. Grant, in her first national appearance last Wednesday, placed 17th and did not advance to the final.

“It was sort of a disappointing finish to what was otherwise a great season,” Grant said. “It sort of seems like I came up one dream short.”

Siilats was pleased with the overall result because it was markedly higher than her pre-meet national ranking, and she met her primary goal of earning All-American honors.

High Hopes

Siilats likes to follow a risky strategy in high jump meets with a high number of competitors—not clearing on her lower heights. Since there are 22 competitors, each athlete has to wait as much as a half hour in between jumps if they clear on the first of three possible tries. Siilats feels she’s best off clearing on her second or third try, so she can maintain what she calls “the jumping feeling.”

The strategy is risky because in order for her to win if she has missed at lower heights, she has to clear a higher height than all the other competitors. Such is exactly what happened when she won at 2001 Indoor NCAAs, when she missed several lower heights but was the only competitor to clear at 1.86 meters.

But this time around, only one competitor—not Siilats—cleared at 1.83 meters and Siilats was among six competitors to clear 1.79 meters, but because of her two misses at 1.75 meters and one miss at 1.79 meters, she placed just sixth.

“Clearing on first heights is a safe and mediocre way to go, clearing on last attempts is all or nothing,” Siilats said. “Last year at indoors, it was all, this time it was more like a nothing.”

In the 2001 Indoor NCAAs, she cleared her third jump at 1.86 meters to win the meet. At last week’s meet, she came close to pulling off a similar feat at 1.83 meters to move up to second place, but to no avail.

“I was very close to clearing at my third attempt at 1.83,” Siilats said. “Coming down from the bar, I was still sure that it would stay on—it didn’t.”

Siilats felt going into the meet that the odds were stacked against her winning another NCAA title. She had been unable to practice sufficiently due to her injuries from the indoor season and what she considered a lack of adequate high jump facilities at Harvard.

“I knew all the other girls would have that advantage over me and I decided to set my goals at becoming an All-American,” Siilats said.

Siilats’ injuries dated back to the indoor season, where she pulled her glute muscle in her upper hip while stretching just three days before the NCAA meet. Under her coach’s recommendation, she still competed and placed 10th.