“With the help of some painkillers and my extensive experience with jumping through pain, I was able to somehow crawl over 1.72 and 1.76 and get the 10th place,” Siilats said. “With my condition, I was expecting to be the last and should have been.”
Siilats had been told her injury would go away in three days. Instead it took months for the pain to subside and for her to resume training. She says though her leg is almost healed now, it still gets tired faster than usual and limits her practice and competition.
Unlike Dora Gyorffy ’01 before her, Siilats’ performance did not improve during her time at Harvard. She places the blame for this on the lack of facilities and resources she’s had at Harvard relative to Estonia, where as the country’s top high jump prospect, the best doctors and rehab facilities were provided for her. Siilats also criticizes the lack of light quality foods in the dining hall, which she blames for her weight gain last season.
“Everything is much more difficult to coordinate here and the attitude is generally less professional, so my performance has been gradually decreasing as a result,” Siilats said.
But Siilats felt that a decline in her performance would be worth the academic quality and overall experience of Harvard. She will, however, not be returning for her final year of NCAA eligibility.
Siilats will now return to her coach in Estonia and jump professionally in Europe throughout the summer. Because of her time spent in school, she doesn’t have high expectations in the immediate future.
“Starting from next fall’s base training I will put high jump first, as I have never been able to do before and will start practicing twice a day as a professional should,” Siilats said.
Throwing It Away
Grant needed a throw that would place her among the top nine competitors after three attempts to even reach the final. She couldn’t meet that goal, throwing 54.81 meters, 55.15 meters and fouling in her three tries. She would have needed to reach 59.91 meters to make it past the preliminaries, beyond her personal best of 59.59.
Grant felt the ring, the area where one turns around and throws the hammer, was faster than any of the competitors were used to.
“It was fast to point of slippery,” Grant said. “I didn’t have really good practices going into it. That was definitely the foremost thought in my mind—just being able to stay on balance and deliver the throw. That had never been a concern of mine before, so it kind of turned all of my thoughts off competition-wise.”
Nerves were also a factor, as it was Grant’s first large national meet. But Grant said she felt fine by her second and third throws. Though her third throw was nullified by a foot foul, she believes it would have been one her best of the season had it counted.
Though Grant was disappointed with the end result, she confessed that it had been a dream season for her. Up until this year, the outdoor season had not been her strong point, and the indoor weight throw had been her best event. But Grant posted almost a seven-meter improvement in her performance through the course of this season to earn her trip to nationals.
Grant looks upon the NCAA meet not as an ending, but rather as a beginning. This meet, she says, is a stepping stone and a learning experience. She believes she hasn’t yet reached her full potential, and she will pursue a spot on the Jamaican national team and a trip to the World Championships.
“I have all these people telling me that I have so much left in me,” Grant said. “I hear that, I think that and I’m going to run with that.”
Pursuing a track career for now will require Grant to put the rest of her life on hold, but she is willing to make that sacrifice.
“I can take care of other things later in life, but this is the one chance I have now and I really want to throw myself wholeheartedly into it,” she said.