ASHWAUBENON – After finishing second in the 100 hurdles at the WIAA Division 1 State Meet in La Crosse in early June, Ashwaubenon High School track and field athlete Jamyana Witte recently had the opportunity to compete at Nike Outdoor Nationals (NON) at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

With a strong performance, Witte, a senior, ran to a winning time of 14.65 to take top honors in the Emerging Elite finals.

“Running at Hayward Field was amazing,” Witte said. “Olympic runners like Masai Russel — who I look up to — have run there. It was cool to see a track dedicated just to track and field. There was no football field in the middle — it was strictly track, which I thought was great to see.”

Witte said she wasn’t expecting such a good result in Eugene.

“I was happy I even made it to the finals,” she said. “Being my first time going to the meet, I was simply happy to be there overall. Of course, I wanted to run a personal best and win, but my end goal was to have fun and make new friends and teammates.”

Running a personal best time of 14.43 at the state meet a couple of weeks before, Witte said runners have to qualify for NON.

“After you enter your time, officials go through your running history and make sure you’re eligible, and then they decide if they want you to run or not,” she said. “I didn’t have a lot of preparation time because when I first submitted my time, I didn’t qualify. After I ran my PR at state, I re-entered my time.”

About a week before NON, Witte said she received the good news that she could run at the meet.

“Obviously, everything was last minute,” she said. “We ran preliminaries just like we would at state or any other big meets like regionals and sectionals. I was seeded fourth going into the finals but ended up winning.”

Battling injuries

Having qualified for the state meet in each of her three seasons at Ashwaubenon, Witte said she never really had to deal with injuries – that is, until her recently completed junior year.
For the last month and a half before this year’s state meet, she said she battled shin splints – a painful condition when the muscles, tendons and bone tissue around the shin become irritated from repetitive stress.

“It was genuinely so difficult for me — both mentally and physically — because it was hard on my body,” Witte said. “I was really nervous because I knew state was my end goal for the year, and I was worried I wasn’t going to make it there. It was a lot of trying to get healthy and taking breaks, but also making sure I was getting the correct training to get to the endpoint I wanted.”

Ironically, Witte said additional rest between the state meet and NON did the trick for her aching shins.

“They didn’t hurt at all in Eugene,” she laughed. “I think it was just some overtraining during the season on my part. I was training at ETS Performance in Green Bay on top of our high school practices. It was just a little too much on my legs. I don’t want to deal with that again, so I’ve learned what my body can and can’t handle — live and learn.”

Future plans

With her senior season at Ashwaubenon yet to come, Witte said she is still weighing her collegiate options.

Beginning her track and field journey starting in sixth grade, she said for as long as she can remember, she has wanted to run at the University of Miami.

“I’m working so hard to get to the point where I’m eligible for a scholarship — that is my goal,” she said. “In the next few weeks, I am going to take a trip to Florida to tour Miami and Tampa.

Closer to home, I plan to tour Oshkosh and La Crosse because those are two schools I would consider as well. I want to study nursing.”