Grant, Siilats Close Out Harvard Careers at NCAAs

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.

“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.