Outrunning (and Out-jumping) Adversity

Anayah Washington has been stuck in a cycle of bad injury luck on the track as of late. Well, over-the-last-nine-months kind of late.

From a dislocated shoulder suffered one week prior to the outdoor conference championships, to a season-ending concussion at the NCAA West Prelims, to avoiding a teammate in offseason practice but straining a muscle in the process, her time has been spent climbing figurative mountain after mountain since the spring of 2022.

And despite all the setbacks, Washington finds herself back where she belongs and exceeding the levels that she achieved a year ago.

Washington is an uncommon type of track and field athlete. She is not a multi-event athlete, such as one who participates in the pentathlon or heptathlon, but she competes in runs and jumps at meets. Specifically, she runs short sprints (60 and 200 in the indoor), is a member of the 4x100 relay teams in both indoor and outdoor, and does the long jump in both seasons.

From a team standpoint, this is crucial. She scores points at championship meets in both her running and jumping events. Instead of finding more than one athlete to score valuable points, Texas State is able to do it with just one. And for Washington as an individual, she is able to compete in all of the things she enjoys.

“I love them both,” said Washington. “I grew up doing both, so that’s all I know. Sometimes if I’m running too much, I need to jump. I jump to run and I run to jump. When I first got here, all I did was run, and I missed long jump so much.”

Washington got her start in track when she was nine years old. She was doing multiple sports at the same time, such as cheer, soccer, basketball and dance. 

While running and competing alongside her sister, dance was her first love. But as she started to enter high school, she had a conversation with her mom that put her on her current path that has since taken her to Texas State.

“In high school, my mom asked me, ‘Okay, Anayah, do you want to run or do you want to dance?’” recalled Washington. “I went back and forth for a little bit before making the decision to only do track.”

Giving up dance was not easy. It was her favorite, and track and field was not something she loved doing early on. 

“At first, you do sports because your parents put you into it,” said a laughing Washington. “And in track, I was losing (early on) and I remember saying, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ After a while, I grew such a love for the sport I didn’t want to do anything else. That’s all I knew in high school, and it’s become a part of me.” 

When she was recruited to Texas State, she was asked to run. She jumped for one year as a junior in high school, but she switched solely to running during her senior year, which drew the eye of the previous Bobcat coaching staff. 

“I was recruited by the old coaching staff, and they had told me I was going to run and jump (here at Texas State),” said Washington. “I bought into the program, and I came here and thought I was going to jump, but I didn’t. Then finally, that last year that the old staff was here (in 2020-21), I had asked can I jump again, and they let me do it.”

In 2021, in her first collegiate long jump of her career, she finished first in the UAB Vulcan Invitational in January. Her 5.65-meter leap (18’ 6.5”) was below her current standard, but huge in giving her confidence that she can pursue both of her passions of running and jumping at the same time.

The 2021 indoor season was not limited to jumping, though. She continued to run the 60 meter and 200 meter and even posted a 24.84 in the 200 at the Akron Invitational that February, which still stands as her indoor personal-best. In the 60, she finished fifth at the conference meet, which paired with her fourth-place finish in the long jump to give the team valuable points in a runner-up team finish.

After a 2021 outdoor season of running the 100 and 4x100 along with the long jump, she returned in 2022 with the biggest indoor long jump of her career – and at the most important time.

At the 2022 Sun Belt Conference Indoor Championships, she won the long jump conference championship with a 6.21-meter mark (20’ 4.5”). It was not only her best so far in her career, but it stands as the third-best indoor long jump in school history. It was the longest by a Bobcat in 20 years.

But the indoor conference meet also featured one of her many moments of bad luck. Due to a clerical error – she was mistakenly registered as another athlete at a different school that shared her last name – she had to quickly convince her way into the 60-meter prelims. Scatter-brained, she narrowly missed the finals after finishing ninth (with a PR time of 7.54).

Minus the setback in the sprints, she had the success of the long jump to propel her forward. Then setback number two of 2022 struck. 

In practice the week before competing in the conference outdoor championships, she dislocated her shoulder during her long jump approach. In what was a routine practice resulted in a sudden injury. The shoulder slid back into place, though, and she was still able to compete in the Sun Belt Outdoor Championships. She finished sixth in the long jump with a 5.84 meter/19-2 leap – below her outdoor season-best of 6.10 meters – but also helped the women’s 4x100 run the second-fastest time in school history with a 44.83.

For the first time in her career, she qualified for the NCAA Regionals in both events. But on her way to the meet in Fayetteville, Ark., she suffered a concussion while loading into the car in an unfortunate string of events. Hours before her time on the national stage, she – and her relay teammates – were left without the opportunity to compete.

For the third time in four months, she had another setback.

Throw in catching strep when she got back from Fayetteville, the obstacles seemed to be never-ending. She worked with her coaches on training regimens over the summer while she bounced back from sickness and injury. Through it all, Washington has learned the lesson of perseverance.

“I think everything that I have been through in all of my years running track have made me the athlete I am today,” said Washington. “Especially with what happened at NCAA Regionals, even making it to Regionals. Sometimes I have self-doubt, but being able to make it to Regionals in not only relays but something as an individual, it showed me you can do this. You do not need to self-sabotage. You have the capability of doing it. You’re strong enough. You’re fast enough. If I’ve done it once, I can do it again.”

This year, the achievement of winning a conference championship and qualifying for NCAA championship meets has unlocked a new mindset for Washington.

“It makes me a little bit nervous but also a lot more motivated,” said Washington. “Knowing in the back of my mind that I did that. That was me. My name was first place last year in indoor. My name is on the board as one of the top jumpers at Texas State. I’m more motivated because if I knew it before, I can do it again.”

While Washington is a standout in her events, her coaches have taken notice her growth in her time as a Bobcat.

“The easy one is I’ve seen her jump farther than she’s ever jumped before,” said Kendall Gustafson, assistant track and field coach in jumps and multi-events. “That’s actual growth right there. But more than anything it’s been the mentality of leaving the mindset of being so wrapped up in numbers. In other words, separating yourself from the numbers and evaluating the jump as a whole. How you executed, how you competed, how you approached the competition. She’s really shown she can separate those two things and not wrap up her self-worth into the numbers.”

Washington is also an important member of the team seeing she competes in two different types of disciplines.

“When we came in (during the fall of 2021), she was already a respected member on the team,” said Gustafson, who with the current coaching staff took over the program in the summer of 2021. “She gaps the bridge between the sprinters and the jumpers. That’s really important. She’s not a super vocal leader, but people watch her. People watch what she does and how she competes. She knows that, too, and that’s forced her to grow and do the kinds of things that Coach E (Trent Edgerton) and I are asking her to do because she knows that people are watching her.”

Washington’s athletic career at Texas State will end this spring, but she has been active in her college experience to not limit herself to the identity as only an athlete.

She is a member of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, which was founded in 1922 by seven African-American school teachers in Indianapolis amidst racial tension.

“I chose this sorority because my mother was also a part of the sorority at Texas A&M-Commerce,” said Washington. “Our motto is ‘Greater Service, Greater Progress.’ We have a lot of emphasis on community and trying to help the community, including fundraisers for the March of Dimes and Swim 1922, which helps teach and educate people of color how to swim.”

She was more involved with the Texas State chapter last year, but now as a graduate student, she is looking to up her involvement with the sorority across the Central Texas region. 

Washington is also a member of Athletes in Action, a Christian-based group which has a chapter at Texas State. She consistently meets with a mentor and attends special events on Tuesdays and bible studies on Wednesdays.

After graduation, Washington wants to pursue a career in healthcare management. She is currently working on her master’s degree in public health with an emphasis on education and promotion. She strives to work in a hospital one day.

“I want to work in the business aspect. I can’t be with the patients and seeing the blood,” said Washington with a laugh. “I can’t do that.”

Washington is on track to graduate with her master’s in the spring of 2024, but this spring, her athlete eligibility will be over. 

She believes the men’s and women’s teams are capable of winning a conference championship in the indoor and/or outdoor seasons.

As an individual, her goals include remaining healthy, mentally and physically, as well as being more consistent in all aspects of her running and jumping. She is more focused on the process and not the results thanks to the differing styles of her two coaches – Gustafson and sprints coach Trent Edgerton. The two have shown her by focusing on the steps along the way, the end will be where she wants it to be. 

All of this is due to the adversity. The overcoming of it alongside her success has helped her grow as a leader on the team, and she has learned whatever it takes, by outrunning unfortunate events or jumping over them, it is something she can learn from. Bad luck or good luck, it is all a part of the approach.