Distined for Greatness
Mar 04, 2024 | Track and Field
A leap into the record book.
With the 2024 SEC indoor gold medal already secured with her leap of 1.97 meters (6 feet, 5.5 inches), Lamara Distin had the bar set at 2.00m/6-6.75, a mark which would earn her an NCAA indoor record and a height no Jamaican women’s high jumper has ever soared.
Distin knocked over the bar on the first attempt and clipped it on the second. With one last attempt, she cleared the bar with centimeters to spare. Without even needing to check if the bar was still up, the native of Hanover in the northwest corner of Jamaica let out an exuberant scream before collapsing back on the landing pad in pure joy.
“I’m still in disbelief,” Distin said. “I’ve been working so hard for this. I wanted to jump two meters for so many years. For it to finally happen, it’s really a great feeling. I want to leave a legacy and a history.”
There is no doubt that Distin is building a legacy at Texas A&M. She owns three NCAA high jump titles, including indoor golds in 2022 and ’23 and an outdoor gold in 2022. The 2.00-meter leap earned her a fifth consecutive SEC high jump title added to indoor-outdoor sweeps in 2022 and ’23.
I'm still in disbelief. I've been working so hard for this. I wanted to jump two meters for so many years. For it to finally happen, it's really a great feeling. I want to leave legacy and a history.Lamara Distin
But for Distin, it was the one that got away which sparked her exemplary efforts to get to the next level. At last year’s NCAA Outdoor Championships, she petered out at 1.87 meters, finishing second to Ball State’s Charity Griffith. While second place is satisfactory for most, the effort did not sit well with Distin who had a 14-meet victory streak snapped.
“She was extremely upset she got beat,” head coach Pat Henry said. “She verbalized it, and Lamara doesn’t verbalize too often. You could see in her demeanor she was going to do everything she could to never let this happen again.”
‘Everything’ meant maximizing every minute to squeeze the most out of every training session and weight room workout.
“After she got beat at the NCAA outdoor meet we had to sit down and have a heart-to-heart,” assistant coach Mario Sategna said. “She still had the world championships in Budapest ahead of her and we wanted to make the most out of that. She voiced some of her concerns and I obviously voiced mine.”
Although she went to Budapest hoping for better than her fifth-place showing, she was heading in the right direction and her work ethic was impeccable.
“Every single day since then she’s been a nine or 10 out of 10 in her training,” Sategna said. “Whether it be in the weight room, outside with general strength movements or in her practice. Now you’re seeing the benefits of all that.”
When he joined the Aggie staff in July 2022, Sategna was not timid in setting goals for Distin. From the start, he set her sight on Paris.
“From the very beginning, my goal for her was the Olympic Games,” Sategna said. “Not to take away from the NCAAs and even the world championships, but I knew it was going to be a two-year process.”
Distin has already showed she can reach the height to medal at the Olympics. Her recent clearance would have earned bronze at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021. Now she needs to replicate the effort at the highest level, which Henry believes should not be an issue.
“She knows she only has so many jumps at an event,” Henry said “It’s a massive collection of everything she has done to get over that bar. It’s about all the work she puts in every day to find a couple more inches and she is really good at bringing that out at the most important times. That’s defined her this year more than any other year.”
Growing up in a country renowned for its speed merchants, Distin is looking to break new ground. Arthur Wint started the sprint craze with a 400-meter gold medal in 1948 and since then nearly all of Jamaica’s 87 track & field laurels have come in the sprints highlighted by the likes of Don Quarrie, Merlene Ottey, Elaine Thompson and the gold-standard Usain Bolt. James Beckford (1996 silver) and Chelsea Hammond (2008 bronze) have accounted for two long jump medals, but nobody has earned the hardware in the high jump.
“That opens the doors for lots of other young ladies down there to get into the sport,” Henry said. “She’s a hero down there and that helps in two areas. You get young people looking up to her that want to do what she’s doing, but you also get people down there wanting to put resources into that area and get better at it.”
Distin is not only breaking new ground for Jamaican high jumpers, she is also setting new standards for all the Caribbean athletes. She became the first to clear two meters. Among Caribbean nations, only Cuba has claimed medals with Ioamnet Quintero earning a bronze in 2002 on the women’s side and the legendary Javier Sotomayor taking home gold in 1992 and silver in 2000 in the men’s competition.
The history making moment ????
— Texas A&M Track & Field/Cross Country (@aggietfxc) February 24, 2024
2.00m/6-6.75 for the NCAA record ??#GigEm // #AggieTF // @DistinLamara pic.twitter.com/XnBM4plADq
The lack of locals in the spotlight had Distin looking elsewhere for high jumping role models. For her it’s Croatia’s Blanka Vlasic – a four-time world champion. If she maximizes her potential, she will be the beacon for future Jamaican children who venture into the high jumper.
“It’s a great feeling,” Distin said. “Knowing there are young athletes out there who say, ‘I wanna be like Lamara.’ It’s great knowing that they are looking up to me and I can be an inspiration.”
Despite her peak years of high jumping still being ahead of her, she’s already a rock star in her home country and she has begun converting the sprint-happy nation.
“I went down with her last year for the Jamaican trials prior to world championships,” Sategna said. “The stadium is packed. And everyone knew who she was. She’s a pioneer there, opening opportunity. She is one of the world’s best that’s getting highlighted by her federation. There’s a lot of young athletes that suddenly see the high jump as an important event.”
A well-rounded human, Distin has become a role model outside of athletics. She recently claimed SEC Indoor Scholar Athlete of the Year. She sports a 3.5 GPA while pursuing her undergraduate degree in sport management. She also picked up USTFCCCA All-Academic recognition the last two years.
“The improvement she has made in the classroom has been impressive,” Henry said. “It’s part of the total commitment she takes. In addition to being a world-class athlete, she is handling the academic rigors of Texas A&M. Now, she’s the SEC Scholar Athlete of the Year, and that says a whole lot about her.”
With the 2.00-meter barrier cleared, it’s equally important for Distin to consistently reach that mark while also looking for those critical inches to go higher.
“Now it’s about being consistent at those marks,” Sategna said. “And that was what was great about her performance. Not just the fact she jumped 2.00 meters. One of the most impressive things to me was that she jumped 1.97 the bar before which is the Olympic standard and she made that on her first attempt. That was a huge breakthrough from a coaching perspective. So now all of a sudden, she’s consistent. That consistency is how you achieve greatness.”
Along with the consistency, the grueling work to find those extra inches continues.
“I’m getting stronger in the weight room,” Distin said. “That’s a really good thing. And I’m actually improving on the track. I’m getting a lot faster. I feel like that all is contributing to me going higher.”
Distin has reached the elite level where every refinement needs to be made with care and diligence. A tweak to improve one area could have an effect on another area.
“The high jump is such a finicky event,” Sategna said. “So we have to be careful. It’s a fine line between making adjustments to improve and messing up what’s already there. She has a lot of input in that. We want her to have a lot of ownership because she needs to buy into what we’re doing.”
More than the physical adjustments, the key for Distin to reach her potential, not only this summer but in the years ahead, will be the mental aspect. The handling the psychological aspects of the event along with all the pitfalls awaiting outside of competition.
“Some physical adjustments are still being made,” Henry said, “But it’s a mental game. Our sport is 90% mental. We train hard. We teach skill development. But most importantly we’re trying to work on the athlete’s brain all the time to try to help them.”
While Distin has a busy summer looming, including a potential appearance at the Olympics, her mind is on another possible leap into the record book at the NCAA Indoor Championships. Joining UCLA’s Amy Acuff and Arizona’s Bridgetta Barrett as the only three-time indoor high jump champions and reaching a new summit.
