![Hunter Powell practices his long jump at Fort Collins High School. Powell was mostly a JV runner when he attended Fort Collins, but has become a top competitor at Baylor in the Big 12.]()
Hunter Powell practices his long jump at Fort Collins High School. Powell was mostly a JV runner when he attended Fort Collins, but has become a top competitor at Baylor in the Big 12.
Hunter Powell had just made a huge leap of faith, despite almost everyone telling him it wasn’t a good idea.
After transferring to Baylor in an attempt to walk on to the elite track and field team, Powell met with the coach.
Instead of reassurance that he made the right choice, Powell received a sharp slap in the face of reality.
“ ’You can stay on the team, train with us this year and take advantage of the counselors, tutors,’” Powell recalls being told. “‘If you improve a lot, maybe you can do a time trial but you’re probably not going to be here next year.’”
Not the ideal welcome the Fort Collins High School grad was expecting at the Waco, Texas school, but Powell is used to having to prove himself.
In high school, Powell was little more than a depth runner for the storied Lambkins program. He was on the junior varsity as a junior before working onto the varsity 1,600-meter relay team as a senior.
He had dreams of setting records at the next level, but no colleges gave him a look and most people around him laughed off the idea of him running in college.
Fort Collins coach Conrad Crist didn’t. He knew there was more there. Sure that Powell would be a late bloomer, he helped encourage Powell to keep working.
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Powell decided to go to Western State in Gunnison to start his college career. In the indoor season of his freshman season, he missed out on running at the conference meet. Three days before the outdoor conference meet in the spring, the 400-meter runner asked his coach if he was going to run at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference meet.
![Fort Collins track and field coach Conrad Crist shows Hunter Powell a video of his long jump at Fort Collins High School last week. Powell was mostly a JV runner when he attended Fort Collins, but has become a top competitor at Baylor in the Big 12.]()
Fort Collins track and field coach Conrad Crist shows Hunter Powell a video of his long jump at Fort Collins High School last week. Powell was mostly a JV runner when he attended Fort Collins, but has become a top competitor at Baylor in the Big 12.
“‘You know Hunter, I’ve been thinking about it,’” Powell’s coach at Western State said. “‘Yeah, you’re going to do the decathlon and open 400.’”
Powell laughed, then asked his coach to be serious.
He was.
Powell had all of three days to learn the decathlon. He had only run the 400 and 100 before. The other eight events — long jump, high jump, pole vault, javelin, discuss, shot put, 110-meter hurdles and 1,500 — were unknown to him.
He spent 30 minutes learning hurdles; another 15 minutes each on the throws.
“Shot put, you jump back and throw it. Simple enough. Javelin? Throw it as hard as you can,” Powell recalls with a laugh.
He took third in the RMAC in decathlon, giving an almost apologetic shrug and laugh while saying he still doesn’t know how he managed it.
Then came the big leap.
On the momentum of his showing at the RMAC meet, which is an NCAA Division II conference, Powell chased his dream to run at a big school and decided to transfer to Baylor, one of the best Division I track schools in the nation.
His parents were concerned of the cost and the competition. But he was determined.
“If you want be one of the big fish, you’ve got to swim with them, right?” Powell said.
If you want be one of the big fish, you’ve got to swim with them, right?
Hunter Powell
That’s when the cautionary meeting with the Baylor coach happened. Shortly after, he did a test to measure his athleticism. He blew the freshmen and transfers away, and Baylor immediately threw him into decathlon training.
He redshirted during the winter season, so heading into the spring outdoor season he was still the track equivalent of a toddler in his knowledge of techniques in the decathalon.
Despite that, Powell finished fifth in the highly competitive Big 12 championships in May.
Stunning.
Now he’s spending every week training with Crist in Fort Collins, trying to learn the events he’s been performing so well in.
The coach and athlete go through a couple decathlon events each session and look at film between each attempt as Powell transitions from raw talent to honed decathlete.
Powell is awed at the transformation.
“It’s amazing to be able to feel these changes every day,” Powell said. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just the strangest thing in the world how you can actually feel yourself growing.”
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So what’s the next challenge?
Powell hopes to qualify for nationals next year as a junior and maybe be a national champion before his time at Baylor is over. But his biggest goal is the Olympics. It may sound audacious, but it doesn’t make sense he’s made it this far, so who is to say where Powell’s limit is?
He’s been told for years what he can’t do, now he’s having a blast showing what he can do.
“Getting to prove people wrong is really nice. Don’t get me wrong, I love that,” Powell said. “But honest to God, the best part and the most rewarding thing is coming home and hearing my buddies or my coach tell me ‘I’m proud of you. You made us proud.’ ”
Follow sports reporter Kevin Lytle at twitter.com/Kevin_Lytle and at facebook.com/KevinSLytle.
Hunter Powell bio
School: Baylor
Class: Junior
Height: 6-foot-3
Sport: Track and field (decathlon)
Notable: Three-year member of Fort Collins track and field team, never ran individually at state…Took third in decathlon in RMAC championships as a freshman at Western State in first decathlon he ever competed in…Transferred to Baylor after freshman year and finished fifth in Big 12 championships in decathlon.
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