Ocean breeze turned to snowstorms. Sunshine turned to rain clouds. The sandy beach turned to wheat fields.
What if this move is the worst decision? What if my season doesn’t go as planned? What if I am merely an athlete?
All these questions flooded University of Idaho senior triple jumper Kalani Hardyway as she made the decision to move from Oceanside, California to Moscow, Idaho. She had never been to the Palouse. She didn’t even know if Idaho would suit her.
“Idaho? No one goes to Idaho. Where is Idaho?” Hardyway said about getting recruited to be a Vandal.
She grew up with a sole purpose, a sole identity. She was an athlete through and through. Hardyway recalled running through the wet grass of a soccer field to jumping on a trampoline as a gymnast to pointing her toes in a dance class. She played almost every sport under the sun. For her, each sport was a new path toward an affordable education. It would pave her way to a degree.
The one sport that surpassed the flippancy of middle school and high school and into the permanency of collegiate athletics was track and field, specifically triple jump. Hardyway was fine with the fields and courts dissipating, as long as the sand pit secured her a scholarship. Even with a signed letter of intent in hand, being a college athlete did not pan out the way Hardyway believed it would.
Anxiety flooded her mind. She craved validation. She wanted to please the crowds, the coaches, her family. But her scores weren’t always where she wanted them. The exhaustion seeped into her veins. Injury crippled her chances at a season. And her identity seemed to suffer. If she wasn’t an athlete, what was she?
“Even though sports was one of the constants in my life, when I got to college, immediately I was like ‘this is fun, but this can’t be the only thing that’s part of me,’” Hardyway said. “This can’t be my whole entire thing.”
“I’m gifted, but I am not the best track and field athlete in the world, nor (was it) something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Finding validation from something that’s not so fickle was hard for me at first.”
Hardyway found that validation in one thing, Jesus. She dove into her faith as a means to cope with anxiety, injuries and purpose. No longer was her audience her friends, coaches, teammates and fans. She jumped for an audience of one, and that was the only way she would see herself as more than an athlete.
“Oh, there’s this man named Jesus who died for me, and he loves me not based on how well I perform,” Hardyway said. “It has nothing to do with my abilities, but he loved me knowing that I might not love him back.”
Hardyway opens meets in prayer with her teammates. She doesn’t ask for places on the podium. She doesn’t ask for school records. She doesn’t even ask to beat her opponents. She asks for nothing.
“Lord, thank you for this opportunity, waking us up and giving us the ability to come out here and do something that we love,” Hardyway prays. “And to get an education at the same time, but would we have fun and also remember that our identity isn’t based in the sport that we play.”
Hardyway said sports live and thrive on pleasing others. If she placed her identity in only being an athlete, she would only be living to please others. Instead, Hardyway chooses to put her identity in something bigger, in being more than an athlete.
“First and foremost, I am a child of God. I am a sister, a daughter, a friend,” she said. “I am more than an athlete.”
Joanna Hayes can be reached at [email protected]