Seven steps to success

It wasn’t long after her first season as coach of the Rhinelander High School volleyball team that Jayme Wyss set her sights on a different, personal goal — one she was able to achieve earlier this month.

Wyss is now the American record holder in the women’s 35-39 age group in the heptathlon, after a successful two-day USATF Masters meet at Carthage College in Kenosha earlier this month. 

The grueling seven-event competition tested Wyss’s athleticism in the 60-meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 60-meter hurdles, pole vault and 800-meter run. Essentially, athletes compete against themselves, earning points for their performances in each event. The better the mark, the higher the points. 

Wyss ended up crushing the record with a total of 3,425 points, surpassing the mark of 2,932 set in 2023 by Erycka Fisher of Broomfield, Colo.

Wyss, a former collegiate pole vaulter at Concordia (Minn.) University, an elite triathlete and newly-named assistant coach for the RHS track team (see related story), said she had her eye on a couple of other marks for the outdoor season and wanted to use the Kenosha meet as an indoor tuneup. When she looked up the women’s heptathlon record, she said she knew she could take a run at it. 

“I knew that this is always every year at Carthage. It’s a national championship, but it’s always in Wisconsin and so I was like, ‘I should look that up,’” she said. “I know I saw what the American record was and I wrote out what I think I could do my marks in and I’m like ‘I think I could beat it.’”

Wyss said the two-day competition was a grind both physically and mentally — especially on Day 1 where she had to get through some events that were not her strongest before getting to her specialties in Day 2. 

    Rhinelander’s Jayme Wyss competes in the 60-meter dash during the USA National Masters Indoor Heptathlon in Kenosha Saturday, Jan. 11. (Submitted photo)
  

She said the 60 went fine (9.10 seconds), but she needed the final of her three attempts in the long jump to get a mark (4.12 meters, 13 feet, 6 1/4 inches) and stay in the fight. She put a mark out early in the shot put competition (8.85m, 29-0 1/2) and managed to clear the bar twice in high jump (1.21m, 3-11 5/8), an event she hadn’t competed in since 2019. 

“I’ve never been a good high jumper,” she said. “Haven’t done a 5 1/2 years. When I did it then I still wasn’t good at it. Like I just never really gave it the time. I can coach it. I can tell you all about what you’re supposed to look like … So I started I started really low like it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I better make more than one height and just because it’s like I don’t want that on my behind my name,’ but at the same time like ‘It’s OK, I got points.’”

Wyss had a rabbit to pace herself against as Fisher, the American record holder, was also in the competition. After Day 1, Wyss found herself within striking distance, 327 points behind Fisher. 

“I’m like OK, I’m like 26 points ahead to where I was hoping so like if tomorrow goes well like I could do it,” she said. 

    Rhinelander’s Jayme Wyss competes in the pole vault during the USA National Masters Indoor Heptathlon in Kenosha Sunday, Jan. 12. (Submitted photo)
  

She made it through the hurdles without incident (11.21 seconds), setting the stage for her strongest two events. Wyss cleared 11 feet, 5 3/4 inches (3.50 meters) in the pole vault — not only winning that event for the women but out-vaulting 38 of the 39 men in the field. Fisher, meanwhile, failed to post a height in the event. 

“I was elated at that point like surpassed my goal,” Wyss said. 

Because results hadn’t updated prior to the 800, Wyss said she was pretty certain, but not positive, she had the heptathlon record clinched going into the final event. No matter, she breezed through it with a solid time of 2 minutes, 53.23 seconds to lock up the crown.

“I just know like I’m good at pacing and keeping calm,” she said, noting the strain of the six prior events had take a toll on her legs at that point. “One really great athlete after was like how do you know how to run that? I’m like I just do a lot of pace work like that’s part of my workouts is like you should be able to feel it at some point of what that feels like to run an 800 … I know how to pace that and my goal was to split 43 (seconds) for all four laps and I ran like a 43, 43, 45, 41. I was like OK I can’t ask for anything more.”

Wyss spent the months prior to the event training locally. She practiced for the majority of the events inside the Hodag Dome while running outside for the 800 and doing footwork for the shot put in her basement. 

“(Hodag Dome Manager) Janet (Jamison) was nice enough to let us open the sandpit. I could not get them to just bring in hurdles so I had to bring in my own hurdles bringing in blocks like that kind of stuff,” she said.

Helping Wyss along her journey was her husband, Andy, a former collegiate track athlete and track coach in his own right, who will also be on the RHS staff this spring. 

“I definitely was probably very difficult in the beginning,” she admitted. “Then it was like being able to get me comfortable with being uncomfortable, I guess, and me just taking some humility being like ‘OK, I don’t know. You tell me what I need to do.’ Just feeling like these are the things that I don’t feel are my strengths, but I think that you can bring the best out of me. I think it just had to do with a lot of me just letting him take that role cause he’s just really good at it.”

Wyss admitted that the mental challenges of the competition were just as hard as the physical. She said she had to take a moment to collect herself after scratching her first two long jump attempts. She saw one athlete barely make the start of the 60-meter hurdles after oversleeping her alarm, another get injured warming up for that event and others scratch out of the field event from simply just trying to do too much and failing to get a mark.

The collegial feel of the meet and the camaraderie of the athletes helped to ease those mental challenges, she added.

“I feel like everybody champions around each other,” she said. “It’s a lot more like the pole vault community is different in that they just want to see each other succeed and they can cheer on their opponents. I feel like when you get to multis, because you spend so much time going from event to event and there are moments of vulnerability, you can relate to them because you know they might no height or they scratch too. You just relate to each other really well because you’re all going through the same thing.”

Wyss had not competed much at the Masters level since 2019, but got back into it, with an eye at eventually going after the women’s 40-44 pole vault record (3.65m, 11-11 3/4). That’s a mark she cleared in 2019. While investigating that record, Wyss found out that the American record in the decathlon in the 35-39 age group is 3,357 points, a mark she said she will attempt to beat this summer.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].