Jayme Wyss wins National Masters decathlon title

A long and challenging competition season for Rhinelander High School volleyball and assistant track coach Jayme Wyss ended with a silver lining last month as she continues to compete on the national masters track scene.

Wyss won her age group in the decathlon at the USA National Masters Combined Events Championships held at the in Charlottesville, Va. on the campus of the University of Virginia. She scored 4,450 points in the event which she said, pending ratification, would be the American and world record in the Women’s 35-39 age group. 

It’s been a season of ups and downs for Wyss on the track. She started the season by winning the her age group in the heptathlon in the USA Track & Field (USATF) Masters Indoors in Kenosha back in January with what would have been an American record in that event of 3,425 points. However, Wyss said she was informed in July that, due to not enough USATF officials being present at that meet, her record score would not be officially accepted by the governing body. 

In late March she won her age group in the pole vault World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships in Gainesville, Fla., with a vault of 12 feet, 5 1/2 inches. However, she returned home from that meet to find that her primary training facility, Rhinelander’s Hodag Dome, had received significant damage as the result of a power outage during an ice storm — damage that would close the facility for two months and leave her scrambling to find equipment for her and the pole vaulters she coached at RHS.

Then came yet another set back in June when she strained her hamstring while competing at the Badger State Games in Marathon. She pulled out of a vaulting competition two weeks later and her participation at the USA National Masters was in doubt.

“For five weeks, the hamstring became my fixation,” Wyss stated in a blog post she shared via email with the River News. “I lifted and only biked for a week. Four weeks to go. Then I started adding in running again, and then I could add in throwing again. No sprinting, no jumping, no vaulting. But I was making enough progress, and wanted to believe it was possible, just enough to register for the meet two weeks out from it. Then I tried drilling for hurdles, long jump, and high jump. Long jump didn’t feel good. Still nothing full speed. Some days I truly believed I couldn’t recover in time. Five days prior I tried doing a pole run on the track and immediately shut it down because of the pain. That was upsetting. But a day later, after my final distance workout, I was able to do pole runs at what felt like full speed.”

“The mental battle is tougher than the physical one, because along the way, I questioned everything I was doing,” she added. “Was it too much? Not enough? Did I need more strengthening? More stretching? Was I hurting it more or slowing the healing process? What if I pulled it in the first event? What if I was back to Day 1 post-injury after the first day of the meet? Would I pull out of the meet? Should I cut my losses and not go at all?”

Ultimately Wyss decided to give the meet a go. The decathlon is a grueling 10-event test over two days that runs the gambit of track and field events. Athletes earn points based on their performance in each event — the better the mark, the more points received. 

Day 1 consisted of the 100-meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump and 400 meters. Wyss started with a modest, by her standards, time of 15.27 seconds in the 100, but said that event was more about assessing the strength of her hamstring than anything else.

“While I did not feel worse after, I also did not feel like I ran it how I would have if I had been healthy,” she said. “I had adapted my original goals for the meet to take into account the last seven weeks leading up to the meet, with the combination of the injury and the lack of event specific training. The majority of the time I was unable to sprint or go full speed.”

Wyss said, while warming up for the long jump, she was approached by the meet director with news that raised the stakes for the competition. While she was aiming for the American record in the women’s 35-39 decathlon, she was told that World Masters Athletics — the sanctioning body through which she won the world championship in pole vault back in March — was, for the first time, recognizing the women’s decathlon as an event. That meant the winner in each women’s age group would also be setting a world record in the event. 

While, according to final results posted on the USATF website, Wyss was the only competitor at the competition in her age group, there was still the question of if her body would hold up through the nine remaining events. She made it through the long jump with a mark of 13-10 (4.22 meters), and added a toss of 30-6 1/2 (9.31 meters) in shot put. After clearing 4-1 1/2 (1.26 meters) in arguably her weakest event, high jump, she closed out Day 1 with a time of 1:12.10 in the 400 and confidence about what she could do on Day 2. 

Wyss said after the high jump she realized that her hamstring was holding up better than expected, thanks to stretching and strengthening drills throughout the day.

“I felt optimistic about being able to potentially put up some good marks on Day 2,” she said. “And the fact that I could make it through event after event made me believe that I could come back the next day and do it again. I would not be returning to Day 1 of injury thankfully!”

Wyss admitted she experienced some soreness going into Day 2 but, following a warmup of more than an hour, got through the first event of the day, the 100-meter hurdles, with a solid time of 19.81 seconds. 

“Loss of speed was again evident though, and I had to switch to four-stepping them (as opposed to a faster three-step approach) halfway through,” she said. “I could have experienced a much worse outcome, so I wasn’t going to be upset about it. I know I can get back to faster hurdle times when I’m healthy.”

A throw of 108-5 1/5 (33.06 meters) in the discus had her feeling good going into her strongest event, the pole vault. However, because she was more accomplished in the pole vault than many of the decathletes with whom she was competing, she had to sit through a long period before the bar finally reached her starting height of 10-4 (3.20 meters). 

“Pole vault is about speed, and it’s tough on Day 2 of a competition to sit three hours and then be fast,” she said, noting it was her first time vaulting since pulling out of competition five weeks prior. 

After clearing 10-4, she passed 10-8 to get to 11-2. After a make there, she was able to top out at 11-6 (3.50 meters) for the event.

“Those were not all first-attempt makes, and I struggled to find the right pole for how I was jumping at the time, but I was thankful to have made 3.50 (meters) after all of that,” she said.

After hurrying back over to javelin and putting down a mark of 75-1 (22.88 meters), the only event standing between Wyss and the finish line was the 1,500 meters. 

“It was the 10th event, 85 degrees out, and about eight hours after I had first started my warm-up for the first event of the day,” she said. “But what it really came down to, was that I just wasn’t in great distance shape. I was hoping to finish it around 6 minutes, but came in at 6:12.” 

As it turned out, Wyss already had the American age group record of 3,357 points in the decathlon covered following the pole vault. While Wyss said she hoped to exceed 5,000 points for the competition — and may have been able to do so if fully healthy —she was proud of her performance. 

“Looking back, I can hardly believe that I was able to pull off a lot of the marks that I did,” she said. “Competitions like the decathlon are tough because you could scratch all of your throws or jumps in an event and end up with zero points in it, or just have a poor showing in an event. There are so many things that could have gone wrong, but I had two days of a lot of decent marks. Yes, the 100 and 100 hurdles were both a second slower than where I should have been, but I did it as well as I possibly could have given the circumstances.”

Wyss said, despite the setbacks, 2025 shaped up to be a pretty strong year for her. While attention has turned to her duties as RHS volleyball coach, she said she’s eager to get back to training with her sights set on officially breaking the American age group record in the women’s indoor heptathlon this coming winter. 

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, but great things will come in time,” she said. 

She was talking about rebuilding the RHS volleyball program with a young roster, but the same could be said regarding her track goals for the upcoming season. 

“Chase your goals. You just might surprise yourself in the end,” she added. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].