From Walk-On to Winston-Salem: The Jack Trent of All Trades

On February 28, 2019, Jack Trent was in final rehearsals for the musical 9 to 5 during his senior year of high school at St. John’s School in Houston, Texas, coming off of a busy soccer season.

On February 29, 2020, Jack Trent placed ninth in the Heptathlon at the Division III New England Championships in the Heptathlon in only his seventh track and field meet ever.

Then Covid hit. With the world turned on its head, Jack returned home to Houston in March 2020 and came back to Amherst in the Fall of 2020 for his sophomore year.

On February 28, 2021, Jack was living off-campus in Amherst, as sophomores were not allowed to live on-campus in the spring semester of 2021 due to campus Covid restrictions, keeping sophomores off-campus to de-densify campus. So Jack and a few of his teammates rented a house in Amherst, to live, study and train together and he wasn't able to compete during the abbreviated 2021 outdoor season.

On February 26, 2022, Jack placed third in the Heptathlon at the Division III New England Championships in only his 12th track and field meet ever, scoring 4,637 points, a mark that ended up qualifying him for the 2022 Division III Indoor Track & Field National Championships, held in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Jack placed 12th in the heptathlon at Nationals, in only his 13th track and field meet ever.

The story of Jack Trent’s meteoric rise from walk-on to Winston-Salem for the National Championships goes beyond a few days in February. It starts in Houston, Texas.

Jack Trent playing soccer for St. John's School

Growing up in Houston, Texas with his family, Jack attended St. John’s School from kindergarten through 12th grade. His mother, sister, aunts and uncles also went to St. John's, making school feel like a family affair for Jack, where he had a few of the same teachers that several of his family members did when they were students there. Jack played many sports when he was younger but mainly focused on basketball and soccer. He played basketball for his first year and sophomore year of high school and then switched to soccer, which is a winter sport in Texas, for his junior and senior years.

Along with his athletic commitments, Jack and a few of his friends started a non-partisan political club at St. John’s called SPEC (St. John’s Political Education Club), to discuss non-partisan political education. The club grew rapidly, with 400 students on their email list, and some club meetings neared 100 students in attendance. In addition to running the club’s website and publishing a magazine with political op-eds from the student body, Jack was critical in getting the Mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, to visit St. John’s and speak to the student body. Jack introduced Mayor Turner to an audience of 500 at St. John’s in October 2017 and Jack ran SPEC until he graduated from St. John’s, which is still an active club today.

Going into his senior year at St. John’s, Jack started to tour college campuses and narrowed in on liberal arts schools, where he felt that he "could meet my professors, meet people and actually be a person and not just a number,” he said, thinking of his college search process. After visiting the Amherst campus and learning more about Amherst, Jack applied early decision to Amherst in the fall of 2018, drawn to the open curriculum and smaller classroom environment.

In December 2018, Jack’s early decision application to Amherst was deferred to regular decision. He was bummed and hoped for the best with his Amherst application when his final decision would be released in the spring.

While working on his college applications and being a captain of the soccer team his senior year, Jack auditioned for the school musical 9 to 5, with no acting or singing experience. He landed the role of Bob Enright, who Jack described as a very minor character with a few lines, who also had a dance solo.

When rehearsals began in October, colliding with soccer pre-season, his days were busy. “I would get to school at 7am in the morning for lifts for soccer, go to school, finish school at 4pm, go to soccer practice from 4pm to 6pm, and then go to musical rehearsal from 6pm until 8:30pm, which was crazy, but was so fun,” as he reminisced about his long days during his senior year of high school. In the winter, he balanced school, being in-season for soccer and the final stages of rehearsals for 9 to 5, which he performed in March 2019. He called being a part of 9 to 5 “one of the best experiences of my life,” where he relished the opportunity to meet new people and to be surrounded by his talented peers. His experience auditioning and performing in 9 to 5 was an early, though unintentional, indication of his ability and appreciation for trying and excelling at new things with no experience.

Then later in March 2019, he found out that he was waitlisted at Amherst, so he sent in his deposit to attend Middlebury College, where his mother went to college. Wearing a Middlebury shirt on May 1st, known as National College Decision Day where high school seniors celebrate their college commitments by wearing gear for their college to school, Jack was all set to go to Middlebury.

Then it gets interesting.

“Then two weeks later I’m playing basketball with my friends and I get a phone call from Pomona College, where I also got waitlisted, and they ask, ‘is this Jack Trent’ so I say 'yes' and they ask, ‘do you still want to go to Pomona, so I say ‘yes, I do,’ and then they offered me a spot and I enrolled at Pomona. And I’m fully a Pomona student for 3 days. And then 3 days later, I get a phone call from an Amherst admissions rep, and they ask ‘do you want to come to Amherst’ and I say ‘yes I do,’ and I enrolled at Amherst!” So it took longer than expected, but Jack was a Mammoth!

Coincidentally, many St. John’s alumni have gone to Amherst. The older brother of Jack’s good friend Wesley Gow, Chris Gow, played football at St. John's and later at Amherst, and their sister, Sarah Gow, was engaged at the time (now married) to Reece Foy, another Amherst football alumnus. In the summer of 2019, Jack joined Wesley for his summer workouts in the brutal Houston heat in preparation for his football season at the University of Chicago and met Reece while doing those workouts, who was in Houston for the summer. After Reece heard that Jack had played soccer and basketball in high school and would be going to Amherst, Jack recalled Reece telling him, “you are athletic enough, you should be on a team at Amherst. You should do track, it’s very welcoming to walk-ons because it’s clear if you can help or not, it’s so much more cut and dry than soccer or basketball is.”

So Jack decided to think about it and took a peek at Amherst’s meet results from the spring and honed in on the long jump, noting that team members had jumped in the mid-19 feet range. “I didn’t even know what that meant,” he said, as he had no experience in track and field beyond attending a meet or two to support his friends when he was in high school. “I long jumped once that summer and we only measured a few jumps, but I put up a jump around 18 flat or 18 low feet,” he remembered of a one-hour long jump practice session, and after that, he began to consider walking on to the track and field team at Amherst.

So Jack went ahead and emailed Coach Rubin, the Head Track & Field Coach, and explained that he had never done track before, but he was interested in walking on. Coach Rubin told him to email him once he got on campus and they’d find a time to meet. After setting up a meeting once Jack was on campus, Jack was terrified, "which is funny to think about now," he remembered of that day.

Going into their meeting, Coach Rubin recalled, “I didn’t think there was any chance in the world that he would work out because he was coming from a different sport and just like anybody else I would consider walking on to the team, they probably don’t understand and don’t know what they’re getting into by joining the team.”

Jack remembers Coach Rubin saying, “we are not going to judge whether you are a walk-on or a recruited kid, but we’re looking for students who are competitive in our conference and region. Track is a serious time commitment, it’s a two-season sport.” At the end of their conversation, Coach Rubin explained to Jack that he could join the team for practices in the fall as part of the tryout period to be on the team, and by the time finals came around in December, he would let Jack know if he would be on the team.

For Jack, the whole conversation resonated with him. “For a lot of people,” Jack said, “that might have been a speech that’s scaring you away from track, but that just sounded really good to me, because I like structuring my day. I like getting to practice 40 minutes early because I like being at practice. So taking something seriously made me really want to do the sport more.”

In Jack’s first year seminar, there happened to be three other team members: Chris Gong, Wilson Spurell and Mia Rahn as well as Ellis Phillips-Gallucci. Ellis also walked on to the team, so Jack already knew a few team members and knew of another person looking to walk on to the team, adding to his comfort level. Initially thinking that he would be a long jumper, Jack practiced with horizontal jumpers Jordan Edwards and Kelechi Eziri for a few weeks.

“At the same time, I was talking to Max Spelke [another first year on the team], who was in my Econ class, and he was thinking about becoming a multi [Max was recruited as a 400 hurdler and javelin thrower], so I talked to him and Troy Colleran [a sophomore multi athlete] and Coach Rubin said that I could start working out with the multis so I started working out with them, and that was way more fun than working out with jumps because I was trying out a bunch of things I’ve never done,” Jack said, similar to him auditioning and performing in 9 to 5 with no musical theater experience.

Jack was quickly ingrained into the multi group, which at the time was him, Max Spelke, Troy Colleran, Jack Dufton, Ella Rossa, and Annelise Romero. The athletes in that event group train for the multi events which are the pentathlon (for women during the indoor season), heptathlon (for women during the outdoor season and for men during the indoor season) and decathlon (for men during the outdoor season), where athletes compete in several different track and field events over the course of two days, where each athlete’s mark in each event is assigned a score, determined by pre-established performance tables. Indoors, the men compete in the two-day heptathlon with the 60 meter dash, long jump, shot put and high jump on day one, and the 60 meter hurdles, pole vault and 1,000 meter run on day two.

(L-R) Amherst Multi athletes Troy Colleran, Max Spelke, Ella Rossa, Jack Trent and Annelise Romero at the team media day in 2020

As practices began, “I remember the first high jump practice Jack looked really good,” Coach Rubin recalled. “Jack seemed to figure out the high jump, which is not something that you normally see. The high jump has a lot of unnatural positions and motions and he sort of gravitated to a flop very quickly. In the hurdles, he understood the rotation of clearing a hurdle and didn’t try to leap on every one and he was kind of running through them a little bit. So I thought, ‘well this guy’s got good instincts.’ But more and more he showed that he had an instinct for technical events and I think that’s what fueled his progress in the beginning.”

In their weekly meetings, Jack remembered that Coach Rubin “was giving me good feedback every time and would say ‘I really like this and we need to work on this.’ So as practice went on, he was talking about long term development so I figured that had to be a good sign that I was good to be on the team.”

As the end of the semester approached, which is when it’s decided if students trying out will make the team, Jack wasn’t quite sure if he was on the team. Meanwhile, Coach Rubin stated that “it was pretty obvious midway through fall practices that Jack could hang and he had a great attitude at practice,” which is every coach’s dream. After Coach Rubin told Jack in one of their weekly meetings that he was on the team and that he needed to be back on campus for practices during Interterm in January, Jack was thrilled to be officially on the team.

But Jack felt that he had to study up to get ready to compete in a track and field meet for the first time in just a few weeks. “Between first semester and second semester, I watched so much track content, because I didn’t know what any of the events were. And so I would watch hours and hours of YouTube videos to see what they’re doing, watching pros and taking notes on some of them."

Going into the Little 3 Championships, his first meet ever, held on January 11th, 2020, Jack admitted that he "was a little nervous about doing so many events, because I didn’t know how check ins work, so I just relied on Troy to tell me what to do and Coach Rubin pointing out certain things,” as they both helped him to navigate the craziness that is an indoor track and field meet.

Jack ended up being the first person to compete in the long jump and after his first jump, he remembers thinking “this is really fun!” As the meet progressed, Jack won his heat of the 60 hurdles, pole vaulted well and also placed sixth in the shot put with his throw of 9.80 meters (32’ 2”), which critically added two points to the team score, helping the men’s team win the Little 3 Championships for the first time in 29 years, taking down Williams’ long-standing winning streak. The Mammoths won the meet by two points, where it came down to the meet-concluding 4x400 relay to determine the Little 3 Champion.

After his next meet at Smith College where Jack high jumped for the first time in competition, in addition to pole vaulting, running the 60 hurdles and also running a leg of the 4x400 relay, Jack was off to Cornell the following weekend to compete in his first heptathlon. His goal was to qualify for the Division III New England Championships (New Englands), where he needed to secure a qualifying mark of 4,000 points in the heptathlon to qualify for the championship meet.

The meet day graphic for the multi at Cornell, (L-R) Jack Trent and Jack Dufton are highlighted in color up front, playing off the saying "Jack of All Trades" because multi athletes compete in so many different events

“At that point I was very good friends with Troy, Max, Jack Dufton, Ella, and Annelise and so we were all just fired up to go compete,” he said, thinking of the great friendship between him and his teammates that helped to relax his nerves going into his first-ever heptathlon at Cornell. Then once the gun went off for the 60 meter dash, the first event of the heptathlon, “I was way less nervous because I was in the thick of it. You just don’t have time to be nervous in the heptathlon because you have another event in 30 minutes.”

At the end of day one, he set PRs (personal records) in the long jump and shot put, tied his PR in the high jump, and ran his first 60 ever, and he was on track to qualify for New Englands. After day two of the heptathlon started with not as strong of a race in the 60 meter hurdles that he had hoped for, Jack thought "'oh goodness, I feel so not confident in pole vault and I don’t feel confident in the 1k [the two remaining events of the heptathlon],' but I figured something has to go right." Then, he set a personal best in the pole vault by ten centimeters and went into the heptathlon concluding 1,000 meter race knowing that he had to run faster than a time of 3:03 in the 1k to break 4,000 points to qualify for New Englands.

After crossing the finish line in the 1k, Jack remembered “finishing and just staring at the board, knowing the time I needed to make to qualify for New Englands because that was the big goal. And then I see 3:00 on the board and I yelled and was pumped and was excited to go to New Englands!”

Jack earned a score of 4,028 points in the heptathlon at the end of the two day competition, qualifying for New Englands in his third track meet ever.

All the multi athletes celebrating after a fun first multi of the season at Cornell

Going into New Englands, Jack carried good momentum with him, setting PRs in the shot put and 60 meter hurdles at two meets between Cornell and New Englands and he also qualified for New Englands in the 60 meter hurdles with his time of 8.89 seconds.

While Coach Rubin wasn’t surprised that Jack qualified for New Englands in the heptathlon, between Cornell and New Englands “he started getting good at some things. Like throwing, he became really good at and hurdling he became really good at. And his speed came around and his endurance came around,” Coach Rubin remembered of Jack’s rapid development in the winter of 2020.

“My goal was to place and be top-8 at New Englands because I wanted to put up points on the board for Amherst [the top-8 finishers in each event score]. Usually, 8th place is around 4300 points in the heptathlon but when I was putting marks for each event in the multi calculator with three or four PRs, I was still in maybe the 4,200, if not high in the 4,100 points range,” Jack said, making scoring seem a little out of the realm of possibility for him.

At New Englands, Jack felt that he was in PR shape in the 60, and was disappointed to run narrowly slower than he did at Cornell, dashing his hopes of starting off the heptathlon on the high note that he wanted. “But then on my third jump of long jump I PRed by 15 centimeters, pushing out over six meters which was huge. And then I PRed in the shot put by 40 centimeters which was huge, and then I PRed in high jump so it ended up being a really good day one, way above anything that I had expected and I was in ninth after day one,” Jack remembered, and he was in striking distance of the scoring top-8 finishers going into the second day of competition.

(L-R) Jack and Troy Colleran after Day One of the Heptathlon at the 2020 New England Championships

Similar to how he opened up day one in the 60, Jack wasn’t thrilled with the day two opening 60 meter hurdles the next day. “But then I PRed in the pole vault by half a meter which was huge and then I PRed in the 1k by four seconds. But I remember finishing and seeing that I had broken 4300 points, but seeing that I got ninth place and I wasn’t happy, thinking I don’t care about my heptathlon PR if it’s not scoring, because I really really wanted to contribute so much to the team.” Jack placed 9th in the heptathlon, scoring 4,301 points.

“Looking back on it, qualifying for New Englands was big for me because in my mind I was still just a kid that doesn’t do track. I sort of felt some imposter syndrome there, thinking ‘do I even deserve to be here?’ But then hitting 4k in the hep, going to New Englands, and establishing myself as a person on the team who’s not just there, but there to compete was big personally for my confidence and knowing that I belong here.”

Then covid hit, and Amherst, like colleges worldwide, sent their students home. Jack went home to Houston and continued to train on his own, which gave him a release from online school and the general unknown at the time. He was also mourning the loss of the spring track and field season that he was so excited for, thinking, like many of his teammates, that the men had a very legitimate shot of winning the NESCAC Championships. And he kept in touch with his teammates, remembering a four-hour long phone call with teammate Ella Rossa, where they talked about how they were doing amongst the craziness of the spring of 2020.

Jack returned to the Amherst campus for the Fall of 2020 for his sophomore year, and after some good training in the fall, he, unfortunately, injured his ankle competing in the long jump in a virtual meet in which he set an unofficial personal best, jumping 6.10 meters. Adding to his woes, sophomores weren’t invited to return to campus for the spring 2021 semester, as Amherst chose to de-densify campus to keep the campus community safe during a difficult time in the pandemic. So Jack decided to live off-campus with teammates Max Spelke, Kelechi Eziri and Matt Gelin in Amherst. He trained at the Amherst High School track and offered to coach students on the Amherst High School team in exchange for using their facilities, which the Amherst High School Coach, Chris Gould, gladly accepted. In addition to coaching high school students, Jack kept up with the workouts that the rest of the team was doing, calling it a “scrappy time” where he did his best to make progress for whenever his next opportunity to compete would be.

The Amherst Multis for the 2022 season (L-R) Troy Colleran, Max Spelke, Annelise Romero, Trintje Nydam, Cam Heafitz and Jack Trent

Coming into junior year in the Fall of 2021, Jack was excited for the season and noticed that he was running far faster in workouts than he was just a year prior and way faster than in workouts two years ago. Practice was going well and then in the last hurdle workout before Thanksgiving, he pulled his hamstring. Then when he was at home during Thanksgiving, he pinched a nerve in his back doing his hamstring rehab, leaving him unable to practice fully until practices resumed with the team in January during Interterm.

Jack throwing the shot put at the 2022 Little 3 Meet

So at the Little 3 Meet on January 15, 2022, Jack competed in his first meet since February 2020. He threw the shot put at the Little 3 Meet, setting a personal best with a throw of 12.69 meters (41’ 7.75”). At the next meet, he set a PR in the 60 meter hurdles with a time of 8.72 seconds and set a PR in the pole vault, clearing 3.50 meters (11’ 5.75”), which “made me feel like things were coming together a bit,” Jack said, just in time for his first heptathlon in nearly two years the following weekend, where his goal was to hit a New Englands qualifying mark. The mark had changed since the 2020 season, changing to a score of 4,250 points, not far off of his personal best score of 4,301 points from the 2020 New England Championships. In his first heptathlon in nearly two years on February 4th and 5th, 2022, Jack far surpassed his goal of qualifying for New Englands, setting a personal best with a score of 4,444 points, safely qualifying him for New Englands, which “felt good, but I didn’t feel like I was where I needed to be, but it was the qualifier, and that was the goal," he said.

“I went into New England’s excited and I wanted to be competitive with everyone” in the multi, where Jack's goal was to score points for the team, especially after his teammate and defending New England Heptathlon Champion, Troy Colleran, pulled his hamstring earlier in the season and wasn’t able to compete at the meet. It was a difficult decision to make as a senior, as Troy was ranked sixth nationally at the time with a score of 4,952 points.

At New Englands, Jack was frustrated with his race in the Heptathlon-opening 60 meter dash, but he came back well in the long jump, jumping 6.28 meters (20’ 7.25”), a personal best by seven inches. After the long jump he was in fifth place in the heptathlon field, “exactly where I wanted to be, in striking position of the top-five,” Jack said. He then won the shot put by more than a meter, throwing 12.29 meters (40’ 4”) and set a personal best in the high jump, jumping 1.78 meters (5’ 10”), which put him in third place after day one, thinking to himself, “'Oh my gosh, I can actually be competitive here and make a push for the top-three,' which is crazy because I got ninth at this meet the last time I was there," thinking about the last and only other time that he competed at New Englands.

Jack pole vaulting at the New England Championships, photo taken by Elijah Sleasman

The 60 meter hurdles and pole vault went fine on day two, where he ran a time of 8.80 seconds and cleared a height of 3.45 meters (11' 3.75"), respectively, and Jack went into the final event of the heptathlon, the 1k, in second place. In the 1k he ran a great race, sitting in a great position with one lap to go, and dropped many of his competitors on the last lap, setting a new personal best with a time of 2:49, a six second improvement. Jack placed third in the heptathlon, earning six points for the team with his personal best score of 4,637 points, "which was more than I ever expected,” he said and he was thrilled to score points for the team, his goal since he was a first year.

After New Englands, Jack was ranked 20th nationally, but with another weekend of Last Chance meets coming up the following weekend, neither him nor Coach Rubin expected that his mark would hold in the top-20 nationally, where the top-20 athletes in each event earn a trip to Nationals. Just in case, Coach Rubin had Jack do light practices the week after New Englands. At the time thinking his mark wouldn’t hold to make Nationals, Jack thought, “it was crazy to even be in that conversation, because I was 40th with my other score, and I was just happy to get third at New Englands, thinking this was the best season that I could have asked for!”

He told his high school friends Wesley Gow and Sam Faraguna after New Englands that “I was 20th in the country in the heptathlon and I’m not going to go to Nationals [thinking that his mark wouldn't hold], but that would be really cool. And Sam goes to Duke, which is really close to Winston-Salem, and he said if you go to Nationals, I’m gonna go and Wesley said if you qualify for Nationals, I’ll go too and fly from Chicago.”

At the end of the Last Chance Meets weekend, Jack Trent sat in 22nd place nationally, two places away from locking up a trip to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to compete at Nationals. Then on Sunday, March 6th the Nationals qualifiers were released, and after one heptathlete ranked in the top-20 nationally didn't enter, Jack was the 21st seed, the next person to be accepted to compete at Nationals if any athlete scratched. His teammate Troy Colleran was the seventh seed, ready to go to Nationals in the heptathlon after placing eighth and earning All-American honors in the decathlon in the Spring of 2021, the multi event held during the outdoor season. So Jack told Wesley and Sam that they didn't need to plan on a trip to Winston-Salem for that upcoming weekend, as he thought there was no chance someone would scratch.

Then on Tuesday, March 8th after Troy practiced, Troy and Coach Rubin came to the conclusion that Troy wasn’t ready to compete at Nationals. And then Jack got a call from Troy, where Troy asked Jack, "do you have a suitcase? I just talked to Coach Rubin and he told me that I could call you and tell you, you should start packing to leave for Nationals tomorrow because I scratched from Nationals." So Jack packed his suitcase and left for North Carolina the next day in a whirlwind 24 hours. He told Wesley and Sam of the recent developments, and because Sam goes to school about an hour away from the JDL Fast Track Facility, where Nationals was held, Sam told Jack that he'd see him on Friday.

Jack during his pre-meet before Nationals

During his pre-meet the day before Nationals, Jack took a look around the JDL Fast Track facility and took it all in, calling it a "surreal experience," as “it felt like I was in the Diamond League [the professional track and field meet circuit], which was crazy," with signs and TVs around the facility, bringing him back to those hours of YouTube videos he watched of professional athletes before his first track season ever.

Jack and his teammates before competing at the 2022 Division III Indoor Track & Field National Championships

Talking with Jack before Nationals, Coach Rubin told Jack, "'you don’t need to do anything new, let the environment take you to where you need to be,' so I was trying to do that,” Jack said. He went into Nationals with the mindset that as the 20th seed and the last person into the meet, he just wanted to see what he could do in the national-caliber field.

Jack got the heptathlon started on a high note, winning his heat of the 60 meter dash in a personal best time of 7.36 seconds, putting him in tenth place after the first event. As he walked by his teammates in the stands after finishing the 60, he yelled "let's go!" in excitement after starting off the heptathlon strong.

Jack crossing the finish line of the 60 meter dash

Reflecting on that yell, Jack said, “I’m pretty animated when I actually get to the competition because I just love competing and that’s a huge reason why I started doing track. I love playing sports and I just love getting after it. It’s just fun to go see what you can do in those big moments and that’s the stuff that I really look for."

At the end of day one of the Heptathlon, Jack sat in 12th place and was happy with his first day of competition, where he felt that he "was beating expectations" by placing higher in the 60 and long jump than he was seeded. Along with placing fifth in the shot put, "I thought 'this is cool, day one is done, this is awesome, I’m in 12th!' And Troy texted me a good thing to do is wherever you are on day one, see how close you can finish there on day two, so I thought ‘ok, sounds good,'" setting the stage for Jack's mindset for day two of competition.

Jack clearing a bar in the high jump

Then at the hotel after the first day of competition, Sam Faraguna stopped by to join Jack for dinner, and Wesley Gow came in behind Sam, surprising Jack by buying a last-minute flight from Chicago to North Carolina to support Jack at Nationals.

Jack got the second day of the heptathlon started in the 60 meter hurdles and he was satisfied, but not thrilled with his race. He ran a time of 8.80 seconds, the same time that he ran at New Englands, and he felt that he was in shape to break his personal best time of 8.72 seconds, which he ran earlier in the season. But so it goes in the heptathlon, and Jack moved on to the next event, the pole vault.

Jack going over the first hurdle in the 60 meter hurdles

Going into the pole vault, Jack's personal best was 3.50 meters (11' 5.75"), set earlier in the season. After clearing 3.00 and 3.20 meters on his first attempts at each height, Jack needed all three attempts at 3.30 meters to clear the bar, clearing 3.30 on his third attempt, adding some drama to the pole vault. The tension settled when he cleared 3.40 meters and 3.50 meters on his first attempt at each height, matching his personal best by clearing 3.50 meters.

The bar moved up to 3.60 meters and "I took one jump at 3.60 but I was blowing through the pole, I couldn't put much force into the pole and it was titled when I was trying to jump off of it. Jamie our pole vault coach said to me, ‘do you just want to send it on a big pole,’ so I said sure” and Jack got on a 14 foot pole, a pole he had never even touched in practice. "And then I missed twice at 3.70 meters and cleared it on my third attempt and I turned to my friends [Wesley and Sam] and screamed 'come on!' and I walked back to the other multis, who were excited for me too, which was a PR by seven inches in the pole vault, which was huge," Jack said, reflecting on the intensity and excitement of that moment.

Jack celebrates after clearing 3.70 meters in the pole vault

Going into the last event of the heptathlon, the 1,000 meters, Jack sat in 14th place. Running in the first of two heats of the 1,000 with the athletes seeded 10th to 18th at that point in the heptathlon, Jack got out well and made a move to get out of the mess of the pack, separating himself from the pack with 300 meters to go. Committing to the move, Jack finished second in his heat and ran a time of 2:50. With the final points tallied, Jack placed 12th at Nationals with a personal best score of 4,663 points, far outperforming his seed of 20th place and he also a personal best by more than 20 points!

After the race Jack found himself over the trash can, exhausted from two tough days of competition, and as Coach Rubin was standing near him, Jack found the energy to say to him, “thanks so much for everything you’ve done for me, I hope I’m making the program proud.” Jack remembers Coach Rubin saying “we’re so happy you’re here."

After recovering from the 1,000, Jack found Sam and Wesley and chatted with them, grateful that two of his best friends made the trip to support him at Nationals. They promised Jack to go to Nationals to cheer him on every time he makes the meet, "and I hope that I can keep dragging them to places," Jack said, with an eye towards future fun and successful seasons.

(L-R) Sam Faraguna, Wesley Gow and Jack Trent after Jack finished the heptathlon

Reflecting on Jack's 12th place finish at Nationals, Coach Rubin said of his performance, "it’s been Jack’s trademark - he’s composed, he executes, he lets the good stuff push him and the bad stuff go after it happens and that’s how you have to be. His success speaks to Jack. Jack has incredible character. He’s an incredible teammate who thinks of his teammates first, and that makes him someone that everybody else tries to support and he is talented."

Going into the outdoor season, which will be his first outdoor track season ever, Jack is "excited to go and get marks for everything [as he's never competed in any of the outdoor only events before, the 100 meter dash, 110 meter hurdles, discus, javelin and 1,500 meter run] and the goal is to go back to Nationals and see what we can do, hopefully with Troy and many more,” as he's hoping for several teammates to earn the trip to Outdoor Nationals.

Author's Note - Assistant Cross Country and Track and Field Coach Veronica Rocco

When I first interviewed Jack Trent in September 2020, I thought it was incredibly impressive that with no experience in track and field, Jack picked up so many technical events and excelled early on, placing 9th in the Heptathlon at the 2020 Division III New England Championships. Originally, this story was going to be about Jack just missing out on scoring at that meet, which on its own is incredible. Who else comes up one place short of scoring at New Englands in their first track season ever? Then work and life got crazy and I kept the interview in the back of my head, both procrastinating and planning for a good opportunity to share Jack's amazing story. When Jack got the call to head to Indoor Nationals earlier this month, I knew that after he competed at the meet would be a great time to share his story and hear his reflections since our initial interview 18 months ago.

Since I met Jack since the Fall of 2020, I've been struck by his kindness, humor, work ethic, and incredible dedication to the team, which is noticed by all of his teammates and coaches. When I interviewed him again a few days ago, he was quick to say,

“It sort of feels weird that I’m talking so much about my heptathlon and so much more goes into it. This could easily be Troy talking about a 5,200 [in the heptathlon] if he didn’t hurt his hamstring, or Kelechi talking about a crazy triple jump, and I think it’s important to acknowledge how supportive our team is and how excited everyone was for me. The thing that blows my mind is sitting here and reflecting on talking to Coach Rubin and telling him, ‘I’ve never done track before or even anything remotely close to running but I want to try out.’ And he took me in and everyone else has been so accepting. When I was trying out, I was just a random kid who had never done track and was running not exceptionally well, but everyone was so accepting and so supportive. I want everyone to know how thankful I am for all of the coaches and everyone who has been part of the program because it has been a crazy ride and hopefully it will continue to be."

And when I asked Jack about his goals for track and field at the end of our interview in September 2020, he told me "Junior year is a toss-up because I want to say the goal is to go to Nationals because that should be the goal, but I don’t know if I’m going to be in that type of shape, but I’m going to strive for it. But honestly, I don’t really care about any of those goals, I just want the team to win NESCACs. The biggest goal is to get a NESCAC Championship as a team."

Jack's forward-thinking and goal-oriented mindset has clearly served him well and shows that when he puts his mind to it, anything that he strives for is within his reach. I'm looking forward to continuing to watch Jack compete and am eager to be witness to more of his exciting moments, where his energy is infectious and only makes his teammates, friends, and coaches want to cheer him on more.