The ritual began during the first few weeks of Kelly Allen's freshman year. Kristen Morwick, the women's track and field head coach, received an email from her new thrower containing what she considered to be some pretty lofty goals.
Given time — less than a year, mind you — Allen achieved them all.
It may have surprised the staff at first, but the Jumbos have since grown accustomed to Allen shattering expectations — and records. Now a junior, she holds all but one of Tufts' throwing marks, and enters this weekend's NCAA meet as an expected finalist, the best thrower in school history and, according to Morwick, one of the top-five female track and field athletes to come to the Hill.
"It's great when you get a kid who's a four-year, freakin' stud like she is," Morwick said. "We lucked out with that one."
Sitting in the bleachers, wearing a tie-dyed shirt and overlooking a sparsely populated Gantcher Center post-practice on Tuesday night, Allen fielded questions and well-wishes in equal proportions. At one point, on the eve of her departure to her first NCAA indoor meet, two teammates stopped by.
"Do excellent," one said. "Like always."
"Throw far," the other chimed in.
Allen stopped mid-sentence, adopting a flattered, swooning tone in response.
"The furthest!"
***
Ask Allen if she thinks about her records, about her shredding all-time marks like sheets of paper, and she'll give a prompt, albeit hushed, response.
"No," she said, retreating to more humble territory. "I'm sorry, that was very candid. Before I broke them, yes, they were goals. At some point they were goals. And now my goal is just to do as best I can every week. With that comes resetting the school record, but that's not something that enters my mind."
Allen is pretty tough on herself. If she knows she can do better, then she wants to do better for personal reasons, to extract every last ounce of performance out of her body, and not just for a school record. Setting new marks is something everyone else sees. "Allen breaks some record, leads Jumbos" has become a mainstay headline on the Tufts athletics website. But she's not necessarily competing for everyone else.
Yes, the records — shot put and weight throw for indoor; discus, hammer and javelin for outdoor — are broken. Yes, the records are hers, and she doesn't want anyone to take them. But Allen also knows that if she approaches meets aiming to set records, instead of focusing on optimizing her performance, she would be adopting an unwanted mentality.
"I want the records because I want to know I'm improving, not so people can look back and say, ‘Look at this girl,'" Allen said. "It was exciting freshman year, but by now I should have them. Forty-two feet in shot should have happened before this year."
***
Her coaches call it stalking. Allen calls it conscientious.
Either way, before she flew to Div. III Nationals at Grinnell College in Iowa, Allen knew her top competition. It's not something she'd broadcast to those tracked, but she's learned the names from scouring meet scores from across the country. You have to know what to expect, who's consistent, what type of throws you're up against. That's why every time Morwick tries to relay information Allen has looked it up first.
That's why Allen can rattle off the eight athletes ahead of her on the NCAA weight throw list after practice on Tuesday:
Alexia Child is a senior from Wisconsin-Oshkosh. She's thrown 62 feet. Three others, Allen competed against at ECACs: Oneonta's Sarah Timmons, Amanda Gricus from Westfield St. and Amina Avril from Williams. Samantha Loew, also from Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and Allison Devor, a junior at Monmouth (Ill.) will be there, too.
"I wish I could tell you the last person," said Allen, who actually incorrectly placed one ahead of her and missed another. "I bet it's a Wisconsin girl."
Indeed, most of Allen's opponents in both events attend colleges in and around Wisconsin. They've faced each other throughout the indoor season, but they haven't seen Allen, the only New Englander competing in shot put. When she reached outdoor nationals her freshman year, she heard Midwesterners asking the same basic questions.
"Who is this freshman, and where is she from? Tufts? What is Tufts?"
They quickly figured it out.
This will be Allen's first NCAA indoor meet, though she's already earned All-American honors in the discus at outdoors in 2010 and 2011. She's ranked ninth out of 15 in the weight throw. The top eight receive All-American status. Allen doesn't have any concrete expectations. She knows a little bit of pressure will force her to rise to the occasion. But the indoor season has lasted long enough. One more meet, and she's ready to get outside.
"I've had good practices this week, especially today, today went really well," Allen said. "I'm as ready as I'm going to be. Let's go."
***
For multiple-day meets, like at NCAAs where Allen will compete in the weight throw on Friday and the shot put on Saturday, being mentally ready can be as challenging as the competition itself. The options are twofold: Either break focus for the night and redo it in the morning, or just stay put. Allen tends to break out of it. Too much wasted energy to continue; that's just her personality.
Part of that perspective develops with maturity. Up until her senior year at Norton (Mass.) High, Allen, a former travel softball first baseman and volleyball player who picked up field events as something to do in between seasons, usually entered meets seeded lower than girls who were throwing 10 feet farther. Her mentality existed somewhere around, "If I lose, it's fine, because I'm seeded lower than they are." At some point, however, it switched. She put in the work. Why not her?
Though Allen entered Tufts as a relatively raw thrower, the potential always existed. Six-feet tall and never having lifted, trained every day or even mastered a technique — Allen just had to see if it carried to the next level.
Sitting in her Gantcher office cluttered with photos of past performers, taking a break from nominating Allen for Regional Field Athlete of the Year, Morwick remembered meeting a confident thrower on a recruiting visit.
"It was almost like her letting us know that we'd be lucky to have her, but not in a rude way," Morwick said. "Whereas other kids are looking to impress you, Kelly was a really confident kid. Right away, we knew we had to have her. We could see she would be a gamer without having to motivate her. She's got that internal thing you can't coach.
"Having said that, she had some horrible coaching, so it was like undoing some really bad habits."
Allen used to rely on mostly her upper body. With half a discus throw, doing a "South African" with her body facing forward at the start, Allen could still throw 130 feet and win meets in New England.
"Oh my god, you really want to ask that question?" said throws coach Lisa Wallin, breaking into laughter as she locked eyes with Allen nearby. "To have to deal with her as a freshman was pretty awful, it was probably some of the most challenging moments of my life. But that's what makes us a good team together. It's like Yoda says: ‘You must unlearn all that you have learned.'"
"We call it character building," Allen chimed in with a smile.
Once Wallin taught her the proper way, things got even easier. Records fell. Awards, including the NESCAC Rookie of the Year, were won — a rarity for throwers. The Jumbos' top point-getter was the team MVP last season, and Morwick guarantees a repeat this spring.
"It's not trying anything new; you just go back to the technique," Allen said. "To get ready, I just think about what I'm going to do to make this thing go far."
Really far.
***
Allen's weekday mornings this semester begin with a 7:15 a.m. bus to Graham & Parks in Cambridge, where she works as a kindergarten teacher at the alternative public school to fulfill fieldwork requirements.
Initially, the hectic schedule took some acclimation. A meet at the end of her first full week was "terrible." Now six weeks in, the child development major has taught herself to prioritize sleep, and is in bed by 10:30 p.m. most nights.
Next year, she'll likely teach first grade. In the future, she wants to be a teacher, preferably for kindergarteners or older students, just like her mother, a 30-year employee of Norton Public Schools.
For Tuesday's lesson, Allen, also a camp counselor in the summer, hauled in her throwing gloves, her shoes and a shot put. She made a PowerPoint to lecture on her craft, and showed the students video of her in action. The pupils each held the shot put, with two hands. It weighs nine pounds, she said. "Oh my god, that's so much," they responded to the teacher they call Kelly, wishing her well when she departed for the day.
Allen told her students that her goal is to throw that heavy sphere as far as possible, and that this weekend she would throw it as far as possible in a place called Iowa. Together, a group of wide-eyed 6-year-olds and the record-shattering student teacher, they found Iowa on a map.
After that, together, they defined "far."
