From The U to Team USA
By Christy Cabrera Chirinos
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Even as she opened the package and pulled out all of its contents, Michelle Atherley felt like she was dreaming.
It wasn’t until she saw herself clad in all the red, white and blue gear sent to her by USA Track & Field that the Hurricanes’ national champion was reminded again of her new reality.
She was now, officially, ready to represent her country on the international stage.
“I don’t really get nervous or anything when it’s coming up to a big meet, but this particular moment made me excited for what I’m about to experience,” Atherley said. “It’s not so much about competing or anything like that, but I can’t even explain what it was like to put on those colors. I kept looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, ‘Yeah, this is really special.”
This weekend, Atherley will represent both the U.S. and Miami when she competes at the Thorpe Cup, a prestigious annual meet featuring some of the top decathletes and pentathletes from across both the United States and Germany.
It will be, for Atherley, another first in a year that’s been filled with them.
In March, the redshirt senior won the 17th national title for the Hurricanes track program when she put together a dominant performance in the women’s pentathlon at the NCAA’s Men’s and Women’s Indoor Track and Field Championship.
She would follow that with an ACC outdoor title in the heptathlon, a grueling two-day, seven-event competition that pushes athletes to their physical limits. By year’s end, her glittering resume also included an ACC indoor heptathlon title, both indoor and outdoor first-team All-American honors and recognition as the 2019 ACC Indoor Field MVP, Women’s Field Performer of the Year and Scholar Athlete of the Year.
That’s not exactly a bad 365-day stretch.
“She’s worked hard and it’s been a great season for her. People don’t realize – because she’s had so many accolades – that this has been her first, from start to finish, really solid outdoor season,” said Amy Deem, Miami’s director of track, field and cross country programs. “To cap off this year and go into her senior year representing Team USA, it’s really going to help her grow and understand what it takes to compete internationally. It will give her a lot of experience and set her up well going into her senior year and going into the Olympic trials.”
As well as the last year has gone for her, though, Atherley’s journey hasn’t been an easy one.
Not long after transferring to Miami as a sophomore, she learned the pain in her knee would not only cost her her first season as a Hurricane, but could impact her career beyond that.
There were questions about whether Atherley would have to drop some of the events in which she participated and how effective she could be in others. There was, she even said, a brief discussion about whether it might make sense to stop competing.
“I remember I took one breath and said, ‘That’s not going to happen,'” Atherley recalled. “I was like, ‘That’s not an option, so what can we do to make it work and move forward?’ I never accepted that as an answer.”
Instead, Atherley poured herself into her treatment and rehabilitative work. A former gymnast, she adjusted her technique in the high jump to continue competing at an elite level.
Her work paid off, with Atherley earning Indoor All-American honors in 2017. From there, she’s only gotten stronger to the point that now, even U.S. Track & Field has taken note of her athleticism and championship resume.
“The adversity of the knee injury and then the challenge of learning to jump off the other leg, every curve ball life threw at her, we found a solution and she tackled it with everything she had,” said Hurricanes assistant coach Rob Jarvis, who works with the athletes in Miami’s jumps and multi-event groups. “Just the progression from that to this indoor season, being a national champion, All-American outdoors again, it’s just a testament to her work ethic.”
For Atherley, the hope now is that competing at the Thorpe Cup won’t just potentially land her a medal and give her much-needed international experience, but that it will translate when she returns to Miami and begins her final year of collegiate competition.
Her national championship trophy has a premier spot on her trophy shelf, but she smiles when she points out there’s still plenty of room for an outdoor championship trophy, too.
And beyond that, Atherley is eyeing the possibility of competing in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
A strong performance at the Thorpe Cup, she knows, will help her move closer to that goal.
“If you asked me about the Olympics like a year ago, I would have been like, ‘I don’t know’ because I’m a pretty realistic person and I like to take things step by step,” Atherley said. “Now that I see I can compete with the best of the best, I don’t think it’s out of my reach to try for that and to go to the trials. People ask me all the time if I’m going to the Olympics and I always say it’s not that simple, but that’s the goal. You never know what’s going to happen because nothing is guaranteed, but that’s really the goal.”
