LINCOLN — Nebraska’s Audrey Svane can’t quite explain the stunning February afternoon when she propelled her body up and over a horizontal bar resting more than 6 feet off the ground.
It was — and still is — the Husker high jumper’s career-best leap, one that ultimately restructured a season’s worth of goals.
But since then, Svane hasn’t necessarily been trying to bottle up all aspects of that jump’s split-second combination of burst and contortion. She’s still not sure if proper form and precise execution were at the core of her success that day.
It was one of those “weird” jumps, she said.
Weird, mostly because she wasn’t really anticipating it. But Svane would gladly take more of those jumps this weekend, when she and select individuals from Husker track and field teams travel to Austin, Texas, to try to earn spots at the national meet.
A nation-high 32 athletes will compete from the NU men’s squad, which won its second straight Big 12 outdoor title two weeks ago. Svane, a junior from Tioga, Texas, is one of 29 on the Nebraska women’s team heading to Austin.
The three-day regional meet, one of two nationally, begins Thursday. The top 12 finishers in each event qualify for the NCAA outdoor championships next month in Eugene, Ore.
Svane has never made it that far. And before that 6-foot, ½-inch jump on Feb. 13 at the Tyson Invitational, she hadn’t really had the national title on her radar. But on that day, she matched veteran teammate Epley Bullock and Wisconsin high flyer Megan Seidl — two of the favorites to take the NCAA crown.
Two weeks later, Svane was an All-American at her first appearance in the indoor national meet. At the Big 12 championships earlier this month, she finished third.
“Sometimes you just have those jumps that you’re not expecting, but I kind of started raising my goals after that,” she said. “That’s when I wanted to go out and not only make it to the big meets, but perform at the big meets.”
She’ll have her chance this weekend, though it won’t be easy.
Meet officials will raise the high jump bar every 3 centimeters instead of the usual 5, so the talented field will be forced to leap more often. It’ll decrease the likelihood of ties and weed out the group more fairly. But the Saturday competition could last about five hours.
There are already 19 high jumpers with higher outdoor marks than Svane’s. She cleared 5 feet, 9¾ inches at the Nebraska Open on May 8, her best leap since the indoor season.
Wisconsin’s Seidl will be one of the 48 competitors in Austin. Bullock will participate, too, of course. The Husker senior holds the nation’s second-best outdoor mark in the high jump (6 feet, 2¾ inches).
So there’s no doubt that Svane will be surrounded by some of the best high jumpers, but she thinks that the heightened competition level might have been what fueled her in Arkansas. She’s hoping for a similar showing this weekend.
“I’ve seen the big meets before,” she said. “You just have to be one of the jumpers that sticks with it the whole time. If you go into it mentally prepared to stick around the whole time, then it’ll be a fun day.”
Contact the writer:
402-473-9585, jon.nyatawa@owh.com
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