Beloit Memorial's Jaslyn Gama ready for state run

BELOIT — High school track and field coaches will tell you Beloit Memorial’s Jaslyn Gama is just the sort of athlete who motivated them to get into coaching in the first place.

Hard-working. Dedicated. Coachable. Maybe someone who’ll never shatter school records, but who will set realistic goals and do everything in her power to reach them.

Gama certainly won’t be a favorite on Friday when she competes in the 400-meter dash at the WIAA Division 1 State Track and Field Championships in La Crosse. Except in the minds of her coaches, who’ll be pulling for her to survive to the finals on Saturday.

Doing that will be quite the undertaking for the senior, who placed third in the Beaver Dam Sectional. Her time there, 1:01.66, was a little off the PR of 1:01.09 she set at regionals. But even that time would put her back in the pack of 24 runners competing for a spot in the finals.

Which means little to Gama. Getting to UW-La Crosse’s Veterans Memorial Stadium in the first place was accomplishing the main mission. The rest, as they say, is cake.

Gama is a four-time sectional qualifier, three times in the 400 and once in the 300 hurdles, but a first-time state qualifier.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop talking about it, honestly,” the senior said with a chuckle. “This was my last shot to make state and I did it.”

The 400 is probably the least popular of the sprints because it requires all-out speed for the longest duration. Gama has basically been the school’s lone 400 runner since her sophomore year, when Rebekkah Dekok also ran the event.

Yet she loves it.

“The first time I ran the 400 was in the seventh grade,” she said. “I thought this really isn’t so bad. When I started to get better at it, I decided to stick with it. Now it’s a real adrenaline rush when I finish the race.”

She had a coach all along who motivated her to improve.

“Coach (Lisa) Moore has been with me since middle school,” Gama said of the current BMHS assistant. “Both she and her husband Tim have always been there for me. They have had so much patience with me because I’m probably hard to coach. I’m a really stubborn person. They have pushed me to my limits in a good way. They helped me grow not just in track but also as a person.”

Lisa Moore, who is a BiLiteracy Instructional Coach and EL teacher at Converse Elementary, said she’s going to miss Gama.

“Jaslyn is a special young lady,” the coach said. “She is a fierce competitor. She doesn’t like to lose. That competitiveness is what drives her to push herself anytime she races.”

Gama said she decided to go the extra mile to make certain her senior year ended up a little longer than her previous seasons.

“I did cross country in the fall and I think that helped me a bunch,” she said. “It helped with my endurance and the 400 is all about endurance. Now I feel like I can run forever.”

She also studied the race itself and how other runners approach it.

“I watched a lot of races on YouTube and I saw that there are really two types of 400 runners,” she said. “You’re either super fast the first 200 meters or you really start kicking it in at the 200 mark. I know I’ve tried to pass people on the curve at the 200, but I knew I had to increase my pace toward the 200, too. I needed to increase my acceleration.”

She also began to use starting blocks for the first time.

“I’d always begun the race standing up, but I finally committed to those blocks,” she said.

The results speak for themselves. She’ll be a one-woman team at state. No other Purple Knights, male or female, qualified.

“I enjoyed the fact we had our 4-by-100 relay go to the sectional,” she said. “Having teammates there was great. I wish we had someone else at state, but unfortunately that’s just not the case.”

Now it comes down to a simple goal for the meet.

“I just want this to be my best last run in high school,” she said.

• NOTES: The state meet features two sessions on Friday. The Division 1 session begins at 9:30 a.m. The Division 2-3 sessions begin at 3 p.m. The competition resumes Saturday at 9:30 a.m. The order of the finals for each event Saturday begins with Division 3, followed by Division 2 and then Division 1. ...Tickets are $11 per session and available to be purchased online at the WIAA website through GoFan, the WIAA ticketing partner, at: https://gofan.co/app/school/WIAAWI?activity=Track%20and%20Field.