“I pride myself in knowing how to handle situations, to be able to get through certain situations without being flustered,” Coach Jennifer O’Keefe said.

The heptathlon is not, to say the least, an easy event. Not only is the fact that it consists of seven different events in itself daunting, but those seven events require very different skill sets. The 100 meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200 meter dash, long jump, javelin, and 800 meter dash are by no means similar. And yet, some people are able to handle all of them beautifully. They are able to fit into and adapt to whatever situation they are in.

Jennifer O’Keefe is one of those people, and not just with sports. She is a teacher, a coach, an athlete, a traveler, a sibling, and a wife. If that doesn’t take a lot of different mindsets and adaptations, I don’t know what does. She puts herself willingly into uncomfortable situations because she know that it will be worth it. She is grounded yet flexible. And let me tell you, she is inspirational. She is a kind of courageous that is so humble, but so powerful.

Wills_O’Keefe_pic4: (Photo credit Ethan Keck) Far left, O’Keefe being an awesome Coach and helping to bring a rainbow on a cloudy day.

O’Keefe has always been an athlete, and a good one at that. She did gymnastics, soccer, basketball, volleyball, and starting in 5th grade, she became a track athlete. New to track, she was not sure what she wanted to do, so she went wherever the coaches put her. She sprinted, and jumped high, long and fast.

“When I won the 7th grade states as a 6th grader, I started realizing I actually really like this sport,” O’Keefe said, looking slightly embarrassed and looking away from me.

She currently still holds the 8th grade state 100 meter low hurdle time in Oregon. That should give you a hint of how amazing she is. Because she started so many different sports requiring so wide a range of skills at a young age, she was able to adapt to the heptathlon. Not because it was going to be easy, but because it was a challenge and she had learned to stretch her abilities over a wide range of acitivites.

Her parents didn’t hound her about sports, they pretty much let her go where her legs took her, but she did say that her father especially encouraged her heptathlon career. As a track and field runner himself, he saw the potential in her and lightly tapped her in the right direction.

In all the ways I have known her, she has an amazing ability to balance hard work and being uncomfortable with having fun and enjoying oneself. I don’t know how she does it. In math class, she let us take 5 minute breaks for our brains, because she knew that sometimes it was all a bit overwhelming. She wanted us to learn the material and do well, but she also didn’t want to kill us with math.

As a coach, she challenges everyone to do their best, and which has been a good, healthy challenge for me personally. Her ability to push herself beyond comfort has made me want to have the same determination and courage that she does. I used to be really scared about coming out and talking in front of people, or leading people, especially on a sports team. I thought that everyone would disregard what I said, think me mean and bossy, and I thought I would be the party pooper. But watching Coach O’Keefe over the last two years has shown me a little bit of that special blend between challenge and fun that is crucial to being a good leader. She is encouraging, funny, engaging, likes to joke around, but is also serious, and is not afraid to show people that she expects results from the work that she is putting into our practices. But like I said, she also likes to have fun.

I remember one beautiful afternoon, I saw Coach Monk lightly skipping down the walkway to the track where the track athletes were waiting for practice to start. With a small grin and sparkling eyes, she asked if I wanted to see pictures of her wedding dress, to which I responded with squeals of excitement. Then a full, bright smile, she took out her phone and opened up Photos, showing me the beautiful dress that would look so good on her (as everything does) and with only a little prodding, she went into talking about what she has ready for the wedding, where it will be, and where their honeymoon will be.

Flash forward a couple of months to a bus on the way back from Track and Field states, my sister and I sitting in the seat behind Coach O’Keefe, her phone sharing the space between us as we looked through her wedding photos.

I love that Coach O’Keefe shares so much of her life with me. While we were talking, she told me a story of how she surprised her boyfriend for senior prom. The one thing that I have learned through my life so far is that weather can ruin plans like nothing else. The Friday before her boyfriends’ senior prom (he was in Oregon, she was in Illinois), she had a track meet where she, as usual, was starring in as many events as possible. But, to her great irritation, the meet was postponed till the following Saturday due to a tornado warning. This was one of the situations that I am sure was hard for her to handle. She was supposed to fly down that afternoon to Oregon to surprise her boyfriend, but she had her meet to compete in, and though one might think that she could just leave early, this was not to be; she ran the last race in the meet.

As she tells me the story, it seems like it belongs in a movie. With a small flare of dramatic, she tells of her finishing her race and, without pausing, running straight to her car to head to the airport. She said that as she ran out people were cheering her, encouraging her to get to the plane as quick as possible so that she wouldn’t miss prom. When she got to Oregon, her older sister picked her up with O’Keefe’s dress ready in the back of the car for her to put on, sunburned face, sandy feet, and all. She then told of how her boyfriend was wide-eyed with fear when the administration pulled him out of prom, thinking he was in trouble. But when he saw her, as the local newspaper quoted, “his eyes, they just popped”. Is this not High School Musical material?

Similar to competing in a heptathlon, interacting with people includes a wide range of skills. During our interview she told me traveling around the world with her dad on his State Farm business trips. She got to go on a bunch of cruises, many different countries and states, meeting tons of people.

“I had to learn how to talk to adults, I learned how to adapt to other people and personalities,” O’Keefe said.

With a little grin she let me in on the joke that she should have carried an index card with the answers to all the typically-asked questions she got from adults. With those experiences supporting her, it is not hard to imagine why she decided to become a coach and a teacher. It also takes a flexibility to be able to interact and connect with many different types of people. I think teaching by itself if hard, but teaching abroad in a country whose language you don’t know hardly at all seems even more challenging.

When she first told me that she picked Berlin, Germany as her place to do 10 weeks of middle school teaching, I was ecstatic because I love Germany. It is one of my favorite places that I have visited. But then she went on to explain why Berlin, and I must say I was a bit dumbfounded at first.

“I wanted to go to a country that I was interested in going to, that I didn’t know the language of… I wanted to go somewhere by myself, where I didn’t know any of the language, but a place that I would be safe,” O’Keefe said.

Knowing how strange the German language is, I asked her how that went for her, and with a laugh full of memories she admitted that it was challenging. She told me of how she went into a local grocery store where no one knew English, and she ended up just walking out because she had no idea what the Germans were saying to her.

But that was the point; she wanted to challenge herself, to do a heptathlon of a different nature. In all the places she had traveled to before, she had either known some of the language or had been with someone who knew the language.

But when she went to teach, she intentionally went somewhere that she would be uncomfortable and on her own, just so that she could grow from the experience. And to me, that is truly inspirational. She doesn’t restrict herself by her comfort zone but instead tries to stretch it as far as she can. She tries, and succeeds, at being able to handle situations efficiently and well.

“You are literally Coach O’Keefe.”

I have heard this complement several times over the last few years since O’Keefe became the sprinting track and field coach. In this modern day and age, some people may take offense being told who they are, but to me it was a great honor to be told I was like O’Keefe. She is one of the people I most look up to. She motivates me in so many ways, challenges me to become better, to really push myself.  She is sharing with me and others what she learned about pushing comfort zones further out. She sees potential in me that I don’t see myself, and instead of letting it sit there, unused, she is willing to risk some of my comfort in order to reach that potential. And that is honestly one of the greatest gifts.