Little Apple Times

Wray Leaving Her Mark

Shalysa Wray, the first person from the Cayman Islands to run the 400m in the Olympics, is already knocking down personal bests like dominoes as the Kansas State junior sprinter embarks upon the indoor track season.

 

Wray pared six-hundredths of a second off her 60m best as her time of 7.38 seconds finished second in school history — 0.01 seconds off the standard set by A'Keyla Mitchell in 2016 — and set a Washburn Indoor Athletic Facility record at the KU-KSU-WSU Triangular in Topeka last Friday.

 

Coupled with her personal best in the 200m at 23.85 seconds — the fastest time since Mitchell set the school record at 22.96 in the 2015 NCAA Championships — Wray is off to a remarkable start for the Wildcats, who begin the two-day DeLoss Dodds Invitational today at Ahearn Field House.

 

"The records weren't really my main goal going into the race, I was more focused on getting PRs," Wray says. "The record in the 60 was something — a second thought for me. When I heard I was so close, I was kind of sad because I was like, 'Oh, I was right there.' I wouldn't say I was shocked because I've been training really hard. I was just waiting for this time to come and show everybody how hard I've been working."

 

Wray has shown substantial growth to open her third indoor season. As a freshman, she ran the 60m in 7.51 and improved to 7.44 as a sophomore before reaching 7.38 last Friday. Meanwhile, her 200m has improved from 24.52 to 24.17 to 23.85.

 

She has yet to run the 400m this season, but her time of 54.01 at the 2022 Big 12 Indoor Championships ranks seventh in school history, beating her time of 54.77 at the 2021 DeLoss Dodds Invitational.

 

"She's improved enormously," says K-State director of cross country and track and field Cliff Rovelto, who has coached 17 Olympians. "She's worked really hard and has gotten a lot better because of it. As a coach, that's what excites me. If you have people who are really talented, they're going to do really good things if they work hard. When you have folks that really aren't blessed with as much natural ability but they get there because they've just put in the time and effort and have more maximized their capabilities, that's so neat to see. She's a wonderful example of that."

Wray attributes her early success to Rovelto's training regimen that she followed while training in the Cayman Islands over Christmas break. With aid of her national coach, she trained early in the morning to beat the island heat and to beat other athletes who trained on the track and then she lifted weights.  

 

"Coach Rovelto told me all Christmas break, 'You're going to run fast,'" Wray says. "That's what he repeats. It's shown in my work. I wasn't that surprised (in Topeka), I was just a bit surprised that it was this early in the season."

 

Wray got an early start to her racing career. Her grandmother, mother and father were all runners. Growing up in Cayman Islands and Jamaica, at age 16 she won the 4x100 at the ISSA Boys and Girls Championships in Kingston, Jamaica. At 19, she won the 4x400 and the 400 meters.

 

In June 2020, the Cayman Olympic Organization and the Cayman Islands Athletic Association granted her the opportunity to represent the country in the Olympics in the 400m — she had clocked a 54.42 in the 400m at the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics Association U-23 Championships.

 

She took seventh-place in her heat with a personal-best time of 53.61 in the 400m in Tokyo, which proved to be an invaluable experience.

 

"I still do get nervous before meets, which is normal, but I'd say since I've competed at Tokyo my nerves haven't been as bad," she says. "The Olympics is a big deal. It's helped suppress some of the nerves I had when I was younger."

 

She fell just short of qualifying for the 2022 World Championships.

 

"I'm even more hungry to make it to this one this year," she says. "I talked with Coach a lot at the end of last season. I want to take my career professionally, so we've been talking about that. He's always motivating me and telling me to believe in myself. I do have some times when I wonder, 'Can I really do this?' We've built a really good relationship. It all has contributed to me running so fast on the track."

The Big 12 Indoor Championships are February 24-25 in Lubbock, Texas, followed by the NCAA Championships on March 10-11. The outdoor season begins March 17-18.

 

"Our conversations aren't much different than they were two years ago, but the reality is she's at a level now where almost every day or every meet she can do something she's never done before," Rovelto says. "It's going to be a PR and in some cases really significant PRs. So I try to get her to appreciate that. It means you've done something that's over 100% from what you've previously done. When you do that, it takes a lot out of you. It's going to wipe you out. That's just the way it is. You've gone somewhere your body has never been before."

 

She still has goals to conquer over these next several months.

 

"I'm proud to represent K-State," she says. "I get excited and really happy to perform for such an amazing school. I like the fact that I'm putting my school out there because when you hear about K-State, you don't really hear about sprinting, you hear about high jump, so I'm glad that I'm able to show that K-State is not only capable of producing high jumpers. It's capable of producing sprinters as well.

 

"I just want to make a name for myself. I want to leave my name here. I want people to look back and remember what I did. I do plan on trying to break school records just to leave my mark. When other athletes come to K-State, I want them to hear about me and hear that there was a girl from a small island who came to K-State and did big things."

Original source can be found here.