Sarah Yensan always has a smile on her face, but it is hard not to when you are the best at what you do. Yensan has dominated the long jump competition for the past year in the SUNYAC. Oswego State’s women’s track and field team always knows it is going to get points when Yensan lines up for the long jump. The numbers are staggering, but there is a story behind those numbers. 

Yensan won the SUNYAC Outdoor Track and Field Championship long jump as a junior, with a jump of 5.56 meters. about 18.2 feet to be exact. To put into context just how long that distance is in, Michael Jordan won the 1988 NBA Slam Dunk Contest over Dominque Wilkins with a dunk from the free-throw line. That dunk was from 15 feet away. Yensan would have gone another 3 feet farther than Jordan’s leap, that is the athletic ability she has.

With such talent, it seems like Yensan would always know that she had this amazing ability to jump further than the average athlete, but she did not. It was ironically a skills-assessment in seventh-grade gym class that showed her the ability she possessed even 10 years ago. 

“Seventh grade we had a shuttle-run test and a broad jump test,” Yensan said. “And I tied with second place for the eighth-grade boys as a seventh-grader. So, my gym teacher told me to join the track team and that is when I started long jump.” 

Even then, Yensan did not fully grasp just how good she was at the track and field event. It fully hit her another five years down the road. This time as a senior in high school. She does not give herself the credit she deserves in her response. Yensan attended Lockport High School, where she earned 11 varsity letters and was named a scholar-athlete all four years of high school. She considers her fifth-place and seventh-place finishes for indoor long jump in the state of New York her junior and senior years, “decent.”

“I didn’t realize until senior year of high school that I was decent at it,” Yensan said.

Surprisingly she did not receive much track offers out of high school. Oswego State pursued her the hardest, and it ended up being the victor. Ultimately, the Lakers wound up with the athlete who would eventually break the school records for both indoor and outdoor long jump.

“The coach kept pushing and pushing me to come here,” Yensan said. “And I did not really have any other coaches looking. I just decided to come here.” 

Head coach Jacob Smith does not work with the field athletes as much as he works with the runners, but he still has observed the greatness that Yensan has been showcasing every week. This is his first year working with the track and field team at Oswego State. He has worked with the best in the country in previous coaching stops, and he sees those qualities in the senior. 

“She does a great job taking care of the things she needs to do to be successful,” Smith said. “She works really hard at practice, she does a great job getting enough sleep and making sure she is on top of stuff like that, which makes a huge difference in terms of performance. She has mastered all the things you have to do, both in practice and in terms of technique.” 

 It does not take a magic formula to be great at any activity, it takes all of the things outlined by Smith. The level of mastery in preparation by Yensan added with her natural ability to jump, creates the record-breaking performances. Her long jump at the College at Brockport meet last Saturday of 5.80 meters is top-five in the country for Div. III indoor long jump this year. 

As Yensan moves into her final stretch at Oswego State, there are records to be beaten and the future to be written. She does not know what she will do after graduation and shares the same emotions that many seniors feel with little time left and a lot of memories in the rear.

“It’s scary,” Yensan said.

Photo provided by Sarah Yensan