On her own time: What’s next for Fremont sprinter Amare Harlan after her record-breaking track and field season
-
- Fremont High’s Amare Harlan looks up at her time after crossing the finish line in the 6A girls 200 meter finals race at the state track and field championships May 21, 2022 at BYU.
-
- Fremont High’s Amare Harlan crosses the finish line of the 6A girls 200 meter finals at the state track and field championships May 21, 2022, at BYU.
PROVO — Amare Harlan just finished the track and field season at Fremont High by winning 6A state championships in the 100 meters, the 200 and the long jump a couple weeks ago at Brigham Young University.
Harlan set the Utah high school track and field state record in the 100 this season — 11.58 seconds on May 7, also at BYU — and nearly set the 200 and long jump records.
Harlan did all that as a junior, following a breakout sophomore year where she started the year running 12.64 in the 100 and ended with an 11.83 in the 2021 state meet.
This season, Harlan’s first race was an 11.68 in a late-March qualifying heat at Weber High that tied Kaysha Love’s state record, set in 2014.
Harlan ran 23.83 seconds in the 200 (0.08 seconds off the record) and jumped 19 feet, 3 inches in the long jump (1.75 inches off the record).
The crazier thing? Harlan’s coaches say the best is yet to come.
“For her to come out and run 11.7s early on in the season…I think I was surprised. Being that elite as a sophomore (in 2021), it’s kind of like, gosh, where can she go from there? She’s already phenomenal,” Fremont track coach Duren Montgomery said.
Even after the record-breaking season, there’s more on Harlan’s plate in 2022.
A BUSY SUMMER AWAITS
She’s been invited to June’s New Balance Outdoor Nationals in Philadelphia, something she called a “really cool opportunity” to test herself against other elite runners in the country.
Harlan’s mother, Kelly, said there’s a chance of Amare racing at a Junior Olympics event in July, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
College recruiting will also ramp up. There will likely be plenty of schools interested — and for good reason.
For starters, Harlan beat Farmington’s BYU-bound sprinter Marianne Barber all four times they raced against each other, and Barber’s personal record in the 100 was an impressive 11.77 seconds.
Harlan’s searing 11.58-second mark in the 100 would’ve been third place at the Big Sky track and field championships, tied for third in the Mountain West, eighth in the Pac-12 and would’ve qualified her for the Southeastern Conference final.
Harlan has put in plenty of hard work, but also has innate talent. Her grandfather is Sessions Harlan, the former Weber State men’s basketball great, now a member of their Hall of Fame, who played on two of the school’s best teams ever in the late 1960s.
Her mom, Kelly, ran track at Weber State, teaches at Fremont and coaches sprinters on the track team. Her dad is Tyler Harlan, a former Weber State football player and a school counselor at Ogden High.
“She was always fast, whether it was track or softball or whatever, she loved running the bases in softball. And soccer, her favorite part was when she got to run, yeah we always knew she was fast, we didn’t know if that would translate to track fast,” Kelly Harlan said.
As a sophomore, track and field didn’t feel like work for Amare Harlan, and she was surprised by how fast she ran. Track was still plenty of fun as a junior, but it’s definitely more serious now.
“I was just hoping to keep doing good individually and keep improving, but I did not think I’d be where I am,” Amare said in an interview at May’s track and field state championships.
A lot of things were different in 2022 than in 2021 for Amare.
She wore her hair differently in track meets, she posted about her accomplishments on Instagram and came into events as the favorite instead of the underdog.
“I still get a little hesitant to post (on Instagram),” Amare said.
This offseason, she worked out and ran almost nonstop once volleyball season ended to get better for 2022. Amare was stronger, physically and mentally, and obviously faster.
“I think that says a lot about an athlete’s character when you’re that good, but you’re still willing to go to work every day to get better,” Montgomery said.
Amare Harlan’s name is now all over Utah’s track and field record books, but she is still the same humble, soft-spoken high-schooler who will acknowledge, sheepishly, the thing that made track coaches and athletes scratch their heads — she runs fast.
“It’s so cool and I feel so blessed and I’m so grateful, especially with all the work my mom and our trainers put into it, it’s been super cool,” she said
SETTING A VERY HIGH MARK, VERY EARLY
Amare’s goal at the start of 2022 was to eventually break the 100 meter state record. Nobody expected she would tie the record in her first race of the year.
Six weeks after running 11.68 in a late-March preliminary heat, Amare broke the Utah high school state record with a time of 11.58 seconds at the BYU Invitational.
At the same BYU Invitational where she broke the 100 meter record, she ran an apparent state-record 23.70 seconds in the 200, except it was with a barely-too-strong tailwind of 2.0 meters per second.
“The 200 is hard, I run it differently every time, it’s a lot of practice for me to get the curve down,” Amare said.
Earlier in April, at the prestigious Arcadia Invitational in California, she hit 19 feet, 7 inches in the long jump and eclipsed Utah’s record of 19 feet, 4.75 inches. However, since it was at an out-of-state meet, her long jump doesn’t count in Utah’s record book.
Amare’s record chase, and the manner in which she set the 100 meter record, was a little unprecedented, as is the fact that she’s smaller than most other sprinters. Enterprise High’s Jaslyn Gardner, now at BYU, was the last runner to come close to the old 11.69 record.
Gardner started out running 12.55 in 2018, only had one sub 12-second time before May and clocked 11.69 at the state meet, falling just shy of the record.
In the long jump, Amare started this year at 19 feet (her best in 2021 was 17-09.5) and jumped 19 feet, 3 inches at the state meet. Her record chase in the 200 was a little more predictable, as she started out with a 24.99 before finishing the year running a 23.83 in the state meet.
In the 100, Amare’s state-winning time was 11.81 seconds. The bar was set very high, very early.
“We made goals at the beginning of the season and she definitely was chasing that state record…I think today she’s a little disappointed that she ran an 11.8 which she shouldn’t be,” Kelly Harlan said at this year’s state meet.
ON HER OWN TIME
Amare Harlan said she was able to start so well in March because of how much work she’d done in the offseason, which included multiple running days per week, as well as a specifically tailored weightlifting regimen.
Also, she was just excited to run. Amare was sick for a couple weeks in the winter — she thinks it was COVID-19 — and didn’t race at many indoor meets, so the City-County meet was her first big race of the year. It was also her first outdoor race since the 2021 state meet.
“I was, like, antsy and just wanted to get out and run, so I think that’s what happened,” Amare Harlan said.
There wasn’t any pressure on Amare in 2021, because no one knew who she was, but she established herself as the sprinter to beat in Region 1 very early on. That’s when eyebrows started getting raised, and she was still doing track and field mostly for fun.
“Last year we started working on front-end mechanics and arms, I don’t even think she knew what front-end mechanics were until the middle of last year,” Kelly Harlan said.
This year, there was some pressure, which came with the territory of being the fastest. Amare Harlan still won every 100 and 200 race, as well as long jump, that she competed in in Utah.
“I feel like most of the pressure she puts on herself, she wants, it she wants to do good,” Kelly Harlan said.
Amare watches videos, both of her races and professional races looking for any way to improve. She says she learns better by watching others run and jump, and has also loved the process of getting better.
Amare described herself as a perfectionist, which fits in a discipline with dozens of details.
“I’m very hard on myself, my start (in the 100) is a little shaky. Sometimes I stand up really fast so I try to stay low and long jump, I don’t hit the board every time. Long jump is a big mental game, but I love it,” Amare said.
The ability for her to improve on her own is one of the reasons why she likes the sport in general.
“No, like, politics or ‘she didn’t get passed the ball.’ It’s you; I also like it that way too because it’s like, I can change stuff and I can make the change through myself versus having to rely on another individual,” she said.
A year ago at this time, Harlan had just finished a breakout 2021 sophomore season by winning the 6A 100 meter state championship with a time of 11.83 seconds.
Now, she has high-level summer competition, college recruiting, another offseason of hard work and potentially two more track and field records in her sights — all for the person who’s likely the last person that will toot her own horn.