Arizona's Jordan Geist focusing on details in seeking elusive outdoor NCAA titles in shot put, hammer

For Jordan Geist, it’s all in the details.

All he’s done is win over his six years at Arizona in the shot put and hammer throw.

He’s piled up multiple All-American accolades, Pac-12 championships and Pac-12 Men's Field Athlete of the Year honors. Indoor, outdoor, he’s conquered it all. Heck, he even was the Pac-12 discus champion his freshman year.

Still, after winning the NCAA Indoors in the shot put, something seemed off.

Looking from the outside, you wouldn’t have noticed as he just kept winning (Jim Click Multis, Mt. SAC Relays, Pac-12 Championships) and putting up personal bests (74.14 meters in the hammer at Jim Click; 21.25 meters in the shot put at Mt. SAC) and meet records (20.92 meters at the Penn Relays in the shot put).

While others might have said all of this was good enough, Geist studied his technique and went back to the basics to fine-tune those little things. It's just one of the reasons he stands out as an elite athlete and one of the best in the nation in his craft.

“He cares,” Arizona track and field coach Fred Harvey said. “From a personality standpoint of view, he's so focused and so driven, whether it’s in the classroom, or his specificity in terms of training. He does the best job of not leaving anything to chance — making sure he’s giving himself the best opportunity.”

Geist’s next opportunity to show the work he’s put in comes Wednesday as he competes in the finals of his two events — shot put and hammer — at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Austin, Texas. Those events will be shown on ESPN+. First up is the hammer at 12:30 p.m. MST, followed by the shot put at 6:30 p.m. Geist has placed in the shot put at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, but he's never won it.

Arizona's men’s team is ranked No. 18 heading into the Championships. Geist’s teammates who are competing this week are Talie Bonds (100-meter hurdles); Tapenisa Havea (discus); Yousself Koudssi (shot put, discus); Zach Landa (shot put); Jared O’Riley (javelin); Alexa Porpaczy (high jump); and Trayvion White-Austin, Brian Limage, Carl Hicks and James Onanubosi (4x100 relay).

Geist has hit the weight room with heavier weights to help push him through the last few months. With that extra strength, it’s taken a while for Geist to feel like he has his rhythm and timing like he did during the indoor season. Watching film and changing up some of the drills has helped him get to this point. That includes throwing a lighter ball in practice (15 pounds) than what's used in competition (16).

“That's forcing the body to move a little bit faster to be able to connect with that ball and be able to throw that ball well,” Geist said. “The feeling was that 15 that we're having in practice now is forcing that timing to speed up a little bit within a meet with adrenaline that's going to mimic that a little bit more closely.”

Mature approach

Geist, who plans on competing professionally and training for the 2024 Olympics in Paris next summer, will talk to agents after the NCAAs. Earlier in the semester, he discussed what's next with his coaches and parents so that he could just do his thing and not be concerned with that while he is competing. One of the possible opportunities is staying in Tucson to continue training with his UA throws coach, Lucais MacKay, and working with the program.

MacKay joined the Wildcats last fall after a six-year stint as an assistant at Penn State and was an NCAA champion in the hammer for Georgia in 2003. 

The two clicked right away. Together, they came up with a plan for Geist and haven’t veered from it. At times it might seem boring or mundane, but that’s exactly how Geist likes it.

MacKay said Geist’s “maturity” and "player-coach" approach helped. 

“He’s been there and done that outside of the top, probably, 10% of the meets in the world he's competed at, so we wanted to create more consistency in the shot put,” MacKay said. “It’s so intricate. A free throw ... they want it to be the same thing every time, so it's (replicable). You're trying to do the same thing in a shot, but you happen to be standing facing away from the area you're throwing. You're turning into a 360-degree turn — actually a little bit more — and then you're pushing on that ball that's moving. It's a delicate ballerina dance, it's ballet, as well as Olympic lifting or powerlifting in the same one-two moment.

“We just looked at it through that lens of, ‘Where can we improve?’ And we tried two or three different tools to get us there. I think actually just this week we're onto it.”

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Geist isn’t one for superstitions like eating only certain foods on meet day or tying one shoe before the other, but leading up to the NCAAs he has focused on specific things outside of the ring. In the weight room, he is focused on speed and not a lot of reps. It’s about conserving energy for the competition.

He’s also been keen on his hydration and food. As both hammer and shot put are on the same day, and it’s humid in Austin, Geist has stored up energy by eating carbohydrates and consuming electrolytes in his fluids. On meet day, he will have a small meal — rice and chicken, pasta or a sandwich — about two hours before he competes.

The one part of the routine that never changes is taking time to gather his thoughts before he throws.

“(I) sit off in the corner, take in the environment and figure out what I need to do to capitalize on other competitors, how the crowd is reacting, what the weather is doing," said Geist, who's on the watch list for The Bowerman award for the third time in his career.

The award, which is given to the most outstanding NCAA track-and-field athlete (male and female), takes into consideration indoor and outdoor performances. The top three candidates will be announced at the end of June, with the award given out in December. 

Recalibrating expectations

Harvey said that one of the biggest areas of growth this season from Geist is his calmness in “dealing with the (outside) expectations of being a top thrower.”

The hammer might have had a little to do with that. Geist calls that event fun as there are fewer expectations and less pressure to excel. Despite having two seemingly different techniques, Geist said that one helps the other and gives him a better tactical perspective.

“The entry to the shot put and the entry to the hammer — there’s a lot more similarities than I thought,” Geist said. “Thinking about the orbit of what the upper body is doing combined with pushing off of this right side of the back in combination with being able to be a little more active with the whole right leg out of the back ...

“There have been times — that lightbulb moment where we're doing something in the hammer and (MacKay is) like, ‘Well, just think about doing this.’ Oh, that's kind of what we're doing in shot put. That makes it a little bit easier to think about, because I'm more comfortable with the shot put than I am with the hammer.”

Geist isn’t looking back at his illustrious UA career at the moment. He’s only focusing on the task at hand as he heads into the NCAAs as the odds-on favorite to win the shot put.

On Wednesday, it’s all about dialing in, hitting certain numbers, getting better from the preliminary round to the finals and having fair throws.

“The surface-level goal, the outcome-based goal I always give, is winning both events,” Geist said. “There's been two people in the history of (the) NCAA who have won shot put and hammer at the same NCAA Championships. It would be pretty cool to be added to (that) elite list as the third. …

“But I think for me what it's going to look like is trying to compete. We have a lot of great throwers in the NCAA this year, both in the shot put and the hammer. If I'm able to just go out and compete and execute what I'm trying to work on, that's a win to me.”