Maia Hauschild in the long jump on Jan. 7, 2014 at the PHS State Relay Warmup Meet.
When it comes to track and field events, Maia Hauschild just can’t say “no.”
The Princeton High School sophomore started running track for fun with her friends in middle school. She stuck to the high jump but decided to attend a Princeton University track camp before her freshman year to try out other events.
She learned the long jump, her favorite event, and currently competes in the horizontal jumps, hurdles, relays and sprints, as well as running for the cross country team.
Is there anything she won’t try once?
“I haven’t seen it yet,” boys’ coach Ben Samara said. “She’ll do anything. Anything to help the team. The other day, we thought we needed a shot putter for Michele [Bazile], who is a national level shot putter, and we weren’t sure if we had a partner for her. We said, ‘Maia, do you want to shot put?’ She goes, ‘Great!’ She was excited about it. Never threw a shot put in her life. I’m sure she would have taken a crash course and been amazing. That’s just the kind of kid she is.”
Samara said an athlete like Hauschild is an invaluable part of any track and field team, though her willingness to learn is what makes her so flexible.
“It’s not as much her versatility as her coachability,” he said. “She’s just extremely coachable, and athletes like that don’t come around often. Every couple of years you get a kid as coachable as her. Being that coachable creates versatility because they’re willing to do anything.”
For Hauschild, it’s all about focus.
“The mental aspect is huge in track,” she said. “You have to be super focused before you do anything, whether it’s the long jump or the 400, in any event. It’s really important to be focused, to know what you have to do before you run.”
Girls’ head coach James Smirk said Hauschild’s mental strength is her greatest asset.
“She’s obviously a phenomenal physical athlete, but the thing that stands out to me, the thing that I think she most relates to the other athletes we’ve had who have excelled in the sport, is her ability to focus on the task at hand,” he said.
“I think the physical piece to it is a result of that. She doesn’t waste any workouts from start to finish. They’re cohesive, they’re structured, they’re well-executed,” Smirk said.
She’s also able to actually sit back and picture herself competing in any event, whether or not she’s had any instruction.
“I really think the thing that’s going to be the thing that causes her to stand out above all others is her imagination,” Smirk said. “She imagines herself doing these things. Most athletes, you say to them, ‘Hey, I want you to try the hurdles.’ They couldn’t even imagine themselves doing it. When we approach Maia for something like that, immediately it’s, ‘Oh yeah, I can see myself doing that.’ She has that imagination to do that without necessarily ever seeing anybody else do it.”
Hauschild started off the winter season by recording a personal-best 17’,1” in the long jump at the team’s first meet. When she started training for the first time in that event last winter, she consistently hit around 14 feet. By the end of the spring, she was jumping upwards of 16 feet.
She’s currently the lead 400 relay runner and often fills in on some of the 200 relays—in addition to the horizontal jumps. Smirk said the 4×400 and horizontal jumps are her strongest events, though that always can always change.
“It’s hard to say whether those will be the only one she stands out in,” he said. “I think what’s going to be her hallmark is each year, as she tackles a new event, her goal is going to see how far she can take that. We look at her as someone who has the potential to be a true heptathlete down the road.”
Hauschild has also started more in-depth training in the hurdle and triple jump, which she’ll do in the spring. She triple jumped for the first time last spring at—where else?—the sectional meet.
“It is a huge meet where you qualify for states,” she said. “That was a lot of pressure because you’re jumping for the first time with the big dogs who do it all the time. That was a little stressful. I actually surprised myself. I had just learned it five minute before I took off. It was a lot of fun. My technique was awful, but it was good to try it. I almost ended up qualifying. I missed it by a couple of inches.”
Honing her technique is what the winter is for. She’s had a little bit of trouble with the hurdles and hopes to improve in the triple jump by the start of the spring season.
“In the winter, we just focus on lifting a lot, putting in a lot of quality work so that in our spring season we can have a long, healthy season and peak at the right time,” she said. “We don’t want to peak too early. It’s definitely very important.”
Smirk can’t see that being an issue.
“You put that imagination together with the athleticism and the ability to execute mentally during practice, and you get a pretty rare athlete.”
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