Wake Forest Athletics
GOLD RUSH: It's about the journey
5/19/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Track and Field
This article originally appeared in the May issue of Gold Rush
By Jay Reddick, Gold Rush
Nyki Caldwell will always revel in her ACC indoor high-jump championship. But even now, what makes her appreciate the title is remembering what got her to that point.
Caldwell, a senior from Dexter, Mich., cleared the bar at 5-foot-10 in Blacksburg, Va., Feb. 27 to win gold - the first Deacons' woman ever to win an ACC indoor field event.
When she came to Wake Forest, she admits, she pictured this moment happening sooner. So is this a case of "good things come to those who wait?" No. For Caldwell, this is "good things come to those who work, and practice, and study, and grow."
A silver medal in the same event as a sophomore, clearing 5-10, gave Caldwell an early taste of success. It let her know what she was capable of, and she wanted more - immediately. Things didn't work out the way she planned, and her junior year was a disappointment. That's what made this senior championship that much more special.
"When you imagine your career, you picture everything on an ascending line," Caldwell said. "But there are struggles and setbacks - it wasn't a straight line for me. I figured, sophomore silver, the next year gold. Clear 5-11 as a junior, 6 feet as a senior, win two ACCs and go from there. But these things take time. If you keep working for it, it can come together."
Vertical-jumps coach Tim Sullivan joined the Wake Forest staff after Caldwell's freshman year and immediately saw that Caldwell had the drive to succeed; she just needed to focus.
"When we set out on her journey, she set her goals really high," Sullivan said. "She had a desire for things to be different. Even when she was down after her junior year, experience made her the person who believed she would turn it around. For her to be a conference champ is fantastic."
Caldwell is the daughter of two college biology professors, so academics was a big focus in her household. Her childhood dream had nothing to do with sports - she wanted to work in the medical field. Sports provided a way to pass the time - and also to learn some lessons.
"Basketball raised me since I was 5," Caldwell said. "It taught me hard work and determination. It also gave me courage to join the track team in eighth grade. At one of my first meets, a coach said, `You're relatively tall. You're going to start high jump.' They showed me the basics, I tried it, and I was apparently good at it. Now I fall more in love with it every day."
Still, school always came first - and that wasn't just a parental edict, it was a personal philosophy. She said she was first attracted to Wake Forest by the "academic rigor."
She was a member of the National Honor Society at Dexter High and was also first-chair viola in the school's Concert Orchestra, and she wasn't sure for a long time whether she wanted to play sports in college.
"High jump wasn't my life; it was just a love that never died out," Caldwell said. "I came on my [recruiting] visits because I wanted to see some schools. It wasn't until I came to Wake [on my visit] that I said, I think I can do it all. I had a scholarship, but I told my parents, if the athletic side doesn't work out, I reserve the right to say I don't want to do it anymore."
Despite feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of being a freshman student-athlete, she never gave up.
"I came in to do everything," Caldwell said. "Be in the orchestra, be in clubs, do all of these things while maintaining my academics and having a social life. I learned quickly, the hard way, that I can't do everything. What are my priorities? I am a student-athlete - `s' first, `a' second. No matter what, I have to have time for those first two."
As far as her studies go, she came in with dreams of getting on a pre-med track, going to medical school and becoming a doctor. Then came sophomore chemistry.
"That's what turned my interest in med school off immediately," Caldwell said. "My family has a background in biology, and my dad always told me how hard chem would be, but I'd walk past the building and have a physiological reaction. I knew I had to find out what was best for me."
Around the same time as her chemistry revelation, she became interested in psychology and decided to take more classes in that field as well. So now, with a health and exercise science major and a psychology minor pending, she's reviewing her options and preparing for what she calls "the next phase."
But she knows she still has some work to do before that happens - specifically, the pinnacle of the outdoor-track season. That ascending line she talked about? It hasn't stopped just because she won gold.
"The ACC turned out in an ideal way," Caldwell said. "I won the gold at 5-10, which I had cleared before multiple times, but I've never gone above 5-10 ½ on the [competition] day. At some point, I need to break the wall and get over that. So that's what we're aiming for now. It's progressing."
Players Mentioned
