photo by: Aiden Droge/Kansas Athletics

Kansas athlete Aaliyah Moore competes in the NCAA West Preliminary Round in Fayetteville, Ark., on Saturday, May 25, 2024.

Kansas decathlete Alexander Jung has always known the importance of the mental side of track and field, but it’s become an area of particular interest for him since the first outdoor meet of his junior season, the Black and Gold Invite in Orlando, Florida, back in mid-March.

Now, in the lead-up to his third appearance at the NCAA Outdoor Championships — Wednesday through Saturday in Eugene, Oregon — he’s been working with a sports psychologist on staying centered. To succeed, he said, he’ll have to concentrate purely on himself.

“Don’t think about points, don’t think about placement, and just do what you can do,” Jung said. “Don’t try to do anything special. Just do you.”

It’s a message that resounds throughout KU’s group of qualifiers, half returnees and half first-time participants, as they head for a big stage.

Aaliyah Moore, one of KU’s captains, will compete in her first outdoor nationals as she runs the 800 meters. She said she’s heard a common sentiment from her veteran teammates.

“They’ve basically said, it’s obviously the highest level in the NCAA, but I think that it’s more of, all right, you’re already there,” Moore said. “And that’s how a lot of our athletes go into the championship, thinking that they already made it to the national championship. It’s just another race, it’s just another jump, whatever the event may be.”

High jumper Devin Loudermilk said he owed his success at NCAA regionals, after missing out on qualification last year, to the same approach: “In my head, I take it as every meet and every bar is the exact same.”

Those Jayhawks who excelled at the conference championships or at regionals were charged with moving past their successes quickly in order to ensure the best possible results at nationals.

photo by: Elicia Castillo/Kansas Athletics

Kansas’ Alexander Jung is jubilant at the Big 12 Outdoor Championship in Waco, Texas, on Friday, May 10, 2024.

photo by: Elicia Castillo/Kansas Athletics

Kansas high jumper Devin Loudermilk during the Big 12 Outdoor Championship in Waco, Texas, on Saturday, May 11, 2024.

photo by: Aiden Droge/Kansas Athletics

Kansas athlete Aaliyah Moore celebrates her qualification during the NCAA West Preliminary Round in Fayetteville, Ark., on Saturday, May 25, 2024.

“I think once I crossed that line, I realized that the hard work has paid off,” said Moore, a junior from Georgetown, Guyana, “but then also I had to think, ‘OK, you know, it’s time to obviously go prepare and put myself in a position to compete for a national championship.'”

Jung said he gave his Big 12 Conference title “the time and space to be celebrated” and preserved some sense of momentum and confidence while also staying humble.

Now, even at Oregon’s venerable Hayward Field, which has hosted Olympic trials and World Athletics Championships, the Jayhawks are charged with treating the competition as similarly as possible to the numerous others in which they have already participated.

For Jung, who has already been to Eugene and knows the facilities well, “the biggest part for the national meet is to not be intimidated, or at least that’s the attempt I’m going to take now.”

“I don’t know if my mind’s going to know the difference,” he said.

For Loudermilk, staying concentrated means fully ignoring the rest of the field.

“I don’t really like watching other people jump, because then it shows me different techniques and different ways everyone else is jumping,” he said, “and at the meet I think I just need to focus on what I’ve been doing the whole year.”

Despite their ostensibly similar approaches, though, the two have very different tasks at hand when they get to Eugene. Jung points out that the mental aspect of the sport is particularly powerful for decathletes, “who have to be mentally sharp for two whole days.” Loudermilk, Jung said, needs to stay locked in for “an hour at most.”

Loudermilk, for his part, sees the pros and cons of his single-event focus. As he noted, he knows exactly what he is going to do whenever he shows up to practice or a meet.

On the other hand: “I only have one opportunity to show who I could be. I can’t go out, have a bad day, and then perform in another event and have a good day. That’s a lot of pressure all on one event, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I love doing one event.”

While many of his teammates compete in multiple events throughout the year, when in Eugene, Loudermilk, Moore, Lona Latema (women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase), Mason Meinershagen (women’s pole vault), Yoveinny Mota (women’s 100-meter hurdles), Dimitrios Pavlidis (men’s discus) and Clayton Simms (men’s pole vault) will have just one to conquer.

Chandler Gibbens will run both the men’s 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters. Jung and fellow decathlete Tayton Klein, a sophomore, will take on their usual array of events, and Klein also qualified in the standalone men’s long jump.

“From providing him guidance in my first year to now, he has improved a lot, mentally as well as physically and technically,” Jung said.

The NCAA Outdoor Championships begin Wednesday with semifinals for an array of track events as well as the finals for the men’s 10K, hammer, pole vault, javelin, long jump and shot put, plus the first half of the decathlon.