GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Izaak Siefken came out of nowhere to become one of the best javelin throwers in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.

He broke the Colorado Mesa University program record in the first meet this spring, only his fifth track meet ever. He placed second in last spring's RMAC Championships, entered this year's conference meet ranked No. 2 on the RMAC performance list and No. 18 on the NCAA Division II performance list. On Friday (April 25), Siefken claimed his first RMAC javelin title with a best throw of 61.31 meters (201 feet, 1.75 inches). He was the only thrower to pass 60 meters.

To understand how Siefken, a redshirt junior from Broomfield, put himself in position to earn one of 22 spots in the Division II national outdoor championships, you have to go back a couple of years.

Back to a sore arm that triggered a domino effect of setbacks that ultimately caused him to walk away from the sport he loved.

A former Division I baseball player, Siefken hopes telling his story about coping with "the yips," as he calls his battle with athletic performance anxiety, and finding a second athletic career, will help other student-athletes who might be dealing with similar issues.

"One big thing that I've thought about a lot since the baseball thing is, what you do isn't who you are," Siefken said. "It's like, you have to detach your identity from the sport that you play. And that was a big blessing for me with baseball, like I lost it, but I didn't lose myself with it, and that helped me kind of move forward.

"You're so much more than an athlete, as a student-athlete, as a person. You're a friend, a sibling, a son, there's so much more to your life than just athletics. I learned that maybe the hard way, but it's been such a good thing to learn. I had something that got taken away but I realize that there's so much more to life than just the one thing you put a lot of time into."

PITCHING FOR THE ILLINI

Siefken has been throwing a baseball as long as he can remember.

Wiffle ball with his siblings in the yard, youth league, high school, summer ball. He was a ballplayer. A pitcher.

Throwing strikes was what he did — until he couldn't any more.

Baseball took him from Holy Family High School in Broomfield to the University of Illinois, where he was pitching in relief his freshman year in the spring of 2022.

After an early season start, Siefken's arm was slow to recover. The next series, against Michigan State, he was scheduled to throw in relief on Sunday.

"I just told the coach, like my arm's not feeling great. And after that, they kind of got on me, like, we need you to be healthy if you're gonna be a guy that throws for us a lot," Siefken said.

The next week, even though his arm still wasn't feeling great, he told himself he was OK, and took his turn on the mound.

"I threw an inning and it went well, but my velo(city) was down, and my coach is like, is something wrong? And I was trying to play the hero, and I'm like, 'No, everything's all right.' '' Siefken recalled. "But the next inning, I threw again and did not go as well, it started to hurt. I came out and that next morning, I woke up and tried to pick up my backpack, and I just had a shooting pain up my arm. I'm like, 'Yeah, something's wrong.' ''

The Illinois medical staff diagnosed a stress fracture in his right elbow, which needed a screw inserted to ensure it healed properly. His season was over, and he couldn't throw during the six-month recovery period.

When Siefken was cleared to start throwing again, his body was ready. His mind was not.

"I had like, a little mental block where I felt like my body felt healthy, but my brain was telling my body that I wasn't safe throwing," Siefken said. "I started playing catch, and it was not good. Like from me to you, almost, I'd try to flip the ball, I'd spike it or throw it way over their head."

His confidence waned, but he kept at it, and his location started to improve. He still had times when he didn't know where the ball was going, and the Illini coaches lost confidence in him.

"It's totally understandable, because I didn't have confidence in myself," he said. "It was a rough time, especially when I've put so much of my life into baseball, and you just watch something that used to be so easy. Since I was, like, six years old, I could play catch, I could throw a strike, and it kind of just went away."

He ended up taking a redshirt season in 2023 to work on regaining his control and confidence, throwing in mid-week scrimmages. He played summer ball in Kokomo, Ind., in the Northwoods League.

"It just wasn't going well. I had an outing in Battle Creek, Michigan, and I got some outs, and that was the first time I got outs in over a year, and that felt good," he said. "My shoulder ended up bothering me after that, and we went to Kalamazoo, and I remember walking to the mound, kind of in pain and just had no confidence in myself. It was tough. I got one out, and it was a bunt, and I think I gave up like six runs that game. I was in pain. It wasn't fun."

He called his mom that night from the hotel.

"I broke down," he said. "I was like, 'I can't do this any more.' ''

STARTING OVER AT CMU

Siefken left Kokomo after that road trip and returned to Broomfield. His mother encouraged him to try again, so he entered the transfer portal, hoping a fresh start would help.

He had some interest from a few schools, but through his brother's time playing baseball at Colorado School of Mines, he knew about Colorado Mesa's highly successful baseball program. With his recent struggles at Illinois and Kokomo, Siefken wasn't expecting scholarship offers, he just wanted a chance.

CMU baseball coach Chris Hanks told him he'd have a shot to make the team during fall practice in 2023.

New team. Same issues.

"I ended up being the worst pitcher here in the fall statistically," Siefken said. "So I knew that that was kind of the end of it here. But it was getting better, it was better than it was that summer. I was throwing some strikes, but still getting hit around, and I wasn't the same player I was in high school or my freshman year at Illinois."

He had a talk with Hanks when the fall season ended in October.

"He said, 'Where's your head at?' and I said, 'I can't do this any more to myself,' '' Siefken said, knowing it was the end of his baseball career. His parents suggested going to a junior college and trying again, but he knew it was time to move on.

He also knew he wasn't done with his career as an athlete.

STARTING OVER AGAIN

Adjacent to The Diamond, just across the walkway at Bus Bergman Sports Complex, is CMU's track and field facility. Siefken had never attended a track meet, didn't know much about the sport.

He had joked that fall about becoming a javelin thrower when he was struggling during baseball practice. During winter break, he talked to his brother, who played baseball at Colorado School of Mines, and his brother's girlfriend, a jumper on the Mines track team, asking if they thought he could learn how to throw the javelin competitively.

"They said, well, maybe," Siefken said.

The concept of javelin wasn't completely foreign to Siefken. As he was working to strengthen his arm after leaving Kokomo, a friend in the A's organization sent him a workout called javelin anatomy, designed to improve mobility.

"I was like, well, this could help me as a baseball player to stay mobile. I was dealing with that shoulder pain and some hamstring stuff, and I spent the summer when I came back doing that mobility stuff," he said. "Along with researching that mobility style, I saw the different throwing styles and watched the javelin videos, and that's kind of how I learned about javelin. I'd never heard of it before that year."

He figured that throwing motion might help him regain his control of a baseball without fixating on actually throwing a baseball. That winter, Siefken started watching javelin videos, studying the approach throwers used, how they threw the spear-like apparatus.

"That's the cool thing about social media now and YouTube, there's so much information out there about anything," he said. "And I reached out. There's this guy, Scott Fuchs, he was a D3 baseball player who went through the same thing, kind of like the yips and performance anxiety. He decided to walk away from baseball and start throwing the javelin.

"I saw his story, and he threw really well at the D3 level. I think he was an All-American and then he transferred to Iowa State, and he made it to the Olympic (javelin) qualifications. And I was like, that's something really cool that I can put my efforts toward."

He reached out to Fuchs, who encouraged him to just start throwing.

Siefken had the instructional videos and he was developing contacts, who were more than happy to share information on the sport. What he didn't have was a javelin, so went online and ordered one.

"I bought the cheapest javelin I could. I still throw it some in practice, but that's how I started," Siefken said.

NEW YEAR, NEW SPORT

Siefken started throwing his new javelin on Jan. 1, 2024.

For someone who basically taught himself the sport, Siefken picked it up relatively quickly. He spoke to the former CMU coaching staff about joining the team, but the Mavericks didn't have a dedicated throws coach at the time, and since the season had already started, taking on a guy just learning the event would be difficult.

Still, he decided to test himself in competition at CMU's first home invitational last spring. A couple of days before the meet, he signed up as an unattached athlete. Never mind that he rarely threw more than 40 meters consistently.

"I was trying to put myself in a spot where, like, who cares, nobody knows who I am. I was just going to go out and try to embarrass myself and learn from it and see what would come from it," he said. "(Getting embarrassed) ended up not happening, which was really cool. I mean, the javelin flew a lot farther that day, and that was nice. I think it was 55 (meters) my first meet and I beat a couple of throwers that have actually thrown. I was like, this is something that I could do."

He won the event with a throw of 54.76 meters (179 feet, 8 inches).

The next week, he was working out with Cameron Kalaf, a former thrower for the Mavericks, and the track coaches came to the infield and talked to him about joining the team. Once his eligibility was confirmed, he got a jersey and threw for the Mavericks that weekend. He competed in four meets, including the RMAC Championships, where he placed second. Siefken won the Maverick Invite #2 title with a season-best throw of 58.97 meters (193 feet, 6 inches), a provisional qualifying mark for the Division II national championships. His runner-up throw at the RMAC meet was 192-10, but he didn't make the outdoor nationals cut.

His summers are now spent honing his javelin technique, not playing summer baseball, and that work shows.

In the first meet of this outdoor season, Siefken shattered Kalaf's school record when he threw the javelin 64.83 meters (212-8¼) to win the event at the Dr. Dan Caprioglio Invitational in Pueblo. That was nearly nine feet better than Kalaf's record and more than 19 feet better than Siefken's previous best.

That mark is also a provisional national qualifying distance, and he's hoping to keep improving so he is one of 22 javelin throwers in the national championship meet.

"This year, I set a goal early to be an All-American, and I know that's going to take a little bit more than what I've got," he said. "The biggest thing is just qualifying for that national meet, because then it's just a competition. It's no longer who has the best mark, and you don't know what the conditions are going to be that day, you go out and compete.

"It might be a little bit of a stretch, who knows, but this whole thing's been a stretch. "

A mechanical engineering major, Siefken wants to work in either the aerospace or energy sector after graduation. He sometimes pairs his interest in aerodynamics with the mechanics of the javelin.

"We had a fluids class last semester, and we had to put something in the wind tunnel," he said. "I was really trying to bring in the javelin and figure out the aerodynamics of it with different angles, but the wind tunnel wasn't big enough to fit a javelin, and we couldn't quite get the math to line up, so we ended up going to something else. But I was really trying to understand that."

BUTTERFLIES, NOT ANXIETY

Walking away from a sport is difficult for an athlete to accept. Siefken met with a sports therapist for awhile, and he's been incredibly open about his journey.

"It's changed the way I think about things in life," he said. "Like, just calm down, take a step back from everything, and realize that the end goal isn't throwing strikes. There's bigger things to life than athletics.

"A lot of the stuff that I had with baseball was some mental performance anxiety, right? And a weird thing with the javelin is, it was a real reset. I don't feel that same performance anxiety. I get the butterflies, but they feel, like, good when I'm throwing the javelin. … I've spent more time with, you know, being at peace with thoughts and anxieties. (I'm in) a lot in a better place now, so that's good."

He watches CMU baseball games on weekends when he's not competing, but also finds himself studying other track athletes.

"I'm really close with some of the guys on the (baseball) team and I like to go support them. It doesn't feel like I'm missing out now, which is really good," he said.

"But I've also become a fan of watching and seeing people that dedicate so much to a specific thing .... It's cool to watch people succeed at the one thing that they've been dedicated to."

He credits his family and faith for helping him move forward when baseball was no longer an option.

"I believe that God put me here, and He's made this path for me to go out and do what I need to do to inspire others, or whatever that is. There's more than just whatever I'm doing, and just having those people around me to push me to do other things has been really helpful," Siefken said.

"I don't think I would be here if my mom didn't say, hey, you've got to go try baseball again, because it gave me a great opportunity to come throw a javelin, and who would have thought that?"