SE: Morgan Coffman’s Improbable Journey from Walk On for K-State Track and Field to Big 12 Scorer, Senior Leader
Jan 08, 2019 | Track & Field, Sports Extra
By Corbin McGuire
Morgan Coffman was working at a dude ranch in upstate New York, near Lake George, in the summer of 2015 when she called the K-State track and field office. She wanted to ask if she could walk on.
If that didn't work, she planned to attend the basketball team's walk-on tryouts that August. She had just finished her first basketball season at Hesston College but was ready for a change.
If that didn't work, she likely would have begrudgingly settled for becoming a dominant force in the K-State intramural rec leagues.
But one way or another, Coffman was set on coming to K-State.
A native of Vassar, a small town about an hour away from Manhattan, she was raised on K-State football and basketball games. Her parents went to K-State. Both of their parents did as well. Even some of Coffman's great grandparents graduated from K-State.
"It's gone way back. We bleed purple," she said. "I've always just loved K-State."
So, when Karol Rovelto, K-State's Director of Track and Field Operations, answered the phone that day in 2015, Coffman nervously spouted off her high jump marks and 800-meter times. Karol then passed the numbers along to K-State's Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Cliff Rovelto, her husband, and he gave the thumbs up.
No tryout was needed. Coffman was on the team. She received her summer workouts via email. She started them immediately between waitressing shifts at the ranch located closer to the Big Apple than the Little Apple where she always wanted to end up.
Now, she's a senior in her final season as a Wildcat. She's scored four times in Big 12 meets — twice in the heptathlon, once in the pentathlon and once in the high jump.
All of it has been more than she could have ever imagined.
"I definitely, as a kid, dreamed of being at K-State, on a sports team; I think it was probably basketball," Coffman said, with a smile, "but I definitely dreamed of being a K-State Wildcat athlete. Having this experience, it is kind of surreal that it happened. I'm so thankful that it did."
***
The way Cliff Rovelto remembers it, Coffman was not brought in as some sort of diamond in the rough he thought he could polish. Which only makes her accomplishments at K-State even more remarkable.
"I didn't even know who she was. I had no clue who she was," he said. "Her marks weren't anything special. (When she asked to be on the team), it was just, 'Sure. We'll see what happens.' You had no idea that she would do the things she's done, let alone the things that I think she'll do this year."
In high school, Coffman said her best clearance was 1.67m/5-06. In her first outdoor season at K-State, she jumped over 1.73m/5-08 and later finished eighth in the heptathlon at the 2016 Big 12 Outdoor Championship. As a sophomore, she improved her personal best in the high jump to 1.80m/5-10.75, about two inches off the cut line to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships. She went on to place seventh in the pentathlon at the Big 12 Indoor Championship and seventh in the high jump at the conference's outdoor meet that season.
People who knew Coffman, she said, were amazed at what she was doing. They asked for her secret, like she had unearthed some hidden ability. She always deflected credit to Rovelto.
"I didn't do anything. I just listened to Coach. I did what Coach told me to do and it worked," Coffman said of how she would respond. "He kept on saying, 'Just trust in the process and don't think,' because I have a problem over-analyzing and critiquing myself.
"He'd just be, like, 'Trust the process.'"
The irony is Coffman almost did not even begin the process. She barely made it to her first K-State practice, and not in a running late kind of way, either.
She sat through the compliance and academics meetings, checking off each box required before she could actually practice with the team. But, as the start of her Wildcat career neared, doubt festered inside of her.
"I was second-guessing myself," Coffman said. "I was, like, 'I don't belong here.'"
Coffman's athletic background built some of this doubt.
She went to high school at Marais des Cygnes Valley, a 1A school where she graduated with 26 other people. She competed in track, sure, and earned multiple state medals in multiple events. But, this time, she was joining a team with Akela Jones, one of the world's best heptathletes. Not to mention all the high jumpers whose personal bests seemed unattainable for someone who only started the event her senior year of high school.
Plus, basketball was her first love. She grew up playing at it alongside her twin sister, Erin. The two led MdCV to a league title their senior year and signed to play together at Hesston College.
After one season, however, Coffman was ready to become a Wildcat — in whatever way that meant.
Since Coffman discovered in her senior season at MdCV that she had a knack for high jump, she continued to train and compete unattached at a few meets in the one year she was at Hesston, which did not have a track and field team.
This self-led, dual-sport season led Coffman to call Karol Rovelto the first time. It was a shot in the dark that ultimately led to some light. Another phone call they had did the same thing, only it came a few days before practice started.
"I called Karol, and I was, like, 'I don't think I'm going to actually practice.' She said, 'No, at least try one week,'" Coffman recalled. "I almost didn't even practice. I'm so thankful that I actually went to practice. The first week of practice, I loved the girls, loved the coach, loved the system.
"Everything from there has been a family in history."
***
Lauren Taubert will never forget the first time she worked out with Coffman.
Taubert, a fellow multi-events athlete for K-State, said the two went on a run. It was about two miles in length, a tough distance for most multis, but not for Coffman.
"She just kept on going and running faster and kept pushing me to stay up with her. It was quite a first practice. She really pushed me," Taubert said. "I think she's just always pushing herself to be her best. She's the hardest worker I know on the team. Everyone looks up to her."
Rovelto described Coffman in much the same way.
"She's observant. She really gets it, gets what we want to see done and kind of helps people see the bigger picture. I think she really offers a lot to everybody but particularly the younger kids on the team because they, one, respect her because they see how hard she works, but, two, what she says makes sense," he said. "She just works so hard. She really attempts do everything that she can as well as she can do it and do everything completely. If anything, she probably has a tendency to work too hard and push herself too much. She just wants to get better.
"Her greatest strength is also probably her biggest weakness, in that respect.
In hindsight, Coffman can now see this.
At a leadership meeting within K-State Athletics' student-athlete development services, she and her peers were asked a question: If they could write a letter to their freshmen selves, what would it say?'
Hers would start with: "Listen to your body."
"If it hurts, you should back off, because I would always try to go through pain," she said. "You just have to be careful and not push yourself too hard."
Coffman learned this the hard way.
Her drive to reach her potential has come at some costs. Pain used to be something she would ignore and push through, or at least try to. Her freshman year, she suffered a stress fracture in her shin. Her sophomore year brought Achille's tendon issues, which required a scope procedure that she spent most of last season rehabbing from.
"It was a struggle last year," she said.
Such a struggle that Coffman spent most of her early junior season on a stationary bike. She didn't hurdle, jump, throw or run hardly at all. When the Kansas Relays came around in April, she had yet to do a heptathlon and Cliff Rovelto did not think she was ready for one. This preceded another conversation the two would have before the Big 12 meet.
"He had a serious conversation with me. He said, 'I really want you at the conference meet, but I don't know if you're ready for it,'" Coffman recalled, who turned the talk into more inner fuel. "I was, like, 'I have to be there. I want to be there. I want to score.' I was super motivated, trying to do everything.
"I wrote down in my binder, 'Every throw, rep, jump, everything counts. Do everything to the best of your ability. Make it matter. Don't just go through the motions.'"
Coffman placed sixth in the heptathlon at last year's Big 12 Outdoor Championship. It was her highest finish at a conference meet and came with a personal-best score of 4,783 points to help K-State repeat as Big 12 champions.
"As a freshman, yeah, it was huge (to score at conference)," Coffman said. "I never would have envisioned it, but last year, overcoming the injury, not even thinking I would travel and being able to score, I just felt accomplished. Being there when we won, that was the proudest moment of my career."
***
Any time Coffman thinks about it, how it's her last season at K-State, she said she instantly becomes "really sad." But then she reminds herself to "enjoy every second."
Coffman, who has started to apply to physical therapy schools, said she wants to soak up all of the time she has left in a K-State uniform.
And there's a lot to take in.
The culture created by her multi-events teammates, whom she described as "best friends" that push one another. The memories, from almost quitting before she started to every major milestone since. The offseason training, which Coffman, a passionate traveler, started in New York. She spent another summer in South Dakota while living with her grandparents and even trained for five weeks one summer in Peru while job shadowing physical therapists at an orphanage for special needs children.
Her journey has been unexpected, maybe even unlikely, but certainly not undeserved.
Coffman, however, put it another way.
"It's been a blessing," she said. "I'm just taking it in, enjoying every moment, every second."
Morgan Coffman was working at a dude ranch in upstate New York, near Lake George, in the summer of 2015 when she called the K-State track and field office. She wanted to ask if she could walk on.
If that didn't work, she planned to attend the basketball team's walk-on tryouts that August. She had just finished her first basketball season at Hesston College but was ready for a change.
If that didn't work, she likely would have begrudgingly settled for becoming a dominant force in the K-State intramural rec leagues.
But one way or another, Coffman was set on coming to K-State.
A native of Vassar, a small town about an hour away from Manhattan, she was raised on K-State football and basketball games. Her parents went to K-State. Both of their parents did as well. Even some of Coffman's great grandparents graduated from K-State.
"It's gone way back. We bleed purple," she said. "I've always just loved K-State."
So, when Karol Rovelto, K-State's Director of Track and Field Operations, answered the phone that day in 2015, Coffman nervously spouted off her high jump marks and 800-meter times. Karol then passed the numbers along to K-State's Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Cliff Rovelto, her husband, and he gave the thumbs up.
No tryout was needed. Coffman was on the team. She received her summer workouts via email. She started them immediately between waitressing shifts at the ranch located closer to the Big Apple than the Little Apple where she always wanted to end up.
Now, she's a senior in her final season as a Wildcat. She's scored four times in Big 12 meets — twice in the heptathlon, once in the pentathlon and once in the high jump.
All of it has been more than she could have ever imagined.
"I definitely, as a kid, dreamed of being at K-State, on a sports team; I think it was probably basketball," Coffman said, with a smile, "but I definitely dreamed of being a K-State Wildcat athlete. Having this experience, it is kind of surreal that it happened. I'm so thankful that it did."
***
The way Cliff Rovelto remembers it, Coffman was not brought in as some sort of diamond in the rough he thought he could polish. Which only makes her accomplishments at K-State even more remarkable.
"I didn't even know who she was. I had no clue who she was," he said. "Her marks weren't anything special. (When she asked to be on the team), it was just, 'Sure. We'll see what happens.' You had no idea that she would do the things she's done, let alone the things that I think she'll do this year."
In high school, Coffman said her best clearance was 1.67m/5-06. In her first outdoor season at K-State, she jumped over 1.73m/5-08 and later finished eighth in the heptathlon at the 2016 Big 12 Outdoor Championship. As a sophomore, she improved her personal best in the high jump to 1.80m/5-10.75, about two inches off the cut line to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships. She went on to place seventh in the pentathlon at the Big 12 Indoor Championship and seventh in the high jump at the conference's outdoor meet that season.
People who knew Coffman, she said, were amazed at what she was doing. They asked for her secret, like she had unearthed some hidden ability. She always deflected credit to Rovelto.
"I didn't do anything. I just listened to Coach. I did what Coach told me to do and it worked," Coffman said of how she would respond. "He kept on saying, 'Just trust in the process and don't think,' because I have a problem over-analyzing and critiquing myself.
"He'd just be, like, 'Trust the process.'"
The irony is Coffman almost did not even begin the process. She barely made it to her first K-State practice, and not in a running late kind of way, either.
She sat through the compliance and academics meetings, checking off each box required before she could actually practice with the team. But, as the start of her Wildcat career neared, doubt festered inside of her.
"I was second-guessing myself," Coffman said. "I was, like, 'I don't belong here.'"
Coffman's athletic background built some of this doubt.
She went to high school at Marais des Cygnes Valley, a 1A school where she graduated with 26 other people. She competed in track, sure, and earned multiple state medals in multiple events. But, this time, she was joining a team with Akela Jones, one of the world's best heptathletes. Not to mention all the high jumpers whose personal bests seemed unattainable for someone who only started the event her senior year of high school.
Plus, basketball was her first love. She grew up playing at it alongside her twin sister, Erin. The two led MdCV to a league title their senior year and signed to play together at Hesston College.
After one season, however, Coffman was ready to become a Wildcat — in whatever way that meant.
Since Coffman discovered in her senior season at MdCV that she had a knack for high jump, she continued to train and compete unattached at a few meets in the one year she was at Hesston, which did not have a track and field team.
This self-led, dual-sport season led Coffman to call Karol Rovelto the first time. It was a shot in the dark that ultimately led to some light. Another phone call they had did the same thing, only it came a few days before practice started.
"I called Karol, and I was, like, 'I don't think I'm going to actually practice.' She said, 'No, at least try one week,'" Coffman recalled. "I almost didn't even practice. I'm so thankful that I actually went to practice. The first week of practice, I loved the girls, loved the coach, loved the system.
"Everything from there has been a family in history."
***
Lauren Taubert will never forget the first time she worked out with Coffman.
Taubert, a fellow multi-events athlete for K-State, said the two went on a run. It was about two miles in length, a tough distance for most multis, but not for Coffman.
"She just kept on going and running faster and kept pushing me to stay up with her. It was quite a first practice. She really pushed me," Taubert said. "I think she's just always pushing herself to be her best. She's the hardest worker I know on the team. Everyone looks up to her."
Rovelto described Coffman in much the same way.
"She's observant. She really gets it, gets what we want to see done and kind of helps people see the bigger picture. I think she really offers a lot to everybody but particularly the younger kids on the team because they, one, respect her because they see how hard she works, but, two, what she says makes sense," he said. "She just works so hard. She really attempts do everything that she can as well as she can do it and do everything completely. If anything, she probably has a tendency to work too hard and push herself too much. She just wants to get better.
"Her greatest strength is also probably her biggest weakness, in that respect.
In hindsight, Coffman can now see this.
At a leadership meeting within K-State Athletics' student-athlete development services, she and her peers were asked a question: If they could write a letter to their freshmen selves, what would it say?'
Hers would start with: "Listen to your body."
"If it hurts, you should back off, because I would always try to go through pain," she said. "You just have to be careful and not push yourself too hard."
Coffman learned this the hard way.
Her drive to reach her potential has come at some costs. Pain used to be something she would ignore and push through, or at least try to. Her freshman year, she suffered a stress fracture in her shin. Her sophomore year brought Achille's tendon issues, which required a scope procedure that she spent most of last season rehabbing from.
"It was a struggle last year," she said.
Such a struggle that Coffman spent most of her early junior season on a stationary bike. She didn't hurdle, jump, throw or run hardly at all. When the Kansas Relays came around in April, she had yet to do a heptathlon and Cliff Rovelto did not think she was ready for one. This preceded another conversation the two would have before the Big 12 meet.
"He had a serious conversation with me. He said, 'I really want you at the conference meet, but I don't know if you're ready for it,'" Coffman recalled, who turned the talk into more inner fuel. "I was, like, 'I have to be there. I want to be there. I want to score.' I was super motivated, trying to do everything.
"I wrote down in my binder, 'Every throw, rep, jump, everything counts. Do everything to the best of your ability. Make it matter. Don't just go through the motions.'"
Coffman placed sixth in the heptathlon at last year's Big 12 Outdoor Championship. It was her highest finish at a conference meet and came with a personal-best score of 4,783 points to help K-State repeat as Big 12 champions.
"As a freshman, yeah, it was huge (to score at conference)," Coffman said. "I never would have envisioned it, but last year, overcoming the injury, not even thinking I would travel and being able to score, I just felt accomplished. Being there when we won, that was the proudest moment of my career."
***
Any time Coffman thinks about it, how it's her last season at K-State, she said she instantly becomes "really sad." But then she reminds herself to "enjoy every second."
Coffman, who has started to apply to physical therapy schools, said she wants to soak up all of the time she has left in a K-State uniform.
And there's a lot to take in.
The culture created by her multi-events teammates, whom she described as "best friends" that push one another. The memories, from almost quitting before she started to every major milestone since. The offseason training, which Coffman, a passionate traveler, started in New York. She spent another summer in South Dakota while living with her grandparents and even trained for five weeks one summer in Peru while job shadowing physical therapists at an orphanage for special needs children.
Her journey has been unexpected, maybe even unlikely, but certainly not undeserved.
Coffman, however, put it another way.
"It's been a blessing," she said. "I'm just taking it in, enjoying every moment, every second."
Players Mentioned
/ Track & Field
/ Track & Field
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Tuesday, November 11
K-State T&F | Broad Jump Competition
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K-State T&F | Gear Reveal
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K-State TF | NCAA Championship Recap
Tuesday, June 17
