Antoine’s Mentality Allowed Him to Overcome Adversity
May 07, 2026 | Track & Field, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
A deep monotone voice on the other end of the phone dips even deeper and finally fades away like that wind that whispers along the white sand beaches at Trinidad in May, back where Aaron Antoine ran and jumped and brought joy to the dual-island Caribbean nation near Venezuela, its people spying elite potential early in his youth, and cheering his name as he grew to 6-foot-8 by age 16, and as he stood above the rest, on this independent, sovereign country entranced by this youthful hero, so entrenched in track and field, a young man with the body and voice of an adult, and skills of an Olympian, who today, just a little while away from the 2026 Big 12 Outdoor Championships, has a story to tell.
Yes, he has a story to tell all right. Does it start when he was an 8-year-old who competed in every track and field event outside of pole vault and javelin and distances longer than 1,500 meters? Or does it start with the 16-year-old who hit a growth spurt in 2017, prompting people of the homeland to encourage him to pursue basketball? Or does it start with the phone call from the NBA Academy in Mexico in 2020, during the heat of COVID that shut down track and field, asking him to train for a week at its basketball camp? Maybe the story starts with Antoine commanding the high jump and long jump in the CARIFTA Games (Caribbean Free Trade Association Games) in Jamaica? He received cards from the Ole Miss, Florida State and Clemson track and field programs immediately after he won three gold medals in the high jump.
"I was like, 'OK, we can go places with this if I really dial it in and focus,'" Antoine says. "In 2022, everything took off."
Eventually, after his first-ever trip to the United States to visit Clemson, and then after his trip to K-State with hopes of training under world-renown high jump coach Cliff Rovelto, Antoine found a home 1,548 miles from where the dream began and where the dream continues still, and continues to grow by the day, by leaping over the odds stacked against him when, performing in front of his home crowd back home one summer day in 2024, Antoine, so improved in the high jump since the last time he jumped in Trinidad, while reaching for the stars in the high jump, felt the sharpest pain in his right knee, nearly passed out, crumbled onto the mat, and wouldn't move his right leg for many months — a dream potentially crushed while the dream was just getting good.
That was June 28, 2024 — one of a couple dates that he'll never forget.
This is the story.
"It was just…tragic," Antoine says softly into the phone, his voice trailing off. "My right knee, my take-off leg in the high jump. I was jumping 7-foot in the high jump and as soon as I put my leg down to plant, it snapped. I tried to jump with it, but I just collapsed onto the mat. I couldn't move or bend the leg. I couldn't do anything. I was just there."
Yes, this is the story to tell, the story that Antoine, a K-State junior, wants to tell, the one he will share with anybody willing to listen. After all, he figures, athlete or no athlete, everybody faces adversity, and after many months, and redshirting the entire 2024-25 track and field season at K-State while recovering from his gruesome injury — a torn patella tendon that required one, no, two surgeries to mend — there is a story to share all right, and that deep baritone voice, and that physical size, is hard to miss. They'll listen, he says. Oh yes, they'll listen.
"I learned that through the injury, it was not my time," he says. "I'm a man of faith, and I pray a lot. This sport has taught me a lot mentally and it's strengthened me a lot mentally these past three years. Nothing in life is guaranteed and nothing in life is going to play out the way we want it to, but through adversity and hardship, the way you face those things determines the way you're going to come out of those things.
"I suffered my injury and I could've stopped there and I could've let the thought of me not being able to jump again consume me and completely change the result of this healing. Mentally, it's a very taxing sport, but your mind has to be on fortitude and cannot be shaken. That's the message I want to send. It's not just for athletes, but it's for people who work and people who go through everyday life. We face adversities. It might not be the same, but everyone faces challenges, but it's comparable — just shift the way you think."
Antoine remembers the phone call that brought him to Manhattan.
"It's funny, actually, because I was looking at basketball and track and field at the same time," he says. "With basketball, I was still young in comparison to my experience in track and field. Then I visited K-State in November 2022, and I made up my mind where I wanted to go."
He visited K-State's track and field program. He got off the plane at Manhattan Regional Airport. And hours later, he knew.
The Little Apple would be his new home.
"What helped me was Coach Rovelto had such a great track record in coaching high jumpers," Antoine says. "When I came here, I didn't know what to expect. I came here by myself. I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting into. I wasn't sure what questions to ask. All I knew was when I spoke with Coach Rovelto and I left K-State, I was like, 'This is the place I want to be.'"
As a freshman, Antoine tied for 16th place in the high jump with a height of 2.09 meters in the NCAA Outdoor West Preliminary. As a sophomore, he tied for sixth place in the high jump with a height of 2.14 meters in the Big 12 Indoor Championships. Then he took fifth place with a height of 2.14 meters in the Big 12 Outdoor Championships before a 14th-place finish with a jump of 2.14 meters in the NCAA Outdoor West Preliminary.
"My freshman year was a little bit frustrating," he says. "I came here, and I suffered a stress fracture three weeks into my training. I competed once that indoor season. Then came the outdoor season, and the stress fracture didn't really heal, and it was bad. My sophomore year was a lot better. My second meet I jumped 7-2 ¼ to set the Trinidad indoor high jump record. Then one week later, I pulled my hamstring in practice, which kept me out until the Big 12 Indoor Championships. The rest of the year, I just suffered a knee pain that wouldn't go away."
Then Antoine returned home to compete in the national trials and the high jump attempt — and the year ahead — that he'll never forget.
"The rehabilitation was supposed to just be one year, but it took one year and five or six months," he says. "Right after the injury, I called my trainers while I was in the hospital back home. They told me not to get surgery and to come back to K-State. So, two days after the injury, I traveled on a leg wrapped in a cast, and I had surgery on July 10. That was the first surgery. It went well. I did rehab for four months, and in those four months, I was never able to fully straighten my leg. I tried as hard as I could.
"Then an MRI showed that the tendon was still torn a little bit. That was my lowest point in the entire recovery process. All my motivation left, and I started to doubt and question myself, 'Can I ever jump again?' While I was in rehab, it became less about returning to jump and more about wanting to tell the story of what happened through my adversity. There are a lot of people who face injuries and go through hardships. I wanted to show that your mentality allows you to overcome so much, you know? So, when I had to do the second surgery, I was devastated. I called my dad, and we were on the phone for 2 hours. At one point, I was just venting. I finally accepted it. I said, 'I have to do this.' So, on November 23, I did the surgery again, and this time the surgery was really good. He's the surgeon for the Kansas City Chiefs, and he did an amazing job."
He pauses.
"This is the story to be told here, the testimony," he says. "From November all the way until October of 2025, I took my first jump in the high jump in October 2025 in practice, and we're here now. I just want to continue to tell the story, you know?"
Antoine did something amazing. Something that few athletes ever do successfully at this stage of a competitive career. And it wasn't just that he chose to switch from competing in the high jump, his baby for more than a decade, but that he believed that he found his true calling in the triple jump. The decision became more apparent at a team-wide track and field scrimmage. After the 16 to 18 months of rehabilitation, Antoine chose to compete in the triple jump, an event that requires even more force production than in the high jump. His performance in the triple jump during the team scrimmage quickly caught the eye of second-year K-State jumps coach Clive Pullen.
In Antoine's first track meet in more than a year at the Thane Baker Invite on January 16, he competed in the triple jump for the first time and finished in third place with a jump of 16.40 meters. He went on to medal in the triple jump at the Big 12 Championship on February 28 with a third-place finish of 16.32 meters.
Then, with an entire K-State cheering section in full force, and with the cheers echoing throughout Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Antoine, the 21-year-old native of Trinidad, who once wondered if he would ever jump again, completed his miraculous comeback at the NCAA Indoor Championships. He jumped 16.60 meters. It was the best triple jump of his life. It was the fourth-best triple jump in the history of K-State track and field.
And the distance was good enough for him to earn First Team All-America honors for the first time. He finished with the fifth-best distance among all active collegiate athletes in the United States.
"At the indoor national champions, we had so many people, such a whole section of lavender, which was so, so, so refreshing, and so fun," he says. "It was so fun to interact with teammates, fans, supporters, donors. I mean, I just love K-State. I love this school, I'm not going to lie. I just love this school."
And he loves the gift of a good comeback.
"You know, I can only thank God," he says. "It wasn't something that was in my vision, that's for sure. I definitely didn't think I'd be coming back as a triple jumper. I don't think I've completely let go of high jump yet, because there's still some thoughts of me doing high jump sometimes, too, but I got the question, 'You've done high jump for all these years. Won't it be hard to switch?' I said, 'Whichever event puts me in the history books, whichever one allows me to tell my story.' I have fun doing this sport, and this sport is a lot about mentality, and I love having fun, and being able to tell the story."
The Rock Chalk Classic took place last weekend. It marked Antoine's second time ever competing in the triple jump in an outside venue in college athletics. He finished in first place with a triple jump of 16.07 meters, capturing the mark necessary for him to qualify for national championships.
But…
"The jump didn't go the way I wanted because I wanted a farther jump, but it takes time," he says. "I'm still pretty new to the triple jump, so I can't get too far ahead of myself with the event. My body felt pretty good. I had good practices that week. That's why I entered the competition with high expectations. I wanted to hit mid or high 16s. I just need to continue to work.
"Every time I go compete, my mindset is I'm going to win and do better than my previous mark regardless how I feel. There are marks I chase. I feel pretty confident in how I respond. In my mind, I'm already at nationals. I want a better finish than I had in the indoor national championships. I can't complain at all finishing fifth nationally in my first-ever triple jump in the indoor championships. But now being in the outdoor season, I want a better placement nationally and I want to record a much farther distance."
The Big 12 Outdoor Championships are fast approaching — May 14-16 at Drachman Stadium in Tucson, Arizona — with the NCAA West Preliminary in Fayetteville to follow two weeks later, and the NCAA Championships to follow on June 10-13 at historic Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
There will be many riveting track and field stories to tell over the next month in the Big 12 and across the college track and field world. Here's one story to ponder: In the history of track and field, how many major-college competitors went from suffering such a serious setback, and going through 18 months of recovery, and then decided to switch events for the first time ever, and not only do well in that new event, but finish fifth in the entire college track and field nation in that new event?
"I just remember standing on crutches during my recovery, and I said, 'I want to try triple jump,'" Antoine says. "Everyone must've thought, 'This guy is crazy.'"
October 25, 2025, is another date Antoine remembers. That's when he attempted the triple jump for the first time in practice, officially beginning a new and exciting chapter in the young life of a man who five months later finished fifth in the NCAA Championships, and who still has more college eligibility remaining, and who carries potential to go from nearly having his career taken away to being one of the finest track and field athletes in America.
"And now we're here," Antoine says into the phone, his deep voice rising. "I just want to continue to tell my story, you know?"
He'll tell it through actions first — with a spot on the podium.
Then people will ask him how he did it.
And he'll smile and begin his story from the beginning — the story that applies to athletes and non-athletes. It's the tale of potential life-altering sorrow transforming into a life-changing comeback. It's the tale of fighting through adversity. It's the story of hope.
They'll listen.
Oh yes, they'll listen.
A deep monotone voice on the other end of the phone dips even deeper and finally fades away like that wind that whispers along the white sand beaches at Trinidad in May, back where Aaron Antoine ran and jumped and brought joy to the dual-island Caribbean nation near Venezuela, its people spying elite potential early in his youth, and cheering his name as he grew to 6-foot-8 by age 16, and as he stood above the rest, on this independent, sovereign country entranced by this youthful hero, so entrenched in track and field, a young man with the body and voice of an adult, and skills of an Olympian, who today, just a little while away from the 2026 Big 12 Outdoor Championships, has a story to tell.
Yes, he has a story to tell all right. Does it start when he was an 8-year-old who competed in every track and field event outside of pole vault and javelin and distances longer than 1,500 meters? Or does it start with the 16-year-old who hit a growth spurt in 2017, prompting people of the homeland to encourage him to pursue basketball? Or does it start with the phone call from the NBA Academy in Mexico in 2020, during the heat of COVID that shut down track and field, asking him to train for a week at its basketball camp? Maybe the story starts with Antoine commanding the high jump and long jump in the CARIFTA Games (Caribbean Free Trade Association Games) in Jamaica? He received cards from the Ole Miss, Florida State and Clemson track and field programs immediately after he won three gold medals in the high jump.
"I was like, 'OK, we can go places with this if I really dial it in and focus,'" Antoine says. "In 2022, everything took off."
Eventually, after his first-ever trip to the United States to visit Clemson, and then after his trip to K-State with hopes of training under world-renown high jump coach Cliff Rovelto, Antoine found a home 1,548 miles from where the dream began and where the dream continues still, and continues to grow by the day, by leaping over the odds stacked against him when, performing in front of his home crowd back home one summer day in 2024, Antoine, so improved in the high jump since the last time he jumped in Trinidad, while reaching for the stars in the high jump, felt the sharpest pain in his right knee, nearly passed out, crumbled onto the mat, and wouldn't move his right leg for many months — a dream potentially crushed while the dream was just getting good.
That was June 28, 2024 — one of a couple dates that he'll never forget.
This is the story.
"It was just…tragic," Antoine says softly into the phone, his voice trailing off. "My right knee, my take-off leg in the high jump. I was jumping 7-foot in the high jump and as soon as I put my leg down to plant, it snapped. I tried to jump with it, but I just collapsed onto the mat. I couldn't move or bend the leg. I couldn't do anything. I was just there."
Yes, this is the story to tell, the story that Antoine, a K-State junior, wants to tell, the one he will share with anybody willing to listen. After all, he figures, athlete or no athlete, everybody faces adversity, and after many months, and redshirting the entire 2024-25 track and field season at K-State while recovering from his gruesome injury — a torn patella tendon that required one, no, two surgeries to mend — there is a story to share all right, and that deep baritone voice, and that physical size, is hard to miss. They'll listen, he says. Oh yes, they'll listen.
"I learned that through the injury, it was not my time," he says. "I'm a man of faith, and I pray a lot. This sport has taught me a lot mentally and it's strengthened me a lot mentally these past three years. Nothing in life is guaranteed and nothing in life is going to play out the way we want it to, but through adversity and hardship, the way you face those things determines the way you're going to come out of those things.
"I suffered my injury and I could've stopped there and I could've let the thought of me not being able to jump again consume me and completely change the result of this healing. Mentally, it's a very taxing sport, but your mind has to be on fortitude and cannot be shaken. That's the message I want to send. It's not just for athletes, but it's for people who work and people who go through everyday life. We face adversities. It might not be the same, but everyone faces challenges, but it's comparable — just shift the way you think."
Antoine remembers the phone call that brought him to Manhattan.
"It's funny, actually, because I was looking at basketball and track and field at the same time," he says. "With basketball, I was still young in comparison to my experience in track and field. Then I visited K-State in November 2022, and I made up my mind where I wanted to go."
He visited K-State's track and field program. He got off the plane at Manhattan Regional Airport. And hours later, he knew.
The Little Apple would be his new home.
"What helped me was Coach Rovelto had such a great track record in coaching high jumpers," Antoine says. "When I came here, I didn't know what to expect. I came here by myself. I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting into. I wasn't sure what questions to ask. All I knew was when I spoke with Coach Rovelto and I left K-State, I was like, 'This is the place I want to be.'"
As a freshman, Antoine tied for 16th place in the high jump with a height of 2.09 meters in the NCAA Outdoor West Preliminary. As a sophomore, he tied for sixth place in the high jump with a height of 2.14 meters in the Big 12 Indoor Championships. Then he took fifth place with a height of 2.14 meters in the Big 12 Outdoor Championships before a 14th-place finish with a jump of 2.14 meters in the NCAA Outdoor West Preliminary.
"My freshman year was a little bit frustrating," he says. "I came here, and I suffered a stress fracture three weeks into my training. I competed once that indoor season. Then came the outdoor season, and the stress fracture didn't really heal, and it was bad. My sophomore year was a lot better. My second meet I jumped 7-2 ¼ to set the Trinidad indoor high jump record. Then one week later, I pulled my hamstring in practice, which kept me out until the Big 12 Indoor Championships. The rest of the year, I just suffered a knee pain that wouldn't go away."
Then Antoine returned home to compete in the national trials and the high jump attempt — and the year ahead — that he'll never forget.
"The rehabilitation was supposed to just be one year, but it took one year and five or six months," he says. "Right after the injury, I called my trainers while I was in the hospital back home. They told me not to get surgery and to come back to K-State. So, two days after the injury, I traveled on a leg wrapped in a cast, and I had surgery on July 10. That was the first surgery. It went well. I did rehab for four months, and in those four months, I was never able to fully straighten my leg. I tried as hard as I could.
"Then an MRI showed that the tendon was still torn a little bit. That was my lowest point in the entire recovery process. All my motivation left, and I started to doubt and question myself, 'Can I ever jump again?' While I was in rehab, it became less about returning to jump and more about wanting to tell the story of what happened through my adversity. There are a lot of people who face injuries and go through hardships. I wanted to show that your mentality allows you to overcome so much, you know? So, when I had to do the second surgery, I was devastated. I called my dad, and we were on the phone for 2 hours. At one point, I was just venting. I finally accepted it. I said, 'I have to do this.' So, on November 23, I did the surgery again, and this time the surgery was really good. He's the surgeon for the Kansas City Chiefs, and he did an amazing job."
He pauses.
"This is the story to be told here, the testimony," he says. "From November all the way until October of 2025, I took my first jump in the high jump in October 2025 in practice, and we're here now. I just want to continue to tell the story, you know?"
Antoine did something amazing. Something that few athletes ever do successfully at this stage of a competitive career. And it wasn't just that he chose to switch from competing in the high jump, his baby for more than a decade, but that he believed that he found his true calling in the triple jump. The decision became more apparent at a team-wide track and field scrimmage. After the 16 to 18 months of rehabilitation, Antoine chose to compete in the triple jump, an event that requires even more force production than in the high jump. His performance in the triple jump during the team scrimmage quickly caught the eye of second-year K-State jumps coach Clive Pullen.
In Antoine's first track meet in more than a year at the Thane Baker Invite on January 16, he competed in the triple jump for the first time and finished in third place with a jump of 16.40 meters. He went on to medal in the triple jump at the Big 12 Championship on February 28 with a third-place finish of 16.32 meters.
Then, with an entire K-State cheering section in full force, and with the cheers echoing throughout Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Antoine, the 21-year-old native of Trinidad, who once wondered if he would ever jump again, completed his miraculous comeback at the NCAA Indoor Championships. He jumped 16.60 meters. It was the best triple jump of his life. It was the fourth-best triple jump in the history of K-State track and field.
And the distance was good enough for him to earn First Team All-America honors for the first time. He finished with the fifth-best distance among all active collegiate athletes in the United States.
"At the indoor national champions, we had so many people, such a whole section of lavender, which was so, so, so refreshing, and so fun," he says. "It was so fun to interact with teammates, fans, supporters, donors. I mean, I just love K-State. I love this school, I'm not going to lie. I just love this school."
And he loves the gift of a good comeback.
"You know, I can only thank God," he says. "It wasn't something that was in my vision, that's for sure. I definitely didn't think I'd be coming back as a triple jumper. I don't think I've completely let go of high jump yet, because there's still some thoughts of me doing high jump sometimes, too, but I got the question, 'You've done high jump for all these years. Won't it be hard to switch?' I said, 'Whichever event puts me in the history books, whichever one allows me to tell my story.' I have fun doing this sport, and this sport is a lot about mentality, and I love having fun, and being able to tell the story."
The Rock Chalk Classic took place last weekend. It marked Antoine's second time ever competing in the triple jump in an outside venue in college athletics. He finished in first place with a triple jump of 16.07 meters, capturing the mark necessary for him to qualify for national championships.
But…
"The jump didn't go the way I wanted because I wanted a farther jump, but it takes time," he says. "I'm still pretty new to the triple jump, so I can't get too far ahead of myself with the event. My body felt pretty good. I had good practices that week. That's why I entered the competition with high expectations. I wanted to hit mid or high 16s. I just need to continue to work.
"Every time I go compete, my mindset is I'm going to win and do better than my previous mark regardless how I feel. There are marks I chase. I feel pretty confident in how I respond. In my mind, I'm already at nationals. I want a better finish than I had in the indoor national championships. I can't complain at all finishing fifth nationally in my first-ever triple jump in the indoor championships. But now being in the outdoor season, I want a better placement nationally and I want to record a much farther distance."
The Big 12 Outdoor Championships are fast approaching — May 14-16 at Drachman Stadium in Tucson, Arizona — with the NCAA West Preliminary in Fayetteville to follow two weeks later, and the NCAA Championships to follow on June 10-13 at historic Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
There will be many riveting track and field stories to tell over the next month in the Big 12 and across the college track and field world. Here's one story to ponder: In the history of track and field, how many major-college competitors went from suffering such a serious setback, and going through 18 months of recovery, and then decided to switch events for the first time ever, and not only do well in that new event, but finish fifth in the entire college track and field nation in that new event?
"I just remember standing on crutches during my recovery, and I said, 'I want to try triple jump,'" Antoine says. "Everyone must've thought, 'This guy is crazy.'"
October 25, 2025, is another date Antoine remembers. That's when he attempted the triple jump for the first time in practice, officially beginning a new and exciting chapter in the young life of a man who five months later finished fifth in the NCAA Championships, and who still has more college eligibility remaining, and who carries potential to go from nearly having his career taken away to being one of the finest track and field athletes in America.
"And now we're here," Antoine says into the phone, his deep voice rising. "I just want to continue to tell my story, you know?"
He'll tell it through actions first — with a spot on the podium.
Then people will ask him how he did it.
And he'll smile and begin his story from the beginning — the story that applies to athletes and non-athletes. It's the tale of potential life-altering sorrow transforming into a life-changing comeback. It's the tale of fighting through adversity. It's the story of hope.
They'll listen.
Oh yes, they'll listen.
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