NewsTribune Girls Track & Field Athlete of the Year: Mendota’s Mariyah Elam

Mendota junior Mariyah Elam is the 2026 NewsTribune Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year after winning her second career Class 2A high jump state title while also placing second in the triple jump.

When Mendota junior Mariyah Elam stood atop the podium in Charleston and had a state championship medal placed around her neck, her biggest emotion wasn’t triumph, elation or joy. It was relief. After injuring her ankle during basketball season, Elam battled throughout the track and field season with physical pain and mental issues that came with it.

“I was so relieved all my hard work paid off,” Elam said. “It was a struggle the whole season. I felt like I was going to get my (offered) scholarships revoked and things like that.

I was going through it. I was so scared.” Despite the injury and ensuing struggles, Elam claimed the Class 2A high jump state championship.

She also won it as a freshman and placed second as a sophomore. This spring, Elam also placed second in the triple jump and ran on the Trojans’ 4x200-meter relay that finished 14th at state and set a school record. Elam recorded the area’s best high jump (1.68 meters) and triple jump (11.65) and also ranked second in the area in the 100 hurdles (15.82 seconds) and 300 hurdles (46.87) and ran on the area’s top 4x200 (1:45.53) and second-fastest 4x100 (49.86).

For all she accomplished this season, Elam is the 2026 NewsTribune Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year. Elam also won the award as a freshman in 2024. “Her sophomore year, a girl beat her (at state) and I don’t think she was expecting it, so this whole season she had a new mentality of no one’s going to beat me,” Mendota coach Joe Hughes said.

“When she needed to, she put on quite a performance. It was everything we could have asked for and more in every single meet she performed in.” Elam’s season got off to a rocky start after suffering an ankle injury late in the basketball season.

Elam did not high jump in Mendota’s first two meets, and after jumping April 9 and placing third, she skipped jumping in the next four meets - including Mendota’s own Don Gooden Invite - before getting back into regularly competing in high jump. Elam did not compete in the triple jump until Mendota’s sixth meet.

“I wasn’t really doing any jumping,” Elam said. “I was just doing races so I could let my leg heal a little bit more. “Instead of practicing with everybody else, I’d be doing stretches and then icing it for 15 minutes.”

When Elam did start jumping again, she said “the best jump I could do was 4-11.” She cleared 1.57 meters (5-1.75) in her first competition. Even when she started competing again, she still was dealing with the effects of the injury.

“Every time I jumped my ankle would start getting an aching pain because I was trying to power off it to do my very best height,” Elam said. “It would be so aching I had to scratch out of races. “Then I had to redo the process of icing it and letting it rest because it got swollen again.”

Elam ended up adjusting her approach to accommodate the injury. “I had to get new steps,” Elam said. “I usually jump farther away from the bar.

With my ankle, we had to change my steps so I can jump a little closer to the bar and use more upward power instead of upward and outward power.” By state, Elam said although there was still some pain, it was more tolerable. “My ankle was more stable (by state)

but it was still sore,” Elam said. “There was a sharp pain each release, but not as bad as the beginning of the season. It was something I could endure.”

At state, she cleared 1.64 meters (5-4.5), which matched her state-winning jump as a freshman and was her second-best jump of the season. “I stayed calm,” Elam said about the keys to her success. “I didn’t get in my head too much.

I stayed warmed up. I made sure I had a calm body and breathing so I could focus on the task at hand.” After missing finals in the triple jump as a freshman and finishing one spot off the podium last season, Elam leapt all the way up to second this spring.

She leapt a personal record and school record 11.65 on her first jump at state. “We’ve been working a lot with each phase,” Hughes said. “(Boys coach)

Brock Sondgeroth was phenomenal in working with her. He has so much knowledge. She was just so committed to putting herself in the best scenario to win, so she listened to every piece of advice a coach told her.

She put it all together when she needed to and all three phases were excellent at state.” Elam has already received recruiting interest from major Division I programs, including the University of Miami, and she hopes to get interest from Texas. Elam said she’s “going to be working way harder to surpass what I’m doing now” in order to achieve her college dreams and have a successful senior season, which she hopes includes a repeat as high jump champion.

“I can be way more confident going into it,” Elam said. “I’m just going to make it a fun year, and a positive and competitive year.”