Dunkleberger leads Auburn into NCAA Track & Field Championships

In his first two seasons in college track, Jacob Dunkleberger was a two-time All-American, a two-time all-conference selection and twice finished in the top 10 in the hammer throw at the NCAA Championships.

Then he decided to take the sport seriously.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I got to college,” said Dunkleberger, an Auburn senior who spent the first two years of his career at Miami University in Ohio.

“I was 18 years old, and I was like, ‘What am I going to do? What do I really want to do?’”

Then he began dominating at Miami and realized that he was nowhere near his ceiling in the sport.

“I was an All-American twice, and I was like, ‘Do I really want to take sixth and seventh the whole time, or do I want to have a chance at winning?’” he said.

“So I started looking around.”

Dunkleberger’s new determination to focus on his sport led him to transfer to Auburn after his sophomore year. Since then, he’s won an NCAA title and an SEC championship in the hammer throw and earned four more All-America honors.

Before his sophomore-season epiphany, Dunkleberger had viewed his sport as a path to a college scholarship, and little else. He had dominated as a high-schooler in Smyrna, Ga., on raw ability alone. To harness that raw ability, he needed coaching.

His decision to transfer to AU started with throws coach Jerry Clayton, acknowledged as one of the nation’s top teachers. According to Dunkleberger, coaching is everything in throws — the hammer throw, the shot put, the weight throw and the discus.

With Clayton tutoring him on technique, Dunkleberger has flourished.

He is one of 14 Auburn athletes — men and women — competing in the NCAA Championships, which begin Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa. The defending national champion in the hammer throw, Dunkleberger currently ranks second nationally in the event, behind teammate Cory Martin.

If Dunkleberger, Martin and their teammates can live up to expectations, the No. 7-ranked Auburn men can contend for an NCAA title.

“The whole year comes down to this final meet. This is the grand finale,” head coach Ralph Spry said. “All year long, our key people that we’ve depended on have done what we needed them to do.

“I feel good about our chances, because we have a lot of seniors that are battle tested and give us a great chance of competing for the national championship. … They’ve been consistent all year long, so I don’t expect that to change now.”

Dunkleberger isn’t making any extravagant predictions. But when he’s asked if his Auburn career has lived up to his own expectations, he’s quick to point out it’s not over yet.

“I’ll tell you that I can’t predict the future,” he said. “We’ll see when it’s all over, and if you ask me after that, I’ll tell you.

“But so far, I’ve done everything I wanted to do.”

Starting today, he has one more chance to do just that.

| 737-2561