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Dan Ninham
Special to ICT
Janee’ Kassanovoid is making a name for herself at the highest level of track and field.
The Comanche Nation citizen and former Kansas State University star has been competing internationally for Team USA, and became the first Native woman to medal at the World Athletics Championships, first with bronze in hammer throw in 2022 and then with silver earlier this year in Budapest, Hungary.
The only place left is to be on the gold medal platform, and Kassanavoid, 28, is keeping her eyes on the prize on the world stage.
“I ended the 2023 season as a world silver medalist in the hammer throw having my highest and best series of my career,” Kassanavoid told ICT. “I made my second consecutive world championship team and claimed my second consecutive world championship medal.”
“I continue to be in third place in the USA All-Time and sixth place in the World All-Time with my personal best mark from 2022 of 78.00m. Post WCH Budapest, I have taken much needed time off to have a personal vacation and to spend time with family and friends before preparing for the 2024 season,” she said.
Now her objective is to qualify for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, and make history.
“The goal for 2024 is to make my first Olympic team and to be again, a medal contender and make history as a Native American woman once again for Indian Country,” she said. “I will focus diligently and continue to work hard to compete at the highest levels and improve where I can put my best foot forward for the USA Olympic trials at the end of June.”
The hammer throw, a form of which is believed to date back as far as 2000 B.C., is one of four throwing events now included in Olympic track and field, alongside discus, shot put and javelin.
Competitors throw a metal ball attached by a steel wire to a grip, which allows them to release the ball and wire mid-swing. The ball is 8.8 pounds for women and 16 pounds for men.
The men’s competition has been in the Olympics since 1900, but the women’s competition was not added to the world championships until 2019 and to the Olympics in 2000 in Sydney, Australia.
Building momentum
Kassanavoid is active in the Native community. When not training or competing, she dedicates time to speaking engagements and personal appearances to share her journey with others.
“My role and goal is to continue to be an active leader in the community, to continue to inspire and empower the next generation of Native athletes and to show the beauty and strength as a woman — on and off the track,” she said.
Kassanavoid grew up in Missouri, but attended her first tribal fair and powwow to connect with her culture and community in Lawton, Oklahoma. She got her degree in dietetics from Kansas State University.
In 2022, she was invited to the Native Youth Summit and the White House Native American Heritage Month Celebration in Washington, D.C. This year, she was invited to speak with the students about leadership, to the Haskell Indian Nations University student body about mental health and wellness, and at the Nike N7 Native American Heritage Month and Veterans Day 5k FunRun at the Nike World Headquarters campus in Oregon.
“I am very passionate about health and wellness, physical activity and balanced nutritious eating therefore I am also an advocate in the Native American community,” Kassanavoid said.
She credits her interest in sports to her father, Ron Kassanavoid, Comanche, who encouraged her and her siblings and sometimes coached them before dying of cancer when she was just 8 years old.
“He taught me what is strength, pride and resiliency,” she told ndnsports.com in 2021. “I stand tall because of him and my culture.”
She also credits her former coach, Greg Watson, first at Louisiana State University and then at Kansas State University, for pushing her to excel in hammer throw. She began hammer throw as a college freshman, and then had several knee surgeries throughout college.
Watson told ndnsports.com that she is “intrinsically motivated.”
Looking ahead
Her circle of support includes her family and close college friends Zack Supple and Max Estill. Supple and Estill traveled to Oregon and Budapest to support Kassanavoid at the world championships.
“This year will technically be our 10-year friend anniversary since meeting at K-State in 2014,” Kassanavoid. “They’ve already booked their travel to Paris 2024 in hopes I will be there to compete. I am truly thankful for them, as they have always been my biggest fans and supporters, watching me grow as a person and a woman becoming one with my culture.”
Supple and Kassanavoid became fast friends at Kansas State. They both competed on the track and field team.
“I think the reason we became so close was because of how we value and treat our friends,” Supple said. “We both value our friends as family and will do anything in our power to help and support our friends in everything that they do. This became apparent when traveling to different track meets across the country together. I would make sure that I watched her throw and she would watch me pole vault whenever the schedules would allow.”
Supple and Estill made a pact that whenever Kassanavoid made it to an elite international event that they would be there for her.
“We both have kept our promise to her,” Estill said. “She has now taken us around the world not once, but next summer will be the third. It is not often you get to see extraordinary people doing extraordinary things.”
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