Anaya Ervin

Happy birthday to the USA’s heptathlete Anaya Ervin, who has spent four straight years doing the hardest thing in track and field and broke her school’s record as a freshman doing it.

Anaya scored 4301 points in the heptathlon at the Carl Kight Invitational in April 2023, as a true freshman, and it stood as the Southern Arkansas school record. She has since taken her best to 4805, which she scored finishing runner-up at the Great American Conference Championships — a seven-event competition in which she set personal bests in the 100m hurdles, the shot put and the 200m across two days. Her lifetime bests now read 15.26 over the hurdles, 1.61m in the high jump, 5.22m in the long jump, 11.94m in the shot, 36.15m in the javelin and 2:28.40 over 800m.

Those last two are this season’s. At Carl Kight in April she threw a javelin personal best of 36.15m and took second in the segment, and at the GAC Championships she ran a lifetime best over 800m and finished third in it — which is the event every heptathlete dreads, run last, on the second day, when there is nothing left. She saved her best one for the end.

Four consecutive years of championship heptathlons is a genuinely rare thing. Seven events means seven separate technical disciplines, each with its own coaching, its own injury profile and its own way of going wrong, and a multi-eventer has to keep all of them alive at once for two full days. She is from Richmond in the greater Houston area, went to Foster High School, and studies biology alongside all of it.

Happy birthday, Anaya! Wishing you health, happiness and a brilliant year ahead — seven events’ worth of it. 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇺🇸