EARLIER THIS MONTH, Rachel Reichenbach completed her collegiate track and field career with a 12th place finish in the high jump at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Austin, Texas.
Reichenbach, a captain and fifth-year senior, was influential in her leadership and through her example in academic success and community service. On the track, she missed time early in her career because of injury, but persevered to cap her Stanford career with her best season, featuring a Pac-12 runner-up finish and first All-America honor through her first appearance at the NCAA Championships.
Off the track, Reichenbach was a comparative literature major and Pac-12 scholar-athlete. She loves serving others and that was reflected in her involvement with the Rubenstein-Bing Student-Athlete Civic Engagement Program, spending parts of two summers in Vietnam, where she returns on a Fulbright Scholarship this year.
Reichenbach jumped a lifetime best 5-10 ¾ (1.80 meters) at the NCAA West Prelims in Sacramento to advance to Austin and is No. 5 on Stanford's all-time outdoor performers' list.
This Q&A is a combination of two interviews, one conducted before the trip to Austin and the other as Reichenbach walked off the track for the final time, after her performance at Mike A. Myers Stadium.
Photo by David Elkinson.
Q: Why was this season so special for you?
A: This season, in terms of marks, has been crazy amazing. Hitting that 1.76 meters (5-9 ¼), was a bar I went at probably 50 times before I cleared it. This season was a mindset shift from focusing on the sport as an individual and taking each meet as another chance to prove myself, to competing for my teammates. Track can be something a lot bigger when you're competing for each other. That's when the magic happens. I thought the magic was going to be these giant bars, but when I ended up looking at what I already had in teammates, the bars just followed.
Q: Is every high jump competition a mental battle?
A: One hundred percent. That's high jump, but also track and field in a nutshell.
The hardest part mentally is never going to be standing on the runway looking at a bar you haven't cleared before. It's always going to be all the challenges, disappointment and hard work that came before. Thinking about it that way, the hard part's over. Jumping and seeing what you can do is the fun part.
I've always been someone who loves the big meets. I love the environment, I love the cheering. That's the nature of the sport that got me into it in the first place. The feeling of running down the runway and getting up in the air and clearing the bar, you have to relish every single bit of that while knowing that the number of jumps in your life or career are limited. Don't look at it as, Oh my God, What if I don't clear this bar? Instead, I began to look at it like, If I clear this bar I get a higher one next time.
Q: What's one thing you did well as a jumper?
A: First, I'm massively a power jumper and I'm very fearless when I'm going to the bar. I'm not afraid to slam my foot into the ground and power up, and, even if it's messy, to do whatever I can to get over the bar. I don't have the most finesse down the runway, I'm not the most beautiful person in the air, but at the end of the day, I will slam my foot into the ground to get up in the air.
That leads to the second part. I'm not afraid to put it on the line and to lose. Everyone who's gotten to this stage in this sport is willing to out there and wants to win, is super competitive. But where you watch people crumble at these bigger meets is that they have that side where they want to be competitive and want to win, but they're also afraid to lose.
Photo by David Elkinson/ISIphotos.com.
Q: Your style is not relaxed. You grit your teeth, your veins are popping out of your neck.
A: My coach, Michael Eskind, says, "You know Rach, you can run fast without showing me every single muscle in your neck."
I'm not the best from a form perspective. It's 'take no prisoners.'
Q: At the Big Meet, you finally broke a longstanding personal best. You were ecstatic, jumping up and down, clapping and hugging teammates. Why were you so excited?
A: So many things. There's never going to be a meet like that. The year before, Brittany McGee, my best friend on the team, tore up her knee doing the high jump in the Big Meet. At the Big Meet this year, I wanted to jump high for so many reasons, but more than anything, to get some 'revenge' on that pit for Brit. When I went into that attempt at 1.76 meters, I was thinking, "Do this for Brit. You're going to clear this for Brit."
I did. We hugged and it was the coolest thing in the world. Also, I had jumped at 1.76 literally 40-50 times in my career up to that point. My junior season, I had been super consistent at the 5-8, 1.73-1.75 bar, but had this huge barrier when it got to anything higher.
My ankle set me back a bit for my senior year and, mentally, I was in a tough place. I was coming into the season with thoughts like, I've got to make this worthwhile and prove I come back and be a good jumper. One of things I pride myself on as an athlete is not getting mentally freaked out about things, but I definitely will admit that the 1.76 bar, for whatever reason, was a really tough one for me.
That's what I was thinking on my first attempt at that bar. But on my second attempt, the one that I cleared, I was just thinking about Brit.
That kind of catapulted me into the rest of the season, where it truly was about doing it for my teammates, and finding ways to make the sport a team sport. It's not an individual sport.
Q: Did that give you a sense of relief?
A: Totally. I cleared that bar and I remember coming back afterward and being like, It's just up from here. I knew that. That was a pretty exciting feeling, and also further proved that this sport is so mental.
The meet before I cleared that bar was my worst this season. I remember walking away from that meet and thinking, This is not how I will end my outdoor season. I knew that I was just trying to overjump bars. I was going at it frantically. So, I changed from being frantic to going at the bar with confidence. That was a huge mental shift for me.
Rachel Reichenbach hugs Valerie Przekop and Giana Gayles after setting a lifetime best. Photo by Spencer Allen/SportsImageWire.com.
Q: Did you think you would make NCAA's?
A: Coming into outdoor season, I didn't let myself think I wouldn't. I cannot express how much fire I had inside to get myself to nationals this year. I also have never been so nervous for a meet as I was for regionals. Not so much because I don't like the pressure of a big-meet setting, because I absolutely live for that. It was not being ready for my season and my career to end. I felt I had more to do here, as an individual and for my team.
Even though this looks like a fairy-tale ending, I wanted one more meet to show my younger teammates that it isn't over until it's over. And, honestly, it has been the switch of thinking about this as a team thing, of doing this together. Thinking, 'us' to nationals not 'myself' to nationals. That's what I wanted to show, that it really can happen.
I did not have the crazy success to make you think this girl's going to nationals. Six months ago, it was probably not expected. That's the fun part, defying the odds.
Q: When you first went to Vietnam in 2016, was it your first choice for the ACE program?
A: It was. I only applied to Vietnam. I was really interested in philosophy and literature, which still is true. But I'd been in a couple of classes on comparative philosophy and looking at Eastern versus Western traditions. I was interested in the service aspect, and also getting to explore a culture that was so unbelievably different from my own.
I had struggled with what we're supposed to do as student-athletes who are soaked in privilege. We're all but given things on a silver platter. A lot of is taken for granted. I had a lot of questions about what sports do in the broader world. What actually am I doing this for?
I struggled a lot with the fact that track felt like such an individual pursuit in some ways – I want to clear this bar and jump high. How does that factor into the millions of injustices happening in the world? I wanted to find a way to transform the athletic privilege we have into athletic activism. This was a program where I could have some sort of tangible impact.
Q: Did you feel you had unfinished business in Vietnam the first time?
A: I came back with mixed feelings about the experience. I was so grateful to have the opportunity and it was amazing in so many ways, but I had many interactions where I wondered: Was there more that could be done? Service really embodies reciprocity and humility. In sending American college kids with little or no experience working internationally, how do you do things in a way that doesn't offend the people you're working with or their culture, while also doing positive good in a three-week span.
I came back unsure if I had been productive or even ethical in many ways. I had questions about interactions and things I had heard other Americans say to the Vietnamese. It was one of the first times in my life I'd encountered something where I did not feel I had the tools or the knowledge to fix problems I saw, and I found that very unsettling.
Photo by John P. Lozano/ISIphotos.com.
Q: Did you feel there was room to mold the ACE program into something even more impactful?
A: Yes. I know that Emily Durham and Kristen Azevedo had poured tons of energy into creating the ACE program and making it a possibility. That was really fantastic. Where I have the most respect for both of them is when I came back as this sophomore stirring the pot a bit with these questions, they didn't just tend to say "No." They could not have been more receptive to the questions I had. They actually were the ones who encouraged me to stay involved and help make the program better.
That would not have happened everywhere and at every program, and I could not be more grateful. That catapulted me into exploring the short-term service program model, and helping out with ACE and Coach for College -- the NGO (non-governmental organization) we connected with in Vietnam -- and looking at the ethics of service more broadly.
Q: Can you describe your Fulbright Scholarship to Vietnam?
A: I'll be there for a little under a year. I'll be in Can Tho, south of Ho Chi Minh City. The Fulbright will be a research project looking at ethics and service. I'll be trying to find new ways to train American volunteers to foster conversations between the Americans and Vietnamese staff members and volunteers in a way that makes the service more respectful on both sides.
I'm so excited. It's a dream come true to be doing this. I did a lot of theoretical background in my research in my honors thesis last year, which was on the ethics of short-term international service trips.
Q: Would you like a career in foreign service?
A: I'm in the process of applying to medical school. I'm interested in ethics of service. Ethics of medicine, especially of international medicine, is an area with a huge room for improvement. One day, I'd love to be involved in both of these pieces, the service side and the medical side. Medicine is so cool because it's so rooted in these individual interactions with other people, the interpersonal connection. That is something I'm hoping to explore. Ethics is such a nebulous term. It helps to think about it as the way we go about doing things. You can do a lot more good if you think about how you're doing it.
Q: Where did your interest in a comparative literature major begin?
A: I would not have expected to major in comparative literature. I thought for a while, human biology, the pre-medical path. After some soul searching, I realized there was a lot I wanted out of literature and philosophy, and there's something about reading theory or a narrative theory. Words on a page have so much power and teach us how we interact with other people.
As a little kid, I loved writing. But more than the reading or the writing is how literature and philosophy are so important to the lives we live and lead, and how we talk to each other.
The other part is comparative literature is you get to study texts from around the world. In many ways, we're so focused on the Western canon. So much is lost by focusing on such a small part of the world. The comparative literature department is really paving a lot of good groundwork for having an educational system that values looking at the entirety of society in the world and not just a very small sub-section of it.
Q: Can you describe leading a Queer Theory class at the LGBT Youth Space in San Jose, as part of a Cardinal Course with the Haas Center?
A: The LGBTQ youth space provides a safe space and atmosphere. It's also a meaningful space to have a lot of really challenging conversations around what it means to be growing up queer. That is one of the coolest things I've been involved with. Now, I'm working through the Haas Center as a CELC – a Community Engaged Learning Coordinator -- for the Queer Theory class. The Cardinal Courses are fantastic because they allow you to work with community partner in a way that's meaningful both ways. That's one small way where you can work with kids and try to change the culture a little bit from the ground up.
Q: What was your role as a music therapy volunteer at the Palo Alto VA Medical Center?
A: About once a week I would play my flute on a hospice unit. I'd go room to room and have some cool conversations with cool people who have a lot more experience in the world than I do. It was also a way to become a little more involved in music again. That's something I totally lost when I came to college.
Q: What did it mean to you to go to Stanford?
A: Stanford has so many amazing resources. The minute I got in here, I felt I had a huge duty to do a lot with what I'd been given, because so many people apply to this school, deserve to be here and don't end up here. I feel lucky that I did.
That's something I think about often, how lucky I am and for all the people who are as deserving who should have been here. I want to make sure that I did everything I could to give back in some way.
Q: As you complete your Stanford career, what are your thoughts?
A: The road to get here has been incredible. Ending at NCAA's with my teammates watching was totally awesome and speaks so much to how far mental strength can get you. That's something I've learned and something my teammates have taught me too.
Q: Are you proud of yourself?
A: Yes, definitely proud of myself. But, honestly, it's everyone who got me there – Coach Eskind, all my teammates. I feel like I came with them to Austin even though they weren't with me on the runway. It's pretty special to be a part of that.
Bob Drebin/ISIphotos.com.