In April, Michigan State decathlete Heath Baldwin set a new personal best of 8470 at the Mt. SAC Relays. That is the best score by any American decathlete in 2024 and the fifth best score in the world so far this year. It was a Big Ten record and was the seventh best score in the history of the NCAA.
The score also met the Olympic standard - and the timing is just right for Baldwin, with the Paris 2024 Olympics looming.
Not only did his 8470 meet the Olympic standard - which athletes must hit in order to qualify for the games - Baldwin’s score would have placed him in sixth place in the last Olympic Games in Tokyo.
“That’s pretty crazy to think about,” Baldwin said recently. “I don’t know, I’m like excited with that score, but at the same time, I had a couple things in there that weren’t so great and it was my first time doing a lot of it this year. I feel like I can do a lot more, which is kind of weird to say after putting up that score. I’m just excited to go compete. I think I can really put together something that could potentially be massive.”
The decathlon is a grueling two-day event that tests athletes’ physical and mental strength as well as their endurance. Athletes compete in 10 different events over the course of two days – 100m, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400m, 100m hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, and 1500m. Point totals are assigned based on performance in each event and are added up to determine a winner.
While the 10 events test all different kinds of physical strengths, the mental side of the decathlon might just be more important than the physical aspect.
“I would say almost half of it, or even more than that, is a mental game because you’re at the track for so long just going event after event, 10 in a row, for two days straight basically,” Baldwin said. “And even when you come back from the track, the recovery in between day one and day two - what you’re eating, what you’re putting in your body, how well you’re sleeping - that’s all part of the competition basically.
“So, I think being able to have a short term memory, like if you mess something up, just being able to forget it and moving onto the next event - even if you do something great - you can’t really think about it too much or let it get to your head. So, I think the people that are able to forget things really fast are the best at the decathlon - and the people that know how to use their energy at the right times.”
It’s not by accident that Baldwin will be fighting for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team later this month at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Baldwin excelled in high school in baseball, basketball, and football. He earned Division 4 All-State honors in all three sports at Hackett Catholic Central in Kalamazoo.
Baldwin was a pitcher in baseball and clocked up to 87 miles per hour in his junior year. In basketball, he played power forward and on the gridiron he lined up at wide receiver.
“I think growing up playing basketball helped me a lot just with my jumping ability and stuff like that,” he said. “(I was) always trying to dunk a basketball, so I just got used to the same jumping motion that you do in track really with high jump and long jump.
“And then obviously baseball helped a bunch with the javelin, just growing up pitching my whole life. So I had like the general arm speed. It’s pretty similar to the way you throw a javelin and a baseball. At the end of the day that helped a bunch.
“I think, overall, playing a bunch of different sports and getting used to different motions athletically helped me learn how to do some of these events.”
Baldwin did receive scholarship offers to play college football at the Division II level and even some preferred walk-on offers at the Division I level. He also had some Division III offers in baseball and basketball, but it was nothing he took all too seriously because of track and field.
It wasn’t until his sophomore year of high school when Baldwin started track and field for his high school.
“My strength coach (who) was training me for football and other stuff - I was doing Olympic lifting with him - became the head track coach at my high school my sophomore year,” Baldwin explained. “Then he kind of convinced me to start hurdling for him. And then from there, I did high jump and long jump. It was sophomore year and things just kind of escalated from there.”
Sophomore year, unfortunately, was rough for Baldwin and his family as they hit a major obstacle – Baldwin’s father passed away from pancreatic cancer. While it was a challenge to overcome, Baldwin thinks his mindset in his personal life and in track and field is better because of it.
“I think that kind of shaped the way I thought about life and my training and everything so I think that’s helped me out a lot,” Baldwin said. “I feel like I have a better perspective on things after that.”
Hackett Catholic Central, where Baldwin went to high school, is not a large school. It is Division 4 in athletics for a reason. According to U.S. News & World Report, the current enrollment is just 235 students.
Despite that, Baldwin did get noticed by some major universities in track and field.
“I think it’s harder to get recruited for team sports out of the smaller school,” Baldwin said. “Track, obviously it’s just numbers. You can’t really ignore numbers. I had a really good grade (level) of guys (who) played sports. We only had like 25 guys in our grade, but my four or five other best friends all played D-1 sports. So that’s kind of big for us. I think we all helped out each other."
One of those schools recruiting him out of high school was the University of Michigan and Baldwin ended up committing to the Wolverines. He spent two years in Ann Arbor before transferring to Michigan State.
“They helped me a bunch,” he said about Michigan. “Coach (Jenni) Ashcroft actually was one of the biggest people recruiting me, so I think she was pretty invested in me. She saw what I could be, which I really appreciate. I think she did a great job of teaching me a lot of the fundamentals my first two years and making sure I was just on the right course of doing things the right way instead of just rushing into it and maybe developing some bad habits in some events.
“I just ended up transferring because I wanted to switch my major, our head coach left, and a couple of my other friends transferred - so I just felt like it was time for a change. I wanted to stay in the state of Michigan. I had a lot of other offers across the country, but I didn’t really want to make too big of a change and I think it was the right decision.”
Baldwin has spent the last three years of his college career in East Lansing. Since last fall, he’s trained under assistant jumps coaches Holly Hankenson (arrived in August 2023) and Richard Fisher (arrived in December 2023), as well as assistant throws coach Derrick Vicars.
“They’ve done a great job,” he noted. “I feel like it has helped me having two new perspectives on my training. They brought new drills and things that I think have helped me, so I’ve just been trying to absorb as much information as I can from them over the past couple of months. And I think Coach Fisher is really good at speed and explosiveness training and I think he’s done a great job of that with me so far.”
Fisher has worked closely with Baldwin since he started coaching the Spartans in early December. Fisher and Hankenson coach Baldwin in all the events except throws, which Vicars oversees.
Fisher’s first impressions of Baldwin were positive. He was undergoing the interview process for the job in mid-November when he met 10 of the athletes at a breakfast. Fisher's first thoughts at that breakfast were that the atmosphere and culture at Michigan State were good and Baldwin contributed to that.
“I heard good things about Heath and even during the breakfast and everything, it was a good atmosphere,” Fisher said. “I could tell the culture I was trying to build at my last school was already in place here and he was a good leader with that."
“From day one when I’ve been here, he’s been extremely receptive, especially for somebody at his level coming in with a new coach midway through his last year and everything like that," Fisher said. "He’s been very open to coaching - and he’s somebody that listens and adapts very quickly.”
Baldwin has had many coaches over his athletic career - not only his track and field coaches, but baseball coaches, basketball coaches and football coaches as well. He’s learned under a lot of different perspectives and coaching styles.
“I think even going back to middle school baseball, and I was playing competitive travel baseball, I’ve had some great coaches and I think I’ve learned lessons that I’ve taken onto the next stage of my life from all my coaches,” Baldwin said. “So I give credit to all of them. I’ve had some great coaches, even travel baseball to high school - had a great coach there - my coaches at Michigan, my coaches here (at MSU). I think it’s been a big group effort of a lot of people investing time in me and helping me out and I’m just trying to take bits and pieces from everybody and put together what works for me.”
The U.S. Olympic Team Trials are later this month (June 21-30) in Eugene, Oregon. The decathlon is scheduled for the first two days of the meet. The top three finishers after the 10 events over the course of two days will qualify to represent the U.S. in Paris at the Olympics.
“I feel like I’ve put in a lot of time into all of this the past five years, and even going into high school and everything," said Baldwin. "It just means a lot to show off all the work and all the stuff that people have invested into me. If I could make that all pay off at (Olympic) trials, I think that would be huge.”
Fisher has experience coaching an Olympian before. He worked with 2016 Olympic high jumper Priscilla Loomis, who represents Antigua & Barbuda internationally. After being around elite athletes in his past, Fisher thinks Baldwin has the qualities of an Olympian.
“The Olympics to me, in my experience, have been talent, timing, and luck,” Fisher said. “There’s a lot of great people who don’t make the Olympic team who are really talented just because they have an injury on the wrong year, things just don’t come together because it’s once every four years. It’s the hardest thing to do. With (Baldwin), the way things are coming together and the way he handles adversity correctly and even the negative things - he responds, looks himself in the mirror, takes accountability and is like ‘okay, what can I do to get better in the next thing?’ - and that’s something to me that’s a big quality of Olympic athletes that I’ve been around and that’s something he has very much of.”
The Olympics is the pinnacle of track and field and making the U.S. Olympic Team is no easy feat. Despite that, Baldwin doesn’t feel the pressure.
“At the end of the day, I know that I have a really good circle of people in my life and I feel like no matter what happens, they're always going to have my back,” he said. “So, that’s also a big thing that’s important for me. I don’t feel like I have a bunch of pressure on me. I just feel like I can just go out there and do my thing without having to worry about the outcome, which is good. I feel like I can just compete freely.”
If Baldwin does end up qualifying for Paris - a place where he’s never been - he will not only be representing the stars and stripes. He will be representing the green and white as well - and he will do so at trials.
“Obviously, Michigan State has invested a lot of time and money in me,” Baldwin explained. “Being able to wear the Michigan State jersey at trials is going to be awesome. If I would be able to qualify with a Michigan State jersey on, I think it would be sweet.”
Note: Story was originally published on June 11.
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Ryan Talbot earns All-American status, what's next for MSU Track & Field
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