Last weekend, Abbey Glynn attended the preliminary state track and field meet at Jefferson County Stadium, and it was a trip down memory lane.
The Colorado Buffaloes star ended up watching some videos of herself from her time at Mead High School.
“It’s crazy how far I’ve come,” she said.
Now a fifth-year senior at CU, Glynn will compete in the NCAA West regional preliminaries in Fayetteville, Ark., on Thursday and Saturday. Glynn, one of the nation’s top 400-meter hurdlers, also hopes to help the Buffs qualify for the NCAA championships in the 4×400-meter relay. The NCAA Championships will be held June 6-9 in Eugene, Oregon.
In total, CU has 32 student-athletes competing in Fayetteville. The meeting started on Wednesday and ends on Saturday.
For Glynn, this will be her fourth trip to the NCAA regionals. She has earned All-American recognition five times in her career, including first-team honors last year after placing eighth in the NCAA finals of the 400-meter hurdles.
“Honestly, yes,” she said when asked if she is surprised by her college career.
Glynn, a 2019 Mead graduate, was an exceptional multi-sport athlete. In track and field, she was a four-time state qualifier and fourteen-time state medalist. She helped the Mavericks win the 800-meter medley relay titles in 2018 and 2019 and captured her only individual state title in her final race, the 300-meter hurdles, in 2019.
At CU, however, she has found a different gear, largely because she focused on one sport while receiving more coaching than was possible in high school.
“Here you get a lot more one-on-one training and more specific training about who you are and how you train,” she said.
In high school, Glynn didn’t get off to a fast start, but finished strong. According to her, she hasn’t changed much in that respect. But overall she’s much better.
“My technique over the hurdle, my confidence is… I now know for sure what I’m doing in hurdles,” she said. “So that’s the part where I see a huge difference.”
At the Pac-12 Championships on May 12 in Boulder, Glynn finished second in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 55.31 seconds. With that time, she broke her own school record and achieved the automatic qualifying standard for next month’s Olympic Trials in Eugene. Glynn is currently ranked seventh in the NCAA and 23rd in the world in the 400 hurdles.
One of the best parts of that race, however, was hearing from former CU star Gabby Scott. When Glynn was a senior at Mead in 2019, Scott set the CU school record in the 400 hurdles. Glynn, who didn’t run her first race in the 400 hurdles until about a week before the 2021 Pac-12 Championships, now owns the four fastest times in CU history.
“Honestly, I never expected to do this,” she says. “I just thought I was going to go to CU and be successful, but not as successful as I was. … I never expected I could beat Gabby Scott. That was such a big name when I was in high school. It just means so much that she reached out to me after all the success she’s had as well.
On May 11, Scott ran the 24th best 400 meter time in the world for 2024. The next day, Glynn posted her 55.31 in the 400 hurdles.
Glynn’s success on the court also has an impact on her off the court.
“I feel a lot more confident in who I am as a person than I did my freshman year,” she said. “It’s also a lot of life experience.”
Going to college so close to home meant Glynn’s family was able to be there along the way. Her parents haven’t missed a single meeting, she said.
“Seeing how close my family is and how much they are willing to support me and my dreams has been, I think, the best experience,” she said.
Glynn said that two weeks ago, when she graduated and CU hosted the Pac-12 Championships, it felt like a turning point and “like it was all coming to an end.”
Glynn’s collegiate career will soon come to an end. She’s not sure what the future holds, but she plans to be involved in sports in some way and continue training to see how far she can get on track.
Right now, though, her focus is on Fayetteville and making sure she gets back to the NCAA Championships and makes some noise there too.
“I’m not ready to be done (at CU), that’s for sure,” she said. “I feel pretty good. It’s actually what we’ve been preparing for all season, so there’s a lot of confidence going into this weekend.”