University of Georgia Athletics
Helping Others Reach New Heights
February 21, 2019 | General, Track & Field, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
As Georgia celebrates Black History Month, each Thursday in February we will take a close look at an extraordinary former Bulldog making his or her mark. So far we have profiled swimmer Maritza Correia McClendon and basketball's Derrick Floyd. This week it's track star Keturah Orji, and we wrap up next week with football's Benjamin Watson.
The question posed to Keturah Orji was wordy but meaningful: If everything the track and field star had done during her brilliant Georgia career, on and off the track, was written down on a piece of paper, which would she have found most unbelievable back when she first arrived in Athens?
Orji took a few moments to think about her answer. For good reason — there was much to consider.
In her four years competing for Georgia, she won seven NCAA triple jump championships and one NCAA long jump title. As a senior, she led the women's program to its first team national championship, at the NCAA Indoors. In those four years of competition, she lost one, ONE, collegiate triple jump meet, finishing second at the NCAA Indoors as a freshman.
She owns all the top collegiate records in the triple jump and she previously held the American indoor and outdoor records, as well. Oh, and in 2016, on the biggest stage imaginable, she finished fourth in the triple jump at the Olympic Games in Rio, missing out on a bronze medal by a couple of centimeters.
And her glorious Bulldog career, as fine as any Georgia student-athlete ever, ended last year with two delicious cherries on top: the 2018 NCAA Woman of the Year Award and The Bowerman (an award that goes to the top track and field athlete).
Off the track, she excelled in the classroom from the beginning and was a three-time Academic All-American and winner of SEC and NCAA postgraduate scholarships. She also served on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) for three years and volunteered in the community whenever she could, which was often. Actually, she did much more than that, starting her own mentoring program at Hilsman Middle School, called Amara's Pride, in 2017.
So Orji had all that to ponder before answering the question.
"If someone gave me a piece of paper and listed out everything I would do in college and I had to choose one, I think the fourth place at the Olympics would be the highest," she said. "But I think the second thing would be starting a mentoring program, because that just wasn't a reality for me.
"I was so quiet and shy (as a freshman) that it wouldn't have been something where I was like, oh, yeah, I can definitely do this."
Pretty much everything Orji has set her mind to since arriving in Athens, she's done. She's earned enough trophies and awards to fill a few bookcases and she's now in graduate school while also training and competing as a professional through the Atlanta Track Club.
The New Jersey native saw beyond the track and the classroom, though, from the beginning.
"I think I've always liked volunteering but I didn't realize how much I liked volunteering until freshman year of college," she said.
At SAAC meetings, when volunteering opportunities were announced, "I was like, 'OK, I have time, I'll do it.'"
That was the start of the path that led her toward creating Amara's Pride.
"I guess as I gained more knowledge about society I realized that people didn't have the same opportunities as me, people didn't have the people around them giving them the same knowledge that I had around me," she said. "Just realizing the different scenarios that people are in, I realized that I wanted to give some knowledge to other people, to invest the things I had into other people, just as some people have invested in me."
It was Carla Williams, then Georgia's Deputy Director of Athletics and Senior Woman Administrator and now Virginia's Director of Athletics, that initially put the idea of starting her own program into Orji's head. After Georgia wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell starting his reading program in Athens, Williams asked Orji if she had ever thought of doing something like that.
"Carla Williams was the one that helped me pretty much believe that I could do it," Orji said.
Amara's Pride: Amara is part of Orji's middle name and means God's grace, while Pride, she said, "comes from a lion's pride, because I want the girls to possess the qualities of lions, such as bravery and strength and queens of the jungle. I want them to be very confident in themselves."
Georgia coach Petros Kyprianou said so much of who Orji is comes from her parents, Anthony and Nicole Orji.
"I think her parents have done a tremendous job of setting the foundation and giving her the freedom to be a thinker, knowing that not everything is perfect in life and you've got to figure it out," Kyprianou said.
Once Orji decided to start a mentoring program in 2017 — she credits Williams and Heather LaBarbera, the Director of Student Services for the UGA Athletic Association, for giving her a lot of help getting it off the ground — she then had to decide what she wanted the program to do and achieve.
The program consists of Orji and other mentors working with 16 girls at Hilsman, meeting twice a month. The mentors talk with the girls about a variety of topics, from "the importance of education, about social media, about boys — anything that they're interested in."
"Before the first meeting I was extremely nervous (laughs), because I knew I was running it. It wasn't like I was going there to volunteer, I was running the show," she said. "I felt very nervous, but I'm a big planner, too, so I had planned everything well."
It's a safe place for the girls to share what they're going through with women that have been through their own middle school experiences and are there to listen and help. The program is still going, still improving, and Orji said it has been a very rewarding experience for her.
"I am proud of myself. I think I've just grown so much from this and from being at UGA. I am proud of myself because when Carla suggested this, I wasn't feeling confident at all — I didn't feel like it was something that I could do," she said. "I was like, this is not realistic, so for it to come together and to be doing this, I am very proud of myself. But a lot of people have also helped me get to where I am today and to be able to do this. It's not just me doing everything."
Along with running Amara's Pride and pursuing her graduate studies in Sport Management, Orji is still a world-class triple jumper. And the 2020 Olympics aren't too far away.
As for what she'll do once she's done competing, Orji, who got her bachelor's degree in financial planning, said merging her interests in finance and community service could be a possibility.
"I feel like I've noticed a need for financial planning and financial education in especially the black community, so I think combining those two things could be something I'm really interested in doing," she said. "I think taking aspects of mentoring and adding in finance could be something."
"People will know her as a great competitor that also gave back to the community," Kyprianou said, "and she did it — she's a self-made woman. And you can't get much better than that."
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
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