After road back from injury, Southeast Missouri State's Farley poised for big finish at NCAA track and field championships

The first time Kevin Farley competed at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field National Championships as a sophomore in 2013, he expected that he'd be able to make it back to represent Southeast Missouri State again as a junior and senior.

He finished seventh in the shot put that year, becoming the first Redhawk to be named a first-team All-American since 2008, but a return trip back to Eugene, Oregon, wasn't in the cards for Farley until now.

After tearing his pectoral muscle he missed most of his junior season before redshirting last year. Now Farley has worked his way back to the national championships, where he'll compete in the discus and shot put beginning today.

"He's worked his butt off all these years and he was determined to get back from it," Southeast coach Eric Crumpecker said. "It was just a long drawn-out process of getting his strength levels back up."

Farley remembers it all quite well. It was mid-April and the Redhawks had just competed at Tennessee's Sea Ray Relays.

He returned to practice that Monday and was working on the bench press in the weight room. He was lowering the bar for his second rep when he felt something pull in his chest.

He'd strained his pec muscle before and assumed that's what had happened again; but this time the icing and rest didn't make it any better, so after a few weeks he had an MRI done, revealing he'd torn it.

He'd competed in enough meets that season that he couldn't redshirt, but he did for the 2015 outdoor season.

The injury completely changed his training. He could do the hammer throw because it didn't aggravate the muscle, but had to ease back into the shot put and discus and his weight training.

He finally felt like he'd returned to full strength this February and was able to train harder.

"I went for, like, months without throwing a shot put or a disc. I threw it one time at the conference meet that year and then after that I didn't touch it for like another five or six months," Farley said.

"I couldn't even bench press. It affected not just the throwing training but the lifting training. I was very limited in things I could do body-wise. Anything that went against that pec was not going to happen. It was slow. Once it started getting a little bit better we started going back into it light and then eventually we got back into the regular training. Even since then there's certain lines I don't cross with it."

He's set to compete in the shot put at 6:30 p.m. tonight and discus at 5:05 p.m. Friday at Hayward Field on the University of Oregon's campus.

The top eight finishers in each event are designated first-team All-American.

When he finished seventh in the shot put as a sophomore it was with a throw of 61 feet, 11 3/4 inches.

His throw of 62 1 1/4 was good for seventh in the NCAA West Preliminaries two weeks ago. He finished fifth in the discus with a throw of 191-5.

The top 12 finishers advance to the national meet. He just missed advancing in the hammer throw by about four feet, finishing 17th.

"It's probably a blessing in disguise because we feel like the discus and the shot put are the two events he has the best chance at doing well at here, so it's given him more time to concentrate on those two here in the last 10 days," Crumpecker said, noting that there only would've been a few hours rest between the hammer throw and the shot put at the national meet.

Crumpecker would've had a hard time believing that Farley would make it in the discus and not the hammer throw when the team began practice in August.

Farley was never terrible at the event, but he saw drastic improvement heading into this season. He recalled coming out to practices in the fall and throwing it in the high 170s and some 180s, which "didn't seem real," to the fifth-year senior.

"The discus -- I can't even tell you," Farley said with a laugh. "I've been throwing it since high school, nine years, and really what I tell coach is that after all these years it feels like I've finally figured it out. … It doesn't feel, like, insanely different. It just feels like I'm hitting positions.

"The hard thing for throwers a lot of times -- the shot put and the discus have about the same technique. It's the same spin, but it's really hard to differentiate between the two, so I think for a long time I was trying to throw the discus as if I was rotating in the shot put, and it's way more like upward force and drive for the shot put, and the discus is more like elongated and you're taking it more out than up. I think this year I just finally got connected with it."

Crumpecker said he was proud to work with the Springfield, Illinois, native over the last five years.

"When he came here he was determined he was going to be as good as he is and hasn't let anything get in his way of it," Crumpecker said. "He's worked hard all these years. He's a student of his events. He's always looking at film of himself throwing and trying to dissect what he's doing wrong or right. He has a passion for the sport, and that's the first thing if you're going to be any good at this level you have to have a passion for what you're doing. He does, and then he applies it and works hard at it."

Farley's effort paid off in his recovery and helped him end his career exactly how he'd planned.

"It's awesome. Very thankful to be doing it my senior year," Farley said. "I couldn't really ask for another way to go out, really."