Landon prepared to make final NCAA Indoor Championship appearance a memorable one

Kyle Landon once again brought home a stack of plaques from the Missouri Valley Conference Indoor Championships on Feb. 26.

The Chester, Ill. native tied his own meet record to win his seventh MVC high jump title including his fourth-straight indoors and was the runner-up in both the long and the triple jumps after he set personal-bests in both events. For his efforts, he was honored as both the MVC Most Outstanding Male Field Athlete and the co-Most Valuable Athlete.

So many plaques, in fact, that when he climbed to the top of the podium to meet Wichita State's Hunter Veith, who Landon shared Most Valuable Athlete honors with, and the MVC only had one award for the two to share, Landon could be seen encouraging Veith to keep the trophy. As if to say, "you take this one, I've got plenty."

Landon believes that his experience at this year's conference meet better prepared him for Saturday's NCAA Indoor Championships.

"I learned a lot throughout the conference meet, primarily just to relax and have fun and not really hold myself to certain standards," Landon said. "At the conference meet, my only goal going in was to score 20 points for the team. And by achieving that goal, I achieved all the other goals."

The four-time All-American has admittedly struggled this season with setting goals too high for himself. It's not so much the goals, but the pressure derived from wanting to achieve what he has set his mind to doing. His solution at the MVC Indoor Championships was to silence his thoughts and just jump.

"All year I've been struggling with putting the bar too high," Landon said. "By not thinking about (my goals) and just jumping, I had a really good meet."

This strategy isn't necessarily new for Landon, who implemented a similar effort to try to just have fun at the U.S. Olympic Trials this past July.

"It worked for the Trials too," Landon said. "I don't know why I've shied away from it. I remember going into the Trials I was just happy to be there, and so one of my goals was to just not be the person that does the worst."

The results speak for themselves. Landon cleared a personal-best 7'-5" (2.26m) at the Trials en route to a runner-up finish, the highest finish by a Saluki at the Trials since Darrin Plab finished second at the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials.

Landon is one of seven in Saturday's high jump field returning from last year's field, and one of five returning All-Americans. He comes in with the second-best regular season mark in the field, second only to USC's Randall Cunningham.

SIU Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Kathleen Raske believes Landon is as ready as he's ever been heading into Saturday's national meet.

"Kyle is the most prepared he's ever been in his whole career to go into this indoor national meet and execute what he is capable of doing," Raske said. "Everything leading up to this point has been nothing but the perfect preparation for him and he knows exactly what he has to do."

The men's high jump competition at the 2017 NCAA Indoor National Championships gets underway on Saturday, March 11 at 3:30 p.m.

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Landon prepared to make final NCAA Indoor Championship appearance a memorable one

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