While it wasn’t quite the final throw of her high school discus career, now Bruins’ alumnus Amaya Fuller basically saved her best for last as a senior. Needing a strong throw to advance to the final round at the CIF State Meet, Fuller managed a whopping 148’10”, a new personal record, nine feet further than her previous mark of 139’8” that placed her third place at CCS. The big throw would earn Fuller three more attempts. Her 148’10” throw landed her on the podium, finishing fourth in the state.
“I had no idea,” admitted Amaya Fuller on if she had a feeling the big throw would be good enough to advance before the measurement was announced. “It was a night meet, the sun was setting, so when I threw it, I honestly thought it was really bad from the angle that I had. As I was walking over there, I just was hoping for 140 and then I hear them go ‘one…four…eight’ and one of the girls that I compete against and ran up to me and jumped on me and hugged me. My dad went crazy. It took me a while to realize how far it actually was, even after that I was still shaking since I knew I made it to the finals.”
Amaya’s father, Paul Fuller, happens to be the throwing coach for the Bruins. As any confident parent and coach, he wasn’t surprised that his daughter was able to reach such a big number.
“We worked on her technique all year,” remarked Paul Fuller. “This was the first year where she didn’t have competitive cheer. Usually, in the beginning of May she has nationals for competitive cheer, so right around league finals she takes a week off of track and goes to Florida for cheer. Usually, she is struggling to keep her technique because we have to take time off. This year she didn’t, so she kept just kind of working through and trusting the process. If you watch her film, you could see where things were clicking in. On that third throw, everything just connected, and everything was in the right place at the right time.”
The 17-year-old Fuller will be attending school and throwing at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the fall. With a more focused attention on track, the potential to improve at a faster rate at the collegiate level is certainly there.
“This was actually her first year of lifting [weights],” remarked Paul Fuller. “She’s been doing high school cheer, competitive cheer and track, so three teams at the same time. She never really got to lift until last summer, so we lifted a lot in the summer and in the fall. The goal was to get as strong as possible before the season in January and then just maintain that.”
“I don’t want to have too high of standards, but I would probably say around 160 is my goal,” noted Amaya Fuller on her collegiate distance goal. “The conditioning in cheer helped a lot, but it was really nice to actually be able to weight lift this year. My college coach was already telling me he was going to send me a summer workout routine. Definitely excited to give it 100 percent attention.”
