By TENAJH SWEETING

Tribune Sports Reporter

tsweeting@tribunemedia.net

With 2023 now in the rearview mirror, expectations are high for not only federations but also top athletes in the 2024 calendar year. Top javelin thrower Rhema Otabor turned in an outstanding 2023 season across the board and although many adopt a “new year, new me” mindset as the calendar flips, The Tribune’s 2023 Senior Female Athlete of the Year wants to build on last year’s tremendous progress this season.

The 2024 calendar year is a major one in athletics due to the Olympic Games being scheduled for July 26-August 11 in Paris, France. With the marquee event a mere 200 days away, the 21-year-old is determined to make a push to qualify and make her debut at the event this summer.

“For 2024 as we all know is gonna be the Olympic year and that is the big goal. I want to make it there and I want to go there and perform really well. I hope that leading up to the Olympics I have really good meets where I feel like I could build confidence on what I have been working on and practicing so that when I get to that actual meet I am able to compete with them and give it my best. It won’t be a repeat of what happened at the World Champs last year but it will be ten times better,” the women’s senior national javelin champion said.

In her debut at the 19th World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Otabor was unable to turn in her best efforts. Team Bahamas’ youngest member ended her stint at the event 15th in Group B of the qualifying round with a throw of 53.62m and was unable to advance to the finals at the global event.

Despite a disappointing performance by her standards, the University of Nebraska student was grateful for the learning experience and will use it as fuel to motivate her on her quest to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

“It wasn’t a really good performance. One thing I will say that I took away from it was the experience. Going into it, I was really nervous because I was actually with the big dogs and it was my first time being on a stage that large. Now that I have that experience and exposure under my belt I feel that I am more equipped. I feel like I belong and could definitely hang with them,” she said.

Otabor had countless remarkable accomplishments in 2023 to cement herself as a notable performer in the women’s javelin at the senior level. She became the second Bahamian, since Laverne Eve in 1987, to win the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division One javelin title at the Outdoor Championships in Austin, Texas with a throwing distance of 59.49m. The NCAA D1 javelin title holder surpassed that mark with a toss of 59.75m at the Bahamas Association of Athletic Associations (BAAA) 2023 National Track and Field Championships to become the women’s senior national champion last July. Throughout the season she expressed the desire to clear 60m which she eventually did at the Pan Am Games in Santiago, Chile where she notched 60.54m to earn her first international medal. She not only claimed silver in the women’s javelin throw finals but became only the second Bahamian to go over the 60m mark in the field event.

Otabor has gotten dangerously close to Eve’s national record of 63.73m which she established at the Nashville Commodore Classic in Nashville, Tennessee in 2000.

“My last meet was over 60m which I feel like I should have already hit from earlier in the season but everything in its time. My practice has been going pretty well. I wouldn’t say it is too tedious or too much emphasis placed on heavy lifting but more on technique, maintaining strength and getting stronger in certain aspects of my throw. It is coming together and I feel pretty good about where I am at right now,” she said.

In her downtime at home, Otabor was grateful to spend time with her family, experience Junkanoo and other aspects of Bahamian culture and enjoy much warmer weather which is the opposite of her experience in Nebraska.

“I missed that a lot when I was up there in Nebraska it ain’t nothing like home. I have not been getting a lot of down time because I have been working but it feels a bit more relaxing being here,” she said.

The senior athlete will head back to the University of Nebraska on January 17 to take on the 2024 season.