As cross-country season winds down, Columbia University track and field prepares for its indoor season debut in three weeks. The opener will be the Rutgers Holiday Classic at the Armory in Washington Heights. Indoor track and field goes into high gear in January and then it’s run, run, run for the rest of the school year.
For middle distance runner Myla Abernathy, a junior at Barnard College (Barnard competes under the Columbia banner as part of the athletic consortium), now is a busy time athletically and academically. Abernathy has a double major in Asian studies on the Chinese track and political science/political theory. Her goal is to work in international affairs and she is applying to the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs to pursue a master’s degree. After that, she hopes to work at the United Nations.
“I checked out Barnard before I even thought about being recruited for Columbia Athletics,” said Abernathy. “I was looking through some of the Barnard groups and student pages on Instagram, and looking at the Barnard Instagram page and TikTok [account].”
She came on a visit with her mother. Abernathy’s coach at home in Maryland knew Columbia director of cross-country/track and field Daniel Ireland because they’d been college teammates at Georgetown. While in Manhattan, Abernathy called Ireland. The idea of attending a women’s college and competing at the Division I level fit her perfectly.
“Barnard is a special community,” she said. “I really like the type of things that Barnard has and the opportunities they have for women specifically … Then, I’m at Columbia and I have teammates [who] are in [the engineering school] and Columbia College.”
Although Abernathy remains on the cross-country roster, she is currently focusing on middle distance indoors and outdoors, running the 800 meters and 1,500 meters. In Maryland, she trained outdoors year-round, so she decided to try cross-country. It was enjoyable, but a bit too taxing on her body.
“I was getting injured, and I’m not injury-prone,” said Abernathy, who spent this past summer studying in China. “I found it best to just do indoor and outdoor track.”
The discipline of sport helps her focus in all areas. “I definitely like for my schedule to be packed with things I’m interested in,” Abernathy said. “A lot of things I have on my plate are my interests and things I intend to pursue after graduation.”