Pavana steps out of her mother’s shadow, leaps into the record books

Last week, not long after she competed in her first competition of the season, long jumper Pavana Nagaraj excitedly made a call back home to her mother in India. She had good news.

Competing for Oklahoma State University, the 20-year-old Pavana had won the women’s long jump event at the Owen Hewett Invitational in Norman, Oklahoma, with a Personal Best (PB) effort of 6.47m.

That mark improved on the 6.44m set by Mayookha Johny in 2012.

Few people know what it’s like to break a National Record (NR). Pavana’s mother, Sahana Kumari, is one of them. In 2012, she had done the same when she erased Bobby Aloysius’s Indian NR in the women’s high jump. Her mark of 1.92m still stands today.

Should Pavana’s mark be ratified by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI), she and Sahana will become the first mother-daughter pair to hold an Indian athletics NR simultaneously.

But Sahana wants more from her daughter. “Mom was pretty happy. But she wants me to do more. She said it was a very good season opener, but she also asked me to be patient and save my energy and not get drained competing in all these events because I have higher targets. She said it’s good to have such a start, but it’s important to be consistent till the end of the season,” Pavana tells  Sportstar.

It was probably destined that Pavana would be an athlete. Sahana jokes that her daughter was competing in the womb itself. “I was a month pregnant with Pavana when I competed at the Inter Railways meet in March 2005.”

While other children spent time with their friends, Pavana’s childhood was spent around the track, where her mother would take her while she trained.

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Being the daughter of an elite athlete came with its share of pressure. “Everyone in athletics in India knew who my mother was. I’m sure they expected I was going to be a sportsperson too,” she recalls.

Her parents, father Nagaraj, who is also a national-level sprinter, never pushed her. “My parents let me develop my own love for sport. They would always take me to the track, and I grew up playing around on the high jump mat,” she says. “That helped me develop my own passion and allowed me to find my own path.”

It is that path that has led Pavana to pursue the long jump in the USA.

She had started as a high jumper, just like her mother, even setting an Under-16 NR in the event in 2021 before switching events. “It’s not that I started doing the long jump because I wanted to do something different from my mother. I started out doing the high jump, but I was always playing around with different events.

“I also ran the sprints, hurdles and even the 800m in the combined events. It’s like when you try different dishes and see which one really works for you, and then that becomes your favourite dish,” she says.

Journey to the USA

A gold medal in the long jump at the Asian Juniors in 2024 encouraged her to focus on the horizontal jumps. “That was the turning point for me and gave me the confidence that long jump was what I should pursue,” she says.

The Asian results enabled Pavana to compete at the 2024 Junior World Championships. Though she did not have a great tournament there, Pavana was approached by representatives of the University of San Diego to compete at the American collegiate level (NCAA).

Although an increasing number of Indian track and field athletes have started competing at the NCAA level, most tend to be men. While the environment was unfamiliar and there was some uncertainty about leaving a country where her parents already understood the sporting landscape, Pavana decided to travel to the USA.

“I’d always wanted to go and compete in the NCAAs. My main reason for moving out of India, apart from the educational prospect—she’s currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in athlete management—was having access to much better facilities and a training programme. It was safe being in India, but I wanted to get out of my comfort zone.

“I wanted to challenge myself. I also wanted to be in a system where there is a lot of competition. The only way I’d grow was when I was having to face a lot of competition. At the NCAA, you are competing with the best students from across the world,” she says.

Pavana says her parents only encouraged her. “They have always trusted me to pursue what I wanted. They wanted me to have a platform, which they didn’t have. They only told me to be brave and bold and go out and compete. They told me that I need to make the most of the opportunity and learn as much as I could,” she says.

She initially planned on training in both the heptathlon and the long jump, but in August last year decided to focus on the long jump. That choice required her to step further into the unknown as she transferred from the college she had originally joined and moved to the University of Oklahoma.

College switch

“It was not the easiest choice. I spoke to a few seniors, especially Indian high jump and decathlon NR holder Tejaswin Shankar. The coach at Oklahoma, Zivile Pukstas, has coached some really good long jumpers, including 2024 Olympics fifth-place finisher Jacob Fincham-Dukes. I know that with good athletes, she’s really capable of producing some great results. I felt I had a really good chance to improve there,” she says.

The change has been worth it. In the five months she has been training with coach Pukstas, Pavana says she has seen improvement in her training even before the start of the indoor season.

“I was confident heading into 2026 because I had worked a lot on my technique, but also my strength and speed. I had a PB of 6.32m last year, and I knew I was going to jump more this season, but I didn’t have any specific number in mind. I’m just chasing progress rather than any specific outcome. I think when you chase progress, magic is bound to happen,” she says.

Even though she has improved on the indoor NR, Pavana says she knows she can do better. “It’s nice to have a new PB, but I think for the national record, the standard should be a lot higher. The standard for the senior national record is 6.83m, set by Anju Bobby George, so I want the indoor record to at least be close to that. A record isn’t just for me but for other athletes as well. You want the national record to be a really inspirational mark,” she says.

There will be many competitions where she can get there. In the collegiate calendar, there is always another one every few weeks. But there are some major events Pavana has her sights set on. “There’s just been one Indian woman, Krishna Jayasankar, in the women’s discus throw, who has competed at an NCAA finals, and I want to be the first to do so in the long jump,” she says.

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She also has international competitions on her mind. “This year, we have the Commonwealth and Asian Games as well. I think I won’t be in a position to qualify for the Commonwealth Games because I have to be competing for my college at that time, but I really hope I can qualify for the Asian Games in September this year,” she says.

Constant learning

Regardless of how the season goes, Pavana says she is only looking to continue learning every time she competes. “There’s always some really strong athletes you have to compete against. That’s what makes you grow. Last year, at San Diego, I was competing against some of the medallists at the junior world championships, and I also competed against Alexis Brown, who jumped over 7m, 7.03m, last year,” she says.

Among the skills Pavana says she has picked up in the USA is the ability to relax before events. “I think the big difference in mindset between how I competed in India and in the USA is how athletes approach a competition. In India, I took too much stress before a competition. I was thinking of all the ways that things could go wrong.

“Now I’m still focused, but I know it’s also important to be free and enjoy the experience and vibe of being at a meet. Whenever I’ve felt confident and relaxed, things have always turned out well for me,” she says.

Published on Jan 27, 2026