“I remember standing at javelin and my coach said to me, ‘You know, at the end of the day please just have fun.’ I looked at her and I said, ‘How do I do that again?’”
Jenna Fee Feyerabend is one of San Diego State’s most accomplished student-athletes, racking up four All-American titles (indoor and outdoor track and field), two Academic All-American titles, and two Mountain West Heptathlon Champion titles. But beyond the records and accolades lies a lesser-known story, defined as much by setbacks and adversity as by the resilience she summoned to overcome them.
Through Adversity
In 2023 Feyerabend suffered a practice accident, tripping over a nail that stuck out of the grass during warm ups, resulting in a severe ankle sprain that forced her to redshirt with a medical hardship waiver.
Once the outdoor season began in 2024, Feyerabend was eager to compete. However, with an ever-lingering ankle injury, she found herself overcompensating on the opposite side of her body, resulting in another injury, this time to her lower back.
As a highly skilled and competitive athlete, Feyerabend was determined to push through.
“I still competed in the 2025 indoor season but at such high pain levels that everything that I did connected to track was torture,” said Feyerabend. “It was just pain. I started dissolving in pain. I would have panic attacks because every time we did yoga, when we did a meditation, and I was told to feel my body, I was terrified, because all I remembered was pain.”
The pain was so debilitating that, ultimately, Feyerabend decided to sit out the outdoor 2025 season to continue healing. Without track, Feyerabend, an international student from Groß-Gerau, Germany, found herself struggling, losing her identity as an athlete, all while being away from home without family in the United States.
“Everything that I did connected to track was torture. It was just pain. I started dissolving in pain.”
Faith Over Fear
Faced with the intense pain from her injuries and the loss of competition, Feyerabend was in an uphill battle. Despite this, she decided that she could not let herself fall into a victim mentality. Instead, she leaned on her support systems, her own mental grit, and prominently, her faith as a Lutheran Christian, to get her through it.
“I always think that there is a higher plan in all of this, there's a higher power navigating me through these things and there's a reason why these things pop up,” said Feyerabend. “I don't believe that God does things as good and bad, like ‘okay I'm gonna let this bad thing happen to you or let this good thing happen to you,’ I think it's all just lessons and it's just our perspective on how we see them.”
Feyerabend mentioned having to learn a lot of lessons throughout the process, with one of her takeaways being her mindset regarding her pain and how we as people tend to feel our emotions.
“Of course pain, it's something that human beings want to prevent themselves from feeling and we want to protect ourselves from it, but at the end of the day, I think there's so many emotions that we judge instead of just feeling them and then working through them,” she said.
Feyerabend learned the importance of recognizing her pain, acknowledging it, and feeling it in order to heal and come back stronger.
“God gives us chances to learn lessons and I choose to believe in the Holy Spirit within us and that Godly voice within us to figure out what we're supposed to make out of each situation. So I think that's very much what kept me going.”
Student-Athlete
As an international student, Feyerabend made sacrifices to not only compete at the highest level of collegiate track and field, but also to prioritize her education.
Even when not competing, she continued to thrive academically, earning a 4.0 throughout her collegiate career, graduating in 2025 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism.
She stressed "active communication," believing "the problem is silence. I think the problem is that we don't talk enough."
Those efforts paid off. "I walked over that stage, I got that diploma in my hand and I'm not just an athlete, I'm so much more," she said. "I think that really helped me, just seeing that putting effort into something else outside of track does pay off, especially when you're facing a little bit more adversity in track and field."
In 2025-26, Feyerabend stayed at SDSU to pursue her Master’s degree in Mass Communication, where she worked as a teaching assistant for undergraduate classes, while continuing to compete.
Self-Advocacy
One of Feyerabend's biggest takeaways was the importance of self-advocacy. From her perspective, many students fail to speak up or make connections with professors due to imagined perceptions of their peers.
"At the end of the day you're going to regret not having spoken up for yourself," she said. "The worst guilt to feel is the guilt towards yourself when you didn't express enough self-love or self-advocacy. I think that's something that I really just fostered because I know that I'm only the best version of myself if I keep showing up for myself, because that's the only way I can show up for other people."
For an international student thousands of miles from home, showing up for yourself and others is especially important.
"One thing that I learned here [at SDSU] is that you're never alone but sometimes you might feel lonely and then those are the moments where you have to reach out to people," she said. "You're never needy for reaching out for help. You're never too much. Also reach out to people if you might think they might be struggling or just check in with them"
Feyerabend's other takeaway was that "Sometimes we have to be our own best friends" who can give ourselves attention and reassurance when others can't.
Pursuing Her Passion
"I think passion always drives you in any and every area of life,” said Feyeraband, “I think it’s in sports and in academics.”
"I have a Bachelor's in Journalism," said Feyerabend. "I started realizing I can connect to people through these interviews, I can get them to like to share their story."
Feyerabend also found alignment between her natural talents and her chosen career.
“I just really try to look out for my talent, so for example, we got interviewed in front of the camera and I was on national TV and everything,” she said. “I was so excited to do it and all my friends were frightened and they said ‘oh my gosh, I'm sweating, I can't do this,’ and I thought ‘wow, this is rare, I like doing this.’ So then I tried to pay more attention to where I excel, which seems a little bit outside of the norms. And that really helped me figure out that I wanted to do my Bachelor's in Journalism.”
The Return to Joy
In April’s Aztec Invitational, Feyerabend won five out of seven events in the heptathlon during her first full-season return to competition since recovering from her injuries. For Feyerabend, the challenge wasn’t the competition she faced during the Invitational, but instead earning marks that qualified her for the NCAA championships.
During the meet, while preparing to compete in the javelin, Feyerabend remembers a distinct mental turning point.
Before her throw, Feyerabend noted “standing at javelin and my coach said to me, ‘you know, at the end of the day please just have fun’ and I looked at her and I said, ‘how do I do that again?’ And she said, ‘well, you’ve been here for a while, you know how to have fun.’ And then I was thinking and I was like, okay, honestly God gave me this talent. So I guess having fun means just living out my time and trusting God, and then I did that.”
Her performance at the Aztec Invitational earned her Mountain West Field Athlete of the Week. It was the top NCAA DI Heptathlon mark at that time. Even now, her 5828 points is the best in the Mountain West and the sixth highest in the nation at DI schools this season.
Feyerabend realized that her mindset was key, and that her recovery from multiple injuries and the success following that is “just another testimony to the love that I have for my sport, and all of the effort that I’ve put in to now just unleash myself and let myself do what I can do.”
The Bigger Picture
As Feyerabend closes out her time at San Diego State with just one more indoor season left to compete next year, her legacy leaves a lot more than just records, rankings, and All-American honors. Through battling injuries, she learned how to rebuild both physically and mentally, while leaning on her faith, discovering her passion academically, embracing the importance of self-advocacy, and ultimately rediscovering her joy in track and field.
Feyerabend is expected to compete at this year’s Mountain West Outdoor Championships in Clovis, Calif. On Thursday, she will compete in four events (100m Hurdles, High Jump, Shot Put, 200m) beginning at 9:50 a.m. On Friday, the remaining three events (Long Jump, Javelin, and 800m) begin at 10:20 a.m. Watch on the Mountain West Network.
Top Photo (throwing javelin): Derek Tuskan/San Diego State
