Still Raising the Bar
Track and field star Emy Ntekpere remains hungry after winning three national championships
By David Leder
As Emy Ntekpere was wrapping up her senior track and field season at Skyview High School in Vancouver, she had accepted the fact that her career as a competitive athlete may be coming to an end.
She qualified for state in three events and took fourth place in the high jump, which felt like a big accomplishment at the time. Little did she know that just two years later, she would be standing atop the NCAA Division II podium for Central Washington University—not once, not twice, but three times.
“I was looking at a couple out-of-state schools, but it was so expensive that I figured I would probably just go to Clark (Community College) like my mom and sister,” said Ntekpere (pronounced “en-teh-pair-ay”), who went on to win two national triple jump titles and a high jump crown for the Wildcats in 2025. “But then CWU messaged me in late May of my senior year asking me if I wanted to come to Ellensburg. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’d love to!’”
The redshirt junior added to her collection of national medals in early 2026 with a silver in the triple jump and bronze in the high jump at the Division II Indoor Championships, but she elected to sit out the outdoor season to give herself another year of eligibility.
“I talked to my coaches, and we decided it just made sense for me to stay for one more year,” Ntekpere said, adding that the 2028 indoor nationals will be held at The Course in Spokane Valley—a venue she and her teammates are very familiar with.
“Of course I want to compete for another national title, but that’s not the only reason I decided to stay,” she added. “I felt like I would have more opportunities to be successful if I stuck it out for one more season. I love track and I love Central, and that’s pretty much what it came down to.”
Ntekpere continued to train with her teammates and coaches during the spring outdoor season, but she bypassed the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) championships to preserve her outdoor eligibility for two more years.
Most of all, she is hoping an extra year at Central will allow her to focus more on her true priority: academics. The pre-med major is planning to attend medical school, and she believes having an extra year in the classroom will help her prepare for what’s ahead.
“Honestly, that was the most important thing to me,” she said. “I was already thinking about doing a fifth year for my education, but I’m glad that track and field will also be part of it.”
Emy Ntekpere competes in the triple jump at the Dempsey Indoor Track Meet.
Family of Athletes
Although Ntekpere wasn’t always certain she would become a college athlete, the signs were unmistakable. Her parents—both Nigerian immigrants—and her brother competed in track and field, while her sister became an accomplished cheerleader and dancer after spending a few years on the track herself.
Ntekpere was always hanging around the track as a kid, so when she got to middle school, she decided to give it a try.
“That’s when I realized that this was the sport I really wanted to do—like, ‘this is it!’” she said. “My family and my coaches were so encouraging, and they made me feel like I could take it as far as I wanted to.”
But by her second year of high school, Ntekpere started to feel disenchanted about the level of training and commitment the sport required, and she almost didn’t go out for the Skyview High School team as a sophomore or junior.
"My mom and sister, and all of my coaches and teammates, were like, ‘Why wouldn’t you want to keep doing it? You’re so great at this,’” she said. “They reminded me that just because I was feeling burnt out, that didn’t mean I didn’t still love track.”
So Ntekpere took their advice and continued to fine-tune her specialty events, which, at the time, were the high jump, hurdles, and 4 x 400 relay. It wasn’t until she arrived at Central that she expanded her repertoire to include the triple jump—an event that has turned out to be her most dominant.
“I didn’t even know I could do it when I was a freshman,” she said with a laugh. “But my coaches talked me into it, and I said, ‘OK, I’ll try it.’ It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I was actually kind of good at it, so I stuck with it.”
Ntekpere credits CWU head coach Jonathan Hill for helping her reach her potential in both of her signature events, but the coach knows he can only do so much for his proteges. In the end, it comes down to their internal drive to be the best.
“My job as a coach is to help the athletes remove hesitancy and doubt so their natural ability can just take over,” said Hill, who took over the CWU program in 2023, the same year Ntekpere arrived. “That concept clicked early on with Emy, and she figured out that she could do whatever she set her mind to.”
Heart of a Champion
Hill recalls Ntekpere’s second indoor national championship meet, when she went on to win the triple jump title. The day started with a rough showing in the high jump, and Hill encouraged her to shift gears and give everything she had in the triple jump.
“She just kept throwing punches, and by the third round, she was like, ‘come and get me,’” the coach said. “Then she went back over to the high jump and went from last to fifth place on her next jump. She cleared one more bar after that and set the conference record, which proved to her how powerful she actually is.”
Nearly two years later, Ntekpere is still the GNAC’s all-time record-holder in the indoor and outdoor high jump (1.79 and 1.82 meters, respectively). That same season, she broke both the indoor and outdoor triple jump records at 13.00 meters (indoor) and 13.26 meters (outdoor), earning GNAC Female Athlete of the Year honors in the process.
“I was a Division I coach for 15 years, and she is the best jumper I’ve ever laid eyes on,” Hill said. “Her athletic ability is absolutely one of a kind, but she’s also a world-class human being. People like Emy don’t come into our lives very often, and the joy she brings to our team is infectious. She contributes to our success in so many ways.”
With one indoor season and two outdoor seasons left in her collegiate career, Ntekpere is going to keep reaching for the stars. But even if she doesn’t recapture the national championship magic she harnessed during her sophomore season, she’s going to look back on her time in Ellensburg as being transformational—as a student, an athlete, and a person.
Along the way, she has developed a soft spot in her heart for her adopted hometown of Ellensburg.
“To me, this town feels like one big neighborhood where everyone is my friend,” she said. “I love how nice everyone is. My friends who go to other schools don’t really have that, so I feel really lucky. There’s this special little vibe that we share here in Ellensburg. We’re like one big family, and I just love that.”