At 33, Ariana Ince is not slowing down

Short of opportunities domestically, professional javelin thrower will let it fly in Canada

By: Josh Kozelj

Ariana Ince sits in the San Diego International airport, waiting for the call to board her flight. 

As business people and tourists walk by, she sits patiently. The occasional flight call reverberates throughout the airport, lineups zig and zag at other gates waiting to board, and conversations from travellers silently echo through her phone. 

The waiting is nothing new for Ince. She has always been a bit of a late bloomer to the sport of javelin. 

Growing up in Gonzales, Texas, a community of 7,200 people roughly 120 kilometres east of San Antonio, Ince played a variety of sports including volleyball, basketball, softball, and a few years of football—where she played wide receiver and cornerback—with the boys. 

She didn’t find her way to javelin until the age of 22, in her senior year at Rice University in Texas, when she decided to help out her team at their conference championship meet. 

“So my event in college was pole vaulting,” Ince says. “And we needed more points at conference, we didn’t have any jav throwers, and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m pretty good at throwing stuff, maybe I could do that too?” 

Ince ended up finishing second in the javelin that year and qualified for nationals, igniting a journey that has led her to a NACAC gold medal in 2018, Pan American bronze one year later, and 2020 Tokyo Olympics where she represented the U.S. last summer. 

“I really just picked it up as a way to help the team and ended up finding out that it was way more fun to be the catapult and not the projectile,” she said. 

On this mid-May morning in San Diego, her final destination is Tuscon, Arizona, a city that will host her one, and only, U.S.-based opportunity to compete in a World Athletics Continental Tour (WACT) ranking event for javelin, the USATF Throws Festival on May 21. 

“There’s literally one meet this year that has a javelin event with ranking points,” Ince says. “And I’m sitting in the airport right now on my way to it.”  

On the professional track and field circuit, meets are ranked by categories from A to D, and sub categories like gold, silver, bronze, and challenger. 

Depending on the meet’s ranking by the sport’s governing body, World Athletics, athletes will earn more or less performance points based on their result. For example, second place in a B meet could earn more total points than winning a lower category meet. 

Points help athletes boost their individual World Athletics ranking, and they are currency which helps them in making larger international events like the Olympics and World Championships. 

Last year, the U.S. hosted four ranking meets that included javelin. This year, the number is just one—putting added pressure for athletes to perform at high level meets when it matters the most.  

“They had a bunch last year and then they’re continuing to do a bunch more events in the United States, but they completely remove javelin for reasons that are beyond me,” Ince said. 

Ince hypothesizes that the coverage, or lack thereof, of javelin might hinder its ability to get more attention from mainstream sport and track and field fans. Whereas viewers can see how high a high jumper is throwing, or the speed in which a sprinter is charging down a track, throwing events like javelin, she says, are at a disadvantage from a television perspective. 

“When you watch javelin or discus on TV, you see someone throw it, and then all of a sudden you see an implement in the air with no context,” she said. “If you’ve ever seen a 90 metre javelin throw in person, it’s one of the most powerful, crazy things you’ve ever seen.” 

Having turned 33 earlier this spring, Ince isn’t slowing down. She has her eyes set on achieving the world standard of 64 metres and making the American World Championship team in Eugene, Oregon in July. 

Since she got into the sport relatively late, Ince credits her breakthroughs at NACAC and Pan-Ams to finally catching up to the field in terms of practicing her routine. She saw incremental growth through her 20s, and says that helped feed her desire to continue growing in javelin. 

“I’ve never been that person that all of a sudden has a five metre PR one year,” she said. “I’m that kind of boring person that, every couple of years, I improve by one or two metres.” 

This season, Ince admits, has been up and down. 

She’s currently ranked 32nd in the World Athletics rankings, but is feeling fit and ready to improve on that score before coming to Victoria for the Track Classic. 

Although she’s been to Harry Jerome—which she will also compete in again this year—she’s never been to Victoria and looks forward to crossing over to Vancouver Island for the first time.  

“I always would watch other people be like, ‘Oh, are you going [to Victoria]? Let’s take the ferry!” Ince said. 

“I’m really excited to do both meets, to get that full experience. Plus, more ranking points.”