Armijo clears path for Preble
Sydney Armijo is a social butterfly.
The Green Bay Preble senior acts like the middle portion of a Venn diagram because there is seemingly no circle she doesn’t interact with.
She welcomes all.
“Sydney is our team mom,” Preble girls track and field coach Jeff Kline said. “She is the matriarch of the team. She makes sure the younger girls are doing everything they are supposed to. She lifts everybody up out here.”
When Armijo needs a pick-me-up, she needs to only look at her right forearm, where there is a picture of a buzzing bee.
She got the tattoo last year in honor of her maternal grandmother, who everybody called “Bee.”
“My outgoingness comes from her,” Armijo said. “My grandma always seemed to know everyone. She was always around people. That’s just how I am. I just love meeting new people and talking to people.”
Get back up and finish
Armijo is aiming to advance to the WIAA state track and field meet for a third time in the 100-meter hurdles.
Her time of 15.56 seconds from the West De Pere Invite on Tuesday leads the Green Bay area. She ranks eighth in Division 1 on the state honor roll, according to Wisconsin Track Online.
Despite battling hamstring issues, Armijo is doing everything possible to finish her prep career with a coveted spot on the state podium at the big, red track in La Crosse.
Armijo had a big breakthrough there two years ago when she qualified for the 100 hurdles finals with the fifth-fastest time in state preliminaries.
Whatever happened from there was supposed to be icing on the cake for her.
However, Armijo felt the sting of the unforgiving track surface when she hooked the second to last hurdle and fell.
Her teammate, Hayley Winzenried, a senior, medaled with a sixth-place finish in the same race.
Winzenried came back to the finish line to embrace Armijo, which was one of the most emotional moments from the state meet that year.
“The fall motivated me,” Armijo said.
“You get knocked down, but you just have to brush yourself off and keep going. There are barriers, and if one knocks you down, you just have to get back up and finish.”
Inner toughness
The emotional hug Winzenried and Armijo shared at state in 2016 was like the passing of the baton for the Preble girls track and field team.
It’s certainly a moment where Armijo fully shed the tough exterior she often tried to display as an underclassman.
“She was impulsive,” said Kline, who was Armijo’s hurdles coach her freshman year. “She was aggressive. She really wanted to make a name for herself and some of the girls on the team didn’t know how to take her. I knew there was this very human girl inside that was putting up this tough facade.”
Armijo joined the track and field team her freshman year with a buzzcut and four years of experience playing tackle football with the boys.
She had been shaving her head every March since she was in second grade in support of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, which raises funds and awareness for childhood cancer.
Armijo began doing it in support of a neighbor, who was battling cancer.
She still thinks about her neighbor and competes because her neighbor never got the opportunity to in high school.
Prior to high school, Armijo played football for the St. Philip Falcons. She started out as a defensive tackle, playing alongside future all-conference linemen, like Nic Dahlke and Ryan Possley, before making the transition to safety.
“I always watched my brother’s games and was like, ‘I really want to do that,’” Armijo said about playing football.
Her brother, Colton, is two years older.
The siblings drove back from their grandmother’s funeral last year in Jefferson so they could make it in time to compete in a triangular track and field meet.
“I missed part of her funeral because my mom said, ‘Grandma would want you to run,’” said Armijo, who set a school record last year with a time of 14.94 seconds in the 100 hurdles.
Never alone
This year has been different for Armijo without her brother by her side.
Colton joined the Army after graduation and has since been deployed overseas.
Armijo got a tattoo on the back of her neck for her brother and touches it before each race.
“It’s like he’s always there for me because he’s my best friend,” Armijo said.
Armijo’s father, Pat, served in the Army for 20 years. She is considering doing the same if she doesn’t decide to attend the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, which is near Jefferson, where her mother, Tammy, grew up.
Both of her parents competed in track and field during high school. She competes in the hurdles because that was her father’s event growing up in New Mexico.
After pulling a hamstring before the season, Armijo has added time to her practice routine to ensure she can continue producing fast times in the hurdles.
Although she is a standout in the 100 hurdles, she doesn’t take any event she competes in lightly. The perfect example of that came during the City Meet at Preble on April 12.
It was a cold night, but Armijo was determined to help her team gain as many points as possible so she didn’t want to scratch out of the 300 hurdles.
She could feel her hamstrings tightening during the end of the race, so she slowed down. Armijo could have easily pulled out of her lane and onto the infield at that point.
However, she decided to finish the race, gingerly going over each of the remaining hurdles. Her time was 1 minute, 2.03 seconds.
But she still finished.
“She doesn’t want to look weak,” Kline said. “She wants to be the one that all the other girls look up to and see that she is capable of handling it all. That drives her.”
Armijo finished eighth in the 100 hurdles in addition to helping the Hornets’ 400-meter relay team make it to the finals at state last year.
She is hoping to have an even stronger finish this season.
“She has softened around all of the edges over the years, but she is still aggressive and still wants to win,” Kline said. “The Kimberly coach said their two best hurdlers, when they run against Sydney, that they want to hate her, but they can’t because she’s so nice.
“She is so kind. She has figured out a way to balance fierce competition with empathy for teammates and competitors. I couldn’t be prouder of her. I think the world of her.”
Armijo walked by while Kline was in the middle of praising his team captain.
Fittingly, she was taking her blanket on a cold night at the City Meet and wrapping it around a teammate, Grace Lindsley, a senior, who is a dancer but decided to give track and field a try this year.
There is nobody Armijo can’t fit into her circle.
You’re not going to find a nicer person on the track this season.
“I’m definitely racing for them this year,” Armijo said while speaking about the importance of the tattoos for her grandmother and brother.
“I just really want to get on the podium. I know my grandma would be super proud of me.”