Green cements legacy as Griz great
5/24/2023 11:05:00 AM | Men's Track and Field
The moment seemed to exist in a world of its own. It happened quickly, but not so quick as the 13.82 seconds it took for Jaydon Green to cover 110-meters and clear 10 hurdles. It showed emotion, but not as much as the exuberant celebration that erupted from Green when the board flashed the results and he saw the 1) next to his name.
It couldn't be seen on the ESPN+ broadcast, which already cut away to pole vault in the busyness of a championship track meet. You had to be there, on that track in Greeley, Colorado, to take it in.
Green fell to his knees in lane three, a smile crossing his entire face. He dropped his face to the track, and gave it a quick kiss.
It may have seemed, to those in Greeley watching Green run for the first time, like a spontaneous reaction to becoming the newest Big Sky Conference Champion. Those who know Green, who have been with him through the ups-and-downs of the career, know the ritual and meaning behind it.
The fastest hurdler in Montana Grizzlies history just had to say thank you, as he does at the end of every race. Thank you for the opportunity to run as a Grizzly again, five years and three coaches later. Thank you for finishing the race healthy and whole, something he couldn't always say. Thank you for the championship, the first big meet win of Green's career.
"I always just try to kiss the track and say thank you, and be in the moment and enjoy myself," Green said. "There are very few times that I'll be able to do this the rest of my life. I take every moment as a special moment and try to learn from it and put myself in a position where I feel like I'm enjoying the moment."
He began hurdling as a sixth-grader on a gravel track at Boise's Lake Hazel Middle School. On the day of try-outs, as everyone moved station-to-station trying out events, Green found himself on the hurdles. One of the more difficult events, his coach began to get desperate when nobody else would take it on. Green proved to be a natural.
"The coach asked if Jaydon would do it because they just needed someone to do it," Jaydon's mother, Sheri Green said. "Who knew that would take him to this point?"
He became the only sixth grader to make the middle school district meet that year. He ran the 110m and 300m hurdles in high school, and played soccer as well. As a freshman, he ran a season best 17.61 in the 110m hurdles. Then he cut over two seconds off as a sophomore, qualifying for the 5A State Championships and placing fifth with a season-best time of 15.13.
He started his junior year with four straight meet victories in the 110m hurdles and three straight in the 300m hurdles. Green seemed to be on a path headed toward a state title. Then, while participating in the prestigious Oregon Relays, Green blew out his knee. His doctor recommended surgery. It meant he would miss the rest of his junior year, and end his high school soccer career.
The moment was difficult. Sports had always been in his family. Green's father Terrance played basketball at Montana State. Jaydon tried the sport, but with dad coaching the two "kind of butted heads a bit."
He loved soccer, the sport that brought his older brother Darion success at Yavapai College and later the College of Idaho. But he needed to rest up for track season, to make one last run at a state title. He recovered well from surgery, and started his senior season with four straight wins in the 110m hurdles.
Green traveled to Oregon again and made it through healthy, routinely running times in the high 14 second range. At the 5A District 3 Championships, he won and set a school record that still stands at Mountain View HS with a time of 14.44. He went to state as one of the favorites, but his high school career ended agonizingly short with a third-place finish.
Deciding on a college is one of the most difficult life decisions any young adult faces. Green had some schools that he was interested in, but he wanted to keep his athletic career going. He reached out to Montana State, the school his parents both attended, but they didn't show interest.
College of Idaho wanted him for both track & field and soccer. His brother had gone there and enjoyed his experience, but Green wanted to pave his own trail.
"It's not too far from home, so I figured I would fall back into my old lifestyle which isn't a bad thing, but I think I needed a change of pace," Green said. "Montana kind of became my only option really at the end of it."
He visited Montana, coming on the trip alone. He now thinks that was a good thing. He fell in love with Missoula and the campus.
He specialized in the hurdles again at Montana, running the indoor 60m and the 110m and 400m outdoors. His freshman season, Green ran an indoor season-best of 8.40. He finished 13th at the Big Sky Indoor Championships and only cracked the top five in one race. He was ninth at the conference meet during the outdoor season with a couple of top three finishes, but again fell short of his expectations.
The season was far from a disappointment, but for Green adjusting to college life and trying to run the times he became accustomed to in Boise presented a difficult challenge.
"We're all really good high school athletes, that's how we got here, so it's weird being at the top of the pedestal and then just immediately falling all the way down to the bottom of the ranks and having to rebuild yourself," Green said. "Mentally, that was really hard for me."
He thought about giving up track. He would call his mom after races "bawling tears" and telling her that he couldn't do it anymore. Green stuck it out through the tough times.
In 2020, he finished seventh and scored two points at the Big Sky Indoor Championships with a time of 8.11. He narrowly missed the school record, and felt good entering the outdoor season. Enter COVID-19, which sidelined all of college athletics for the year. It also took away the 2021 indoor season, keeping Green off the track for more than a full year.
He then missed the 2021 outdoor season because of injury, something that would take its toll on Green for the next few years. Right as he started to run his best times, his body also began to fail him. He wouldn't be deterred, and found his health improving for indoor season in 2022. He tied the school record in the first race that year. Then, at the WSU Invitational, Green broke a 41-year old school record by becoming the first Grizzly to ever run a sub-8 second time in the 60m hurdles.
A few weeks later, he earned All-Big Sky Conference honors with a third-place finish at the league championships. It seemed to be a huge payoff for a runner who had gone through so much in his time in Missoula.
When outdoor season rolled around a few weeks later, Green struggled to keep his health. He had fallen on a hurdle during indoor season, and the pain had grown steadily with every training session. The injury list piled up. Pulled hamstrings. Separated shoulder. High-ankle sprain. Torn ab and adductor. The pain didn't sideline him, but it did make him question the worth of it all.
He waited for the big injury to come like it had before in high school, or during his sophomore season. The one that would end his season, and potentially his career. He doesn't remember the exact moment, but at some point he realized that he needed to be thankful for every race he had left.
Green began kissing the track.
"You can survive, you can make it over 10 hurdles with a torn ab," Green said. "It's when I started kissing the track and taking my moment after the race to catch my breath and say thank you for the occasion and the event."
The gesture was meant to acknowledge his gratitude for a sport that had given him so much. He didn't know how much time he had left with it. His health that year, combined with another head coaching change, left Green ready to hang up his spikes.
"I was fully expecting not to come back this year," Green said of 2023. "After outdoor conference I was not coming back and had a couple meetings with my coaches after the season and told them no like three times. I wasn't coming back, but they finally got me."
Head coach Doug Fraley, and everyone at Montana, is sure glad he did. Green has produced a senior year that is one of the all-time best seasons at the University of Montana. He broke his own school record in the 60-meter hurdles and has now etched a 7.86 time into the record books. The only runner in Montana history to run under eight seconds in the event did it every single time he took to the track in 2023, and it ended with another All-Conference honor.
This outdoor season has been historic for Green as well. He won the Griz-Cat Dual in his first race of the year, leading Montana to its first rivalry win since 2013. Two weeks later he ran a 14.20 time that would have set a school record, but it was wind-aided and didn't qualify.
He righted that in his next run, breaking a 43-year old school record with a time of 14.23. His times continued to get lower and lower, and his name now sat next to two school records. But there was one more thing that Green wanted.
You may be thinking of a Big Sky Championship, but for Green there was something more pressing. He has been running since he was 12 years old, and in all that time there was one dream that he had been chasing. A sub-14 second time in a 110-meter hurdle race.
It's nearly impossible to say the number of hours that went into chasing that goal. The repetition over the hurdles. The weights. The warm-ups. The cool-downs. The practices and the planning. He entered every season with the goal of a time starting with 13.
In the preliminary race in Greeley, the dream finally came true. Green ran 13.84, a time that would have shattered the school record but again came with the aid of the wind. It certainly didn't matter to Green, who said he couldn't even put into words what running under 14 seconds meant to him in the moments after the race.
It freed him up for the final. Green started well, running in second over the first eight hurdles, side-by-side with Idaho's Jurrian Hering. Then, on the ninth hurdle Herring began to slow down and Green inched ahead. Two lanes over, Idaho State's Zachary Cox made a final push and dove toward the finish line.
As the computers gathered the results, Green continued to run full-speed in his lane. He had nearly completed the corner by the time the scoreboard showed the results. 1.) Green, Montana. 13.82.
He ran another 13 second time, and became Big Sky Champion in the process.
"I think even if I got second or third in that race I would have been perfectly happy. I think that's partially why I won because I lost the expectation," Green said. "This was the first meet where I was like, alright, I'm not going to put any pressure on myself. I'm just going to go out there and have fun and enjoy my last meet."
The celebrations began, first with Green and then with all those that helped him along the way. After he took his moment, kissed the track, and rose back to his feet, he looked into the stands for his parents. He didn't see them right away.
Sheri, who Jaydon said has been at nearly every single meet of his since he was 12 years old, including all the outdoor meets this year, couldn't stay in her seat. His parents were at the bottom of the stairs, nearly on the track, waiting to embrace their son.
The years of work and pain. Wins and losses. High and lows. It all came to a culmination in Greeley.
"I feel like he's put his whole heart and soul into it. He's had so many ups and downs. He's had injuries. He's fought through everything," Sheri Green said. "I've told him so many times when he's been down that there's not many people who would have the fortitude to keep going and keep fighting, and to get back up. Seeing him fight so much for that, it meant the world to me that he finally accomplished that goal."
Waiting behind the Green's seemed to be the entirety of the Montana track & field team. They had gathered in the stands near the finish line, and now all waited their turn for a hug with the Big Sky Champion. It's a good thing the hurdles needed to be cleared from the track, or the next race may have been delayed by the celebration.
The time is great and the medal can hang on the wall forever as a reminder of this accomplishment. The Green's can look back on the broadcast or photos of the race and see Jaydon gracefully clear hurdle after hurdle. But it's the moment after, the embraces with teammates and coaches, that will stick with Sheri.
"It's honestly something I'll never forget. I was super thankful to be there, but just to see his teammates all come into the stands and yell for him," Sheri said. "Then when he won, seeing all of them embrace him and cheer for him, that filled my heart."
It also was just another reminder to Fraley of how much the senior has meant to the program. He's often called upon Green to break down the team huddle at the end of meets, which he did again in Greeley. As a veteran leader, you can't ask for much better than Green.
"We had a lot of great eruptions at the conference meet but that was by far the biggest. You could tell by the number of people that came out of the stands - both coaches and athletes, parents, parents of other athletes - to congratulate him just how much he means to this team," Fraley said.
Green will run later today in Sacramento against the 48 best hurdlers in the western United States. It may be the final race of his career. Or he could advance to the quarterfinals, and then nationals. Even if he doesn't, Green has another year of eligibility left.
If he returns to Montana, he can chase after lower times and more titles. If he doesn't, Green will leave the sport on top. A Big Sky Champion. A three-time All-Big Sky performer and two-time school record holder. The only man to run under eight seconds indoor, and 14 seconds outdoor. The list of accolades is long, and the ending to his career would read like one ripped from the pages of a storybook.
Whether or not it's his final race today, Green is thankful for the ride and to have one last chance. You can guarantee, win or lose, that he will be there after, kissing the track in thanks to the sport.
"It's honestly just incredible to be a part of it. Track and field is such a competitive sport, kids these last couple years are so good, so it will be cool to just see that level of competition," Green said. "I'm excited just to go out and run and have another race. There's really no pressure, just go out there and try my best, have fun, and go shock the world. Crazier things have happened."
It couldn't be seen on the ESPN+ broadcast, which already cut away to pole vault in the busyness of a championship track meet. You had to be there, on that track in Greeley, Colorado, to take it in.
Green fell to his knees in lane three, a smile crossing his entire face. He dropped his face to the track, and gave it a quick kiss.
It may have seemed, to those in Greeley watching Green run for the first time, like a spontaneous reaction to becoming the newest Big Sky Conference Champion. Those who know Green, who have been with him through the ups-and-downs of the career, know the ritual and meaning behind it.
The fastest hurdler in Montana Grizzlies history just had to say thank you, as he does at the end of every race. Thank you for the opportunity to run as a Grizzly again, five years and three coaches later. Thank you for finishing the race healthy and whole, something he couldn't always say. Thank you for the championship, the first big meet win of Green's career.
"I always just try to kiss the track and say thank you, and be in the moment and enjoy myself," Green said. "There are very few times that I'll be able to do this the rest of my life. I take every moment as a special moment and try to learn from it and put myself in a position where I feel like I'm enjoying the moment."
He began hurdling as a sixth-grader on a gravel track at Boise's Lake Hazel Middle School. On the day of try-outs, as everyone moved station-to-station trying out events, Green found himself on the hurdles. One of the more difficult events, his coach began to get desperate when nobody else would take it on. Green proved to be a natural.
"The coach asked if Jaydon would do it because they just needed someone to do it," Jaydon's mother, Sheri Green said. "Who knew that would take him to this point?"
He became the only sixth grader to make the middle school district meet that year. He ran the 110m and 300m hurdles in high school, and played soccer as well. As a freshman, he ran a season best 17.61 in the 110m hurdles. Then he cut over two seconds off as a sophomore, qualifying for the 5A State Championships and placing fifth with a season-best time of 15.13.
He started his junior year with four straight meet victories in the 110m hurdles and three straight in the 300m hurdles. Green seemed to be on a path headed toward a state title. Then, while participating in the prestigious Oregon Relays, Green blew out his knee. His doctor recommended surgery. It meant he would miss the rest of his junior year, and end his high school soccer career.
The moment was difficult. Sports had always been in his family. Green's father Terrance played basketball at Montana State. Jaydon tried the sport, but with dad coaching the two "kind of butted heads a bit."
He loved soccer, the sport that brought his older brother Darion success at Yavapai College and later the College of Idaho. But he needed to rest up for track season, to make one last run at a state title. He recovered well from surgery, and started his senior season with four straight wins in the 110m hurdles.
Green traveled to Oregon again and made it through healthy, routinely running times in the high 14 second range. At the 5A District 3 Championships, he won and set a school record that still stands at Mountain View HS with a time of 14.44. He went to state as one of the favorites, but his high school career ended agonizingly short with a third-place finish.
Deciding on a college is one of the most difficult life decisions any young adult faces. Green had some schools that he was interested in, but he wanted to keep his athletic career going. He reached out to Montana State, the school his parents both attended, but they didn't show interest.
College of Idaho wanted him for both track & field and soccer. His brother had gone there and enjoyed his experience, but Green wanted to pave his own trail.
"It's not too far from home, so I figured I would fall back into my old lifestyle which isn't a bad thing, but I think I needed a change of pace," Green said. "Montana kind of became my only option really at the end of it."
He visited Montana, coming on the trip alone. He now thinks that was a good thing. He fell in love with Missoula and the campus.
He specialized in the hurdles again at Montana, running the indoor 60m and the 110m and 400m outdoors. His freshman season, Green ran an indoor season-best of 8.40. He finished 13th at the Big Sky Indoor Championships and only cracked the top five in one race. He was ninth at the conference meet during the outdoor season with a couple of top three finishes, but again fell short of his expectations.
The season was far from a disappointment, but for Green adjusting to college life and trying to run the times he became accustomed to in Boise presented a difficult challenge.
"We're all really good high school athletes, that's how we got here, so it's weird being at the top of the pedestal and then just immediately falling all the way down to the bottom of the ranks and having to rebuild yourself," Green said. "Mentally, that was really hard for me."
He thought about giving up track. He would call his mom after races "bawling tears" and telling her that he couldn't do it anymore. Green stuck it out through the tough times.
In 2020, he finished seventh and scored two points at the Big Sky Indoor Championships with a time of 8.11. He narrowly missed the school record, and felt good entering the outdoor season. Enter COVID-19, which sidelined all of college athletics for the year. It also took away the 2021 indoor season, keeping Green off the track for more than a full year.
He then missed the 2021 outdoor season because of injury, something that would take its toll on Green for the next few years. Right as he started to run his best times, his body also began to fail him. He wouldn't be deterred, and found his health improving for indoor season in 2022. He tied the school record in the first race that year. Then, at the WSU Invitational, Green broke a 41-year old school record by becoming the first Grizzly to ever run a sub-8 second time in the 60m hurdles.
A few weeks later, he earned All-Big Sky Conference honors with a third-place finish at the league championships. It seemed to be a huge payoff for a runner who had gone through so much in his time in Missoula.
When outdoor season rolled around a few weeks later, Green struggled to keep his health. He had fallen on a hurdle during indoor season, and the pain had grown steadily with every training session. The injury list piled up. Pulled hamstrings. Separated shoulder. High-ankle sprain. Torn ab and adductor. The pain didn't sideline him, but it did make him question the worth of it all.
He waited for the big injury to come like it had before in high school, or during his sophomore season. The one that would end his season, and potentially his career. He doesn't remember the exact moment, but at some point he realized that he needed to be thankful for every race he had left.
Green began kissing the track.
"You can survive, you can make it over 10 hurdles with a torn ab," Green said. "It's when I started kissing the track and taking my moment after the race to catch my breath and say thank you for the occasion and the event."
The gesture was meant to acknowledge his gratitude for a sport that had given him so much. He didn't know how much time he had left with it. His health that year, combined with another head coaching change, left Green ready to hang up his spikes.
"I was fully expecting not to come back this year," Green said of 2023. "After outdoor conference I was not coming back and had a couple meetings with my coaches after the season and told them no like three times. I wasn't coming back, but they finally got me."
Head coach Doug Fraley, and everyone at Montana, is sure glad he did. Green has produced a senior year that is one of the all-time best seasons at the University of Montana. He broke his own school record in the 60-meter hurdles and has now etched a 7.86 time into the record books. The only runner in Montana history to run under eight seconds in the event did it every single time he took to the track in 2023, and it ended with another All-Conference honor.
This outdoor season has been historic for Green as well. He won the Griz-Cat Dual in his first race of the year, leading Montana to its first rivalry win since 2013. Two weeks later he ran a 14.20 time that would have set a school record, but it was wind-aided and didn't qualify.
He righted that in his next run, breaking a 43-year old school record with a time of 14.23. His times continued to get lower and lower, and his name now sat next to two school records. But there was one more thing that Green wanted.
You may be thinking of a Big Sky Championship, but for Green there was something more pressing. He has been running since he was 12 years old, and in all that time there was one dream that he had been chasing. A sub-14 second time in a 110-meter hurdle race.
It's nearly impossible to say the number of hours that went into chasing that goal. The repetition over the hurdles. The weights. The warm-ups. The cool-downs. The practices and the planning. He entered every season with the goal of a time starting with 13.
In the preliminary race in Greeley, the dream finally came true. Green ran 13.84, a time that would have shattered the school record but again came with the aid of the wind. It certainly didn't matter to Green, who said he couldn't even put into words what running under 14 seconds meant to him in the moments after the race.
It freed him up for the final. Green started well, running in second over the first eight hurdles, side-by-side with Idaho's Jurrian Hering. Then, on the ninth hurdle Herring began to slow down and Green inched ahead. Two lanes over, Idaho State's Zachary Cox made a final push and dove toward the finish line.
As the computers gathered the results, Green continued to run full-speed in his lane. He had nearly completed the corner by the time the scoreboard showed the results. 1.) Green, Montana. 13.82.
He ran another 13 second time, and became Big Sky Champion in the process.
"I think even if I got second or third in that race I would have been perfectly happy. I think that's partially why I won because I lost the expectation," Green said. "This was the first meet where I was like, alright, I'm not going to put any pressure on myself. I'm just going to go out there and have fun and enjoy my last meet."
The celebrations began, first with Green and then with all those that helped him along the way. After he took his moment, kissed the track, and rose back to his feet, he looked into the stands for his parents. He didn't see them right away.
Sheri, who Jaydon said has been at nearly every single meet of his since he was 12 years old, including all the outdoor meets this year, couldn't stay in her seat. His parents were at the bottom of the stairs, nearly on the track, waiting to embrace their son.
The years of work and pain. Wins and losses. High and lows. It all came to a culmination in Greeley.
"I feel like he's put his whole heart and soul into it. He's had so many ups and downs. He's had injuries. He's fought through everything," Sheri Green said. "I've told him so many times when he's been down that there's not many people who would have the fortitude to keep going and keep fighting, and to get back up. Seeing him fight so much for that, it meant the world to me that he finally accomplished that goal."
Waiting behind the Green's seemed to be the entirety of the Montana track & field team. They had gathered in the stands near the finish line, and now all waited their turn for a hug with the Big Sky Champion. It's a good thing the hurdles needed to be cleared from the track, or the next race may have been delayed by the celebration.
The time is great and the medal can hang on the wall forever as a reminder of this accomplishment. The Green's can look back on the broadcast or photos of the race and see Jaydon gracefully clear hurdle after hurdle. But it's the moment after, the embraces with teammates and coaches, that will stick with Sheri.
"It's honestly something I'll never forget. I was super thankful to be there, but just to see his teammates all come into the stands and yell for him," Sheri said. "Then when he won, seeing all of them embrace him and cheer for him, that filled my heart."
It also was just another reminder to Fraley of how much the senior has meant to the program. He's often called upon Green to break down the team huddle at the end of meets, which he did again in Greeley. As a veteran leader, you can't ask for much better than Green.
"We had a lot of great eruptions at the conference meet but that was by far the biggest. You could tell by the number of people that came out of the stands - both coaches and athletes, parents, parents of other athletes - to congratulate him just how much he means to this team," Fraley said.
Green will run later today in Sacramento against the 48 best hurdlers in the western United States. It may be the final race of his career. Or he could advance to the quarterfinals, and then nationals. Even if he doesn't, Green has another year of eligibility left.
If he returns to Montana, he can chase after lower times and more titles. If he doesn't, Green will leave the sport on top. A Big Sky Champion. A three-time All-Big Sky performer and two-time school record holder. The only man to run under eight seconds indoor, and 14 seconds outdoor. The list of accolades is long, and the ending to his career would read like one ripped from the pages of a storybook.
Whether or not it's his final race today, Green is thankful for the ride and to have one last chance. You can guarantee, win or lose, that he will be there after, kissing the track in thanks to the sport.
"It's honestly just incredible to be a part of it. Track and field is such a competitive sport, kids these last couple years are so good, so it will be cool to just see that level of competition," Green said. "I'm excited just to go out and run and have another race. There's really no pressure, just go out there and try my best, have fun, and go shock the world. Crazier things have happened."
Players Mentioned
Sprints
/ Men's Track and FieldGriz Basketball vs. Idaho State Highlights - 1/24/26 [N7 Game]
Tuesday, January 27
Griz Basketball vs. Weber State Highlights - 1/22/26
Tuesday, January 27
Lady Griz Basketball vs. Northern Arizona Highlights - 1/19/26
Tuesday, January 20
Griz Basketball vs. Northern Colorado Highlights - 1/3/26
Thursday, January 15
