They told Kaitlin Salisbury she couldn’t do it.
She was too small. Her arms were too skinny. She was not strong enough.
But for years, she carried that 35-pound snare drum from her shoulders, playing in the Hawthorne High School band.
“I don’t have the body for it, but whatever. I did it anyway,” Salisbury said with a chuckle. “I am an honest-to-goodness band geek.”
Now, people think Salisbury — born the day after Christmas in 1997 — can do anything.
She might be the most versatile track athlete in North Jersey and the most talented. Today she will compete for her beloved Bears in the triple jump at Penn Relays and then cheer on the Bears’ 4-x-400-meter team.
Tagged with various nicknames — like Supergirl — and known for her trademark glasses and flashy socks that she wears when she competes, Salisbury is much more than the face of Hawthorne track and field.
She is, as you already learned, a band geek. She enjoys discussing video games, old science fiction shows and what it’s like to be able to leap great distances with a single bound.
“Junior year we went to Easterns, and I had to triple jump for the first time [in a competition]. I remember exactly what happened: I went 35-feet, 9 inches, but I didn’t know what was a good jump,” Salisbury said. “I turned around and asked my coach, ‘Is that good?’ and he was completely dumbfounded.
“Eventually he said yes, that was pretty close to what [former Hawthorne star] Jenna [Dyksen] was doing. So I was like, ‘Yes, I can do this,’ and I took it from there.”
Growing up, Salisbury played many different sports, but focused mainly on soccer. Her first real track experience came in seventh grade. She loved to run and thought she was pretty fast, and figured if nothing else, it was good cross-training for soccer.
So she tried everything. She even still has the cards showing she threw the shot put and discus. Now she laughs about that. Skinny arms, remember?
When she got to high school, she was all set to play soccer, but never quite fit in. And after one frustrating season on JV, she put away her cleats.
So she turned her focus to track, but the Bears’ coaches weren’t exactly sure what to do with her. Her father, Jerald, was a runner and jumper, and he was sure the high jump was the right event for his only daughter.
It wasn’t.
“I was awful at the high jump. I kept hitting the bar,” Salisbury said. “I hurt my back. Eventually I said, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’Ÿ”
“When she was a freshman, we were trying to figure out because of her talents what the best events for her would be,” said Hawthorne coach Gus Schell. “At one point we said, ‘Let’s not overthink this. She’s fast. She can jump. Sometimes things just click.’Ÿ”
Forming a potent 1-2 punch with Dyksen, Salisbury finished seventh in the state Meet of Champions in the long jump as a sophomore and made the Bears one of the top small-school teams in the area. When Dyksen graduated, Salisbury became the star.
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