BUTTE, Mont. -- This week, Alyssa Jany could be training to represent Montana Tech at the NAIA Women's Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

Instead, she will resume training to become a United States Marine.

Jany was the Frontier Conference champion and No. 18-ranked runner in the NAIA in the 3,000-meter Steeplechase this outdoor season, a résumé that qualified her for this week's national meet. She would have joined 10 other Orediggers in the national field.

But duty called. The Frederick, Colo. native shipped out Saturday for Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where she will complete the second of two six-week summer courses that comprise the U.S. Marines' Platoon Leaders Class, a pathway for undergraduate students to pursue an officer's commission. Upon completion of the PLC and finishing her mechanical engineering degree at Montana Tech, Jany will have the option to accept her commission as a Marine Corps officer next spring.

 

"It's always been something in the back of my head," Jany said of military service.

The idea originated, she recalled, when she was in elementary school and the Navy SEALs began accepting women. Something about the Marine Corps stood out to Jany.

"It's cool that they've upheld their standards throughout the years," she said.

Those standards are rigorous. PLC candidates are graded on leadership, physical fitness, and academics. ("People pay money to do those. Here, you're getting paid to do it," Jany quipped.)

It's six weeks with little rest and a lot of work, both in the field and in the classroom.

"You're up at 4 in the morning until 9 at night," she recalled of last summer's experience. "Kind of stressful, but as the weeks went on I definitely adapted."

And while she made and maintained friends all over the country, she said the bonds were built through shared experiences.

Several of Jany's fellow candidates from last year's July and August session will be in this year's early-summer cohort. She had the opportunity to complete the PLC later this summer as well, but Jany said her level of fitness entering cross country — what she considers her premier sport — wasn't what she wanted it to be entering her junior season last fall.

"You're in shape when you get back [from PLC], but you're in a different kind of shape," Jany explained, noting the volume of hiking and cross-training involved in her program in lieu of running the distances she's accustomed to for the 6-kilometer distance races in which she'll compete this fall.

"Hopefully I'll have enough time to build back the endurance and the speed," she added.

Despite that perceived lack of fitness for cross country, Jany helped lead the Orediggers to their first-ever conference championship in women's cross country this past fall. She was fourth at the Frontier championship meet to help clinch the Montana Tech team victory. Jany then raced to 124th at the NAIA cross country championships in a career-best 6k time of 22:58.8.

She followed that into track season with indoor career-bests in the mile and 3k and outdoor best times in the Steeplechase, 10k, 5k, and 1,500m runs.

Jany parlayed that into the Steeplechase win at the outdoor conference meet and podium finishes in both the 10k and 5k, helping Tech win an unprecedented fourth-straight Frontier Conference championship.

"I had no doubts that we'd be able to do it the way everyone was performing," she said of the four-peat. "We've got a pretty deep team, and it was never a doubt that crossed my mind."

For her part, Jany won a second-consecutive track athlete of the meet honor.

That contribution was the latest in a long line of her family's contributions to Montana Tech athletics. Both of her parents are Butte natives and former Tech student-athletes — dad Josh played football for the Orediggers; mom Marcie played basketball. Alyssa's grandparents still live in Butte, and for Jany, coming to Tech was always the top choice. It was the only school she applied to.

"I never really considered anything else," she said.

As for the Marines, that just fit the bill.

"I've been a part of a team my whole life, and that's what it's like," Jany explained. "I want to be challenged mentally and be around people with the same drive and determination."

Those are the same skills she'll apply in the PLC this summer and the same sort of culture she hopes to perpetuate next year in her senior track and cross country seasons.

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