DENVER – It's January, 2022, and MSU Denver's Maya Ries is in the starting block, ready to run a competitive hurdles race, just like she had done hundreds of times before.
 
She was scared.
 
"Oh, I was literally shaking in the blocks," Ries said.
 
It had been six years since her last race.
 
Ries' journey, from high school star to disappointing collegiate experience, through mental health challenges and poor relationships, to an epiphany and a return to school and athletics, is playing out at MSU Denver.
 
After smashing the Roadrunners' school hurdles records during both the indoor and outdoor seasons and coming up just short of qualifying for the NCAA Division II National Championships, she's back at it again this season – a 24-year-old sophomore who is happy, healthy and ready to build a future.
 
"It just seemed like it was a fit for me," Ries said of MSU Denver. "It's close to home, and I have the support I need from my dad and my family. So it worked out perfectly."
 
A 2016 graduate of Denver East, Ries' high school career was spectacular. Despite tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee during her junior season, Ries came back better than ever as a senior and finished sixth in both the 100-meter hurdles and the triple jump at the Class 5A State Championships.
 
But, on her last triple jump, she once again tore her reconstructed ACL. Her Division I offer went away.
 
Plenty of Division II schools were interested, though, and Ries settled on UCCS. Once there, however, the academic and rehabilitative support available didn't align with her expectations.
 
"I wasn't able to advocate for myself," she said. "My dad had always been around to be on top of everything for me. Going to a school by myself and living by myself, it was just difficult for me to keep up with everything. And because of that my grades started to slip."
 
She wasn't able to compete at UCCS due to her academics. She made another run at returning to the program by taking online classes in the fall of 2017, but her personal life had begun to spiral.
 
"After the first year, I messed up," Ries said. "I was getting some bad grades and just not doing the best for myself. But I don't think I realized that my knee affected me (mentally) as much as it did. I was planning to go back, but I just kind of fell into a depression. My mental health was not in the best state."
 
Finally, she had a heart-to-heart talk with her father, Douglas.
 
"He was worried about me," Ries said. "I just told him I didn't feel like being in school any more, and I didn't feel like running track any more. I finally just opened up to him. I wasn't doing my classes that whole semester, and he kind of realized that."
 
And so school, and track, were in her past.
 
"For a while it felt pretty good, because I was just living my life," she said. "But it was masked behind all the things I was going through, the relationships I was so focused on instead of thinking about myself and putting myself first.
 
"I started working, and I never thought I would go back to school – it was just never in my mind. I didn't want to be in school. It wasn't my thing."
 
By the spring of 2018, while in an unhealthy relationship, Ries stopped eating.
 
"I ended up losing 20 pounds in two weeks," she said. "I weighed like 96 pounds. I didn't realize how scary it was until I started gaining weight back. I've seen pictures from then and I think, 'Oh my gosh.'"
 
Once she ended that relationship, though, she started eating and working out again. She regained the weight, and got another retail job.
 
"Then I got into another unhealthy relationship that was physically abusive," Ries said. "That one affected me pretty badly."
 
Finally, she started working as a valet at Denver International Airport in August, 2019. With the help of a family member, she bought a car that December. She ended the abusive relationship she had been in the following day.
 
"From that day on, everything started to go better," Ries said.
 
One more setback awaited, though – the outbreak of COVID-19. Related to the uncertainty that many businesses felt, her valet job was put on hold in April, 2020.
 
"After I was done working at airport, after COVID had just started and everybody was at home, I realized wanted to go back to school," Ries said. "Because I realized that I didn't want to be working those types of jobs. I wanted to be doing something that I loved, and I wanted to have a better future for myself."
 
Nearly as importantly, track re-entered the picture for her. Though being a track athlete had always been part of her personality, she always figured that some of it had been so that she wouldn't disappoint her father, a track coach.
 
"I realized that I didn't want to just go back to school, but I also wanted to run track," she said. "I realized that I actually do love the sport."
 
She began doing track workouts organized by her father, and by January, 2021, she was taking a visit to MSU Denver with Roadrunners coach Janis Christopher.
 
"Of course Janis wanted me to come (to MSU Denver), but even if she hadn't I still would have wanted to be here," Ries said.
 
By the fall of 2022, she was hesitantly ready to start classes. MSU Denver's diverse population, with students of all ages, helped her make the transition.
 
"When I first came, I felt awful about myself because all my friends my age had already graduated, or were going to get their master's, or had their career started … and I was about to be a freshman," Ries said, laughing. "But when I did start going to classes, I saw so many people of different ages that I didn't feel as bad as I had."
 
Meanwhile, a very quiet person was getting herself up to speed in workouts with the track program.
 
"I didn't really talk to people on the team because I was very in my shell at the moment," Ries said. "I'm sure a lot of people on the team thought I was mean or stuck up because I didn't speak – but then they got to know me. It was definitely tough, but the longer it went on, it got so much easier."
 
One difference between Division I and Division II athletics is the "clock" that student-athletes are on in order complete their athletic eligibility.
 
In Division I, the clock starts once the athlete begins attending classes, and it expires after four years (with exceptions for redshirting and injuries, and in this era, COVID). In Division II, the clock is paused when students aren't attending classes, so Ries – after what could be considered a redshirt year at UCCS – still had four years to compete at MSU Denver.
 
She still had to restore her academic eligibility during her first semester at MSU Denver, which she did. And thatput her in the starting block in January, 2022, a nervous wreck.
 
"The second meet, I was perfectly fine," Ries said.
 
And why wouldn't she have been?
 
Though MSU Denver's hurdling history is relatively short, Ries easily set the school record on her first try and she just kept getting better.
 
During the indoor season, she ran the seven fastest 60-meter hurdles times in program history. Outdoors, she posted the top three times in the 100 hurdles in program history as well as seven of the fastest eight. She broke the school record indoors four times and the outdoor mark three times.
 
She finished fourth at the RMAC Indoor Championships in February with a (school record) 9.0-second clocking in the 60 hurdles, and at the RMAC Outdoor Championships in May she finished third with a (school record) 14.36 in the 100 hurdles.
 
"It was muscle memory for me," Ries said of regaining her hurdling technique. "But some things had gone away over time – my arms and small little things that I'm still working on. But getting over the hurdles wasn't really a problem for me."
 
Ries has competed in one indoor meet this season, running the 60 hurdles in 9.13, just off where she finished last season, a very encouraging sign.
 
"I definitely do want to run at Nationals," Ries said of her career goals. "But I want to run certain times first before thinking about going to those types of meets. I want to run in the 8s this season, maybe an 8.6. For outdoor, I ran 14.3 at conference and this year I want to be in the 13s, hopefully a 13.7."
 
And Ries said she has every intention of using all four seasons of her eligibility, meaning she wouldn't wrap up her athletic career until she is a 26-year-old senior in 2025. In fact, nationals that year might not come until after her 27^th birthday.
 
The age difference with some of her teammates is barely noticeable.
 
"Sometimes I do feel a little older than them," Ries said. "But I feel young at heart, so it's easy for me to get along and be within the group and not feel like, 'I'm older, so I have to be wiser.' Of course I'll give people advice, but I'd rather be friends."
 
A graphic design major, Ries wants to design logos and websites, with the idea of working for a company first before branching out on her own.
 
Her early uneasiness about returning to school is behind her now.
 
"It was kind of difficult for me, but my dad and my family kept telling me, 'You go at your pace. It's your life,' she said. "A lot of people, after taking that many years off, don't go back to school. So I started to realize that and I felt better about myself.
 
"Sometimes I do get a little down because I'm not in the place where my friends are, but I'm accomplishing the things I want to accomplish in my life, so I don't mind being the age that I am."