Southeast Missouri State University junior Chris Navarro's track and field career began when he was recruited by his high school's track coach after the football team failed to win a state championship. Navarro was strictly a football player at the time, but his coach thought he would be a good addition to the track team. Navarro competed in the long jump until his coach saw him practicing hurdles for fun.

"I was just messing around at practice one day, and I went over some hurdles and my coach said 'Hey, wait, come try this again. I know you're just messing around,'" Navarro said. "So I did it again for him, and believe it or not that year I ended up going all the way to winning [California Interscholastic Federation], going all the way and actually going to Nike Nationals and running at Eugene, Ore."

Navarro is now the NCAA's eighth ranked decathlete and wasn't even aware of it.

"Actually, my mom called me," Navarro said. "She said congratulations on OVC Player of the Week. I didn't even know I got that. She kind of let me know and said 'Do you know you're ranked eighth right now?' and I was like, 'No I didn't know that.' That was pretty cool."

A decathlon is made up of 10 events, the 100-meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400-meter dash, 110-meter hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw and 1500-meter run. Scoring is based on benchmarks in each event.

"There's already a predetermined score for every performance that you can do in the event," Southeast track and field coach Eric Crumpecker said. "It's all based off of some formula off of what the world records were at some point."

Navarro took first place in the decathlon at the Alabama Relays on March 22 with a score of 6,577 and victories in the 110-meter hurdles, javelin throw, shot put and high jump. He also finished his indoor season with an Ohio Valley Conference championship in the heptathlon and finished second in the 55-meter hurdles en route to the team also winning the OVC championship.

Navarro said he understands that not every decathlete in the country has competed at this time, but that it's still an honor to be ranked in the top 10 early in the season.

"It feels good," Navarro said. "A lot of hard work's paying off and I'm actually waiting to see how everybody else is going to be doing. I'm probably one of the first people to do the decathlon. I mean, off the bat to come out and be ranked that high is really nice, but I know I'm going to have to keep working, though. Because everybody else, probably within the next few weeks, is going to start doing well and I just got to keep my stuff up as well too."

Since Navarro competes in multiple events, he is almost constantly at practice.

"He's a very hard worker. To be a good decathlete you have to be a hard worker because you're going to spend a lot of time [at the Abe Stuber Track and Field Complex]," Crumpecker said. "He comes out and does stuff in between class and then goes back to class, comes back, works some more, goes and grabs some lunch, comes back in the afternoon. So he's out here all day long, off and on doing stuff. He's a very hard worker like I said, and a little bit of that rubs off on everybody on the team. I mean, they see him working hard and it makes everybody else better too."

Crumpecker said that he thinks Navarro has a chance to win the OVC championship in the decathlon this season and potentially compete at the NCAA national championships in the future.