Most people don’t know much about Ricks College’s outstanding athletes, or that they are among us.

Justin Garner, a national champion, All-American and adviser in the Activities Program at BYU-Idaho, is one of those individuals. Garner, from Rupert, Idaho, started participating in track at age 11 and often placed in high school state meets, but never won a state title.

After high school he competed for the College of Southern Idaho on scholarship in the decathlon — an event he had never done before. The decathlon consists of 10 individual events for which a score is totaled to determine the winner. Garner had to learn seven new events the summer before he started at CSI.

After a successful year as a freshman at CSI and a mission, Garner joined the Ricks track team in 1995. That year, Garner became the junior college national champion in the decathlon with 6,754 points, just 20 points ahead of one of his teammates.

Garner said his original goal was just to be an All-American (place in the top six). “I had two other teammates that I was in the shadows of the whole year. So it was surprising to end up ahead of my teammate by 20 points,” he said. “But it was a good surprise.”

He credits his success to being goal oriented, but said he also relied a lot on other people. “I learned that it’s not you all the time,” he said. “My life has been extremely blessed by coaches.”

Garner had to work a little harder than the average athlete to learn some events because he lost part of his index finger on his right hand and had some difficulties in the throwing events of the decathlon. However, “he didn’t look to make excuses, he just did his best with what had,” said Doug Stutz, a current athletics adviser and one of Garner’s Ricks track coaches.

Garner acknowledged that missing part of his finger created an additional challenge, but shrugged it off. “You just learn to adapt,” he said.

After Ricks, Garner went on to compete successfully at Idaho State University, making all-conference teams and qualifying for national championships. However, his senior year he had a major accident in pole-vaulting which landed him in the hospital.

“It really changed my focus,” he said. “The doctor asked me, ‘Is athletics worth risking walking for what could be the rest of your life?’”

From then on he had a new perspective. “Athletics offers and teaches so many good things, but we have to realize sports aren’t everything,” Garner said. “Sports are part of life, but sports are not life.”

Now married for 10 years with three children, Garner is still involved in athletics at his alma mater. After graduating from Idaho State, he coached high school for a few years then joined the Ricks track coaching staff and helped with the multi-event athletes. “He did an outstanding job for us,” Stutz said.

Then, when the Athletics Program moved from intercollegiate to its current organization, Garner was right in the middle to participate in the transition and act as an athletic adviser and coordinator, giving him the opportunity to mentor and teach students, perpetuating the positive effects of athletics.