On a pleasant June evening in Oregon last year, Mayson Conner set a new bar for himself.
The Nebraska high jumper cleared and matched a personal-best 7 feet, 3¾ inches, which landed him near the top of the medal stand at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships.
It earned Conner a bronze medal — the best finish by a Husker high jumper in more than a decade — and it salted away a tough 2021 indoor season.
It also had Conner thinking about what he wanted to accomplish over his final two years as a Husker.
"I definitely want to prove this year, and the rest of the year and into outdoor (season), that that outdoor NCAA meet wasn't a fluke, and I'm not just going to have the one third-place finish and call it a career," the York graduate said this week. "I don't want that to be the high point of my career."
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Conner, who won a Big Ten outdoor title as a freshman, hasn't reached 7-3¾ since last June, but he's setting himself up well to heighten an already successful Husker career.
He cleared 7-2½ at last week's Adidas Classic in Lincoln, which is the top jump in the Big Ten this season and is a top-six mark nationally. That mark will likely be good enough for an NCAA indoor championships bid.
Now it's a matter of fine-tuning and tightening some things between now and Big Tens, starting this weekend at the Frank Sevigne Invitational, which runs Friday and Saturday at the Devaney Sports Center.
"I think the rest of the season is going to be just finding a way to hammer everything out going into Big Tens, and if some higher bars come in along the way there, that's great," Conner said.
Conner wants to make the most of a promising indoor season, especially considering how different it was a year ago.
The junior battled COVID-19 at the beginning of the 2021 season, which slowed him down, and then he found himself fighting through some of his lowest performances as a Husker.
"I was no-heighting at a couple meets," Conner said. "I was jumping 6-8 at a couple meets, which is not what I'm used to — I've been jumping higher than that since I was junior in high school — so that's tough to deal with.
"I think I was physically fine, but it kind of took me awhile to get over that mental barrier."
Conner worked harder to get over the mental bar. He increased practice reps, did more visualization and learned to trust his training more. Some of it, too, was getting back to basics.
"Toward the end of outdoor season, I kind of started to figure it out and just kind of turned it loose for nationals," he said.
Conner's third-place leap at NCAAs also earned him a ticket to the U.S. Olympic trials a month later, and it was a memorable time for an athlete who started high jumping in the seventh grade.
"That was a really fun experience, getting to jump against some of the guys that I watched on YouTube forever, like Erik Kynard," Conner said.
The trials only motivated Conner more, not that he needed it. Matching and surpassing last year's showing at NCAAs is motivating enough.
Conner, though, will welcome any motivation he can find. It happened before last week's Adidas Class meet when he saw that he was ranked 34th nationally in the high jump.
"I was looking at that list and I was like, 'There's not 33 guys that I think are better than me. That I think really have the abilities that are better than me, and the coaching that's as good as mine,'" Conner said. "That was a huge motivating factor. (But) I try not to look at that stuff too much because I want to focus on what I can control."
A clearance of 7-2½ followed, pushing Conner to No. 6 in the country. But he'll be the first to tell you, there's still room to grow, and more bars to clear.
"It's a tough process to kind of go through, but at least for me, that's why I like the sport and event so much because you can always find that one or two things about your approach or physically that you could get better at that can set you over that next bar," Conner said.