Bobcat thrower Mary Jo Kraft returns to Fort Rucker tomorrow to resume training on Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters. MSU photo.

There are times when Mary Jo Kraft can see how it all fits together.

She can see where her different worlds -- those of a senior physical education major at Montana State, an accomplished thrower on the Bobcat track and field team, a dedicated facilities employee at MSU, and an officer in the Montana National Guard -- intersect.

"It's really all fun," says Kraft, a Helena Capital grad who is in Montana for Christmas break from flight training school in Alabama. She returns to Fort Rucker on December 30 to resume classes and training which will culminate next summer in certification to fly helicopters.

While Kraft enjoys her primary passions -- flying, throwing, and school -- she is a person for whom fun is not a goal, but a means to reaching those goals. "It can be tough juggling everything," she said. "It's a full plate. But I enjoy it. I enjoy all of it."

Long-time Bobcat throws coach Mike Carignan began recruiting Kraft as "just a name in the newspaper who had thrown the shot 38 feet." He says that Kraft's words don't always paint a realistic portrait of what she has gone through. "Having fun, I think that's her outlook on life," he said. "But things don't come easy for her, partly because she tries to do so much. She has struggled with school, with track, and putting herself through school. She has to work harder than anyone else. No one works harder."

Kraft first picked up a shot, her throwing implement of choice in high school, during her junior year. It was not long after that she made an inquiry that led to her joining the Montana National Guard. "I don't know why all of that happened then, I guess," she says.

Carignan, though, thinks that he does. "I think that she wants to affiliate herself with something meaningful," he said. "She looks for full commitment in whatever she does. She wants to be of service. That's what drew her to the military."

And also, she says, to throwing. "I love the hammer," she says, and that passion has manifested itself in dramatic improvement. She threw 141-feet at Southwestern Oregon Community College, and during her first year at MSU, in which she redshirted, she improved to 161-feet. During her redshirt sophomore year in 2003 she had a best mark of 177-feet, still the fourth-best throw in school history. That throw came during the Tom Gage Invitational, a small meet just before the Big Sky Championships typically described as "low-key" and "low-pressure" by competitors and coaches alike.

And that distinction is meaningful in understanding Kraft's personality before June, when she began pilot training, and the student-athlete Carignan saw standing before him on Thursday. "I saw it right away," he said of the changes in Kraft. "The confidence in her voice, she was very relaxed and confident. I think she's gained a mastery of herself that wasn't there before."

Which, Carignan and Kraft agree, was a limiting factor. "When I throw, I can get real frustrated," she said. "If you have a bad throw on your first throw, you're not supposed to let it affect the rest of your throws. But I did. In flying, if you mess up your first maneuver you just have to forget about it. I've had to teach myself to put mistakes behind me."

Carignan is more direct. "Mary Jo's adrenaline level is very high," he said. "But she also has a temper. We've had serious talks about that."

One thing no one has had to discuss with Kraft is her work ethic. "She is a super-reliable kid," said Dave Baumberger, a production specialist for MSU Sports Facilities who supervised Kraft during her stint working for the Fieldhouse crew. "She was always here on time, she got along well with everybody. She worked hard."

That propensity for work, and for tackling any task headlong, sometimes left Carignan shaking his head. "What a lot of people saw is someone having fun," he said of the time Kraft spent training in the hammer and weight throws as well as working and going to school. "But what I saw was someone who never got enough sleep. She worked so hard at school, so hard at track, and so hard at her campus job and National Guard stuff that she was just worn out."

Kraft's willingness to work has re-emerged during her year-long entry in flight training school, which she is not quite half through. Her day can begin anywhere from 3:30 am to 5:30 am, depending on the rotation she is in. After physical training, the day is typically split between lectures on various aspects of flight, such as the physiological effects of altitude, and actual flight training. "Then every night I go home and study for three hours, and I study all weekend every weekend," she says. "You just have to know that stuff verbatim."

For a person who many describe as being in constant motion -- "She always has something to do," Carignan said -- it's not surprising that the hardest thing for Kraft to tackle as a pilot-in-training is hovering, a maneuver which involves a degree of inactivity. "That's been the hardest part, hovering," she said, describing the maneuver of holding aircraft steady just a few feet off the ground with little movement. "You have to think about three things at the same time, and it's like when you're learning to drive a car and you're always over-correcting. That was multi-tasking big-time."

When Bobcat head coach Dale Kennedy looks at the Mary Jo Kraft on break from flight school, he sees an amazing sight. "We talk a lot about diversity in a community or on a campus," he said, "but here's diversity in another dimension. Here's diversity within one person. Mary Jo is a helicopter pilot, a student, an athlete. There are so many elements existing and thriving within this one person, it's amazing to see and it's incredible to watch how she's growing and changing. I think they're really challenging her (at flight school), and I'm amazed how much she has matured."

When her time in Alabama is finished, probably late next summer, Kraft will return to MSU. She will maintain her status in the National Guard, "probably through retirement," she says. "I can't see putting all this effort into it and not seeing it all the way through." Beyond college, Kraft hopes to turn her degree in physical education into a career teaching and coaching -- "I really want to help people," she says -- with the opportunity to progress in the Guard as a pilot flying Chinook or Blackhawk helicopters.

And when she returns, Mary Jo Kraft's different worlds will once again come together, somehow. Her drive to "see things through" will again manifest itself as an MSU student, a member of the National Guard, possibly as a facilities employee, and as a standout Bobcat hammer thrower. Mike Carignan doesn't know exactly the person or the thrower he'll be working with a year from now, but he knows how he'll feel about her.

"I'm really proud of Mary Jo," he says. "Proud of her courage and amazed at what she's done."

And for her part, Kraft knows how she'll feel, as well. "I love what I'm doing now, but I'm a little homesick. And it will be fun to get back here and to throw again."

Written by Bill Lamberty and posted 12/29/04.