Decision made: Tempel heading to KU

Full Interview with Taryn Tempel

Garden City, Kan (westernkansasnews.com)-For all of her accolades; for everything that Taryn Tempel has done as an athlete and a student, the one thing that remained a mystery was the next step; what would it be? All questions have now been answered.

On Friday, the senior broke the silence-announcing she’ll be jumping at Kansas next season. 

“My dad and I took a visit to the campus last weekend and I fell in love with it,” Tempel said. “Everyone around there was really friendly.”

Tempel, who could have played a multitude of sports, is coming off one of the most successful four-year runs of any Garden City girls basketball player in history. She broke Deana Craft’s all-time scoring mark-then capped it off by becoming the first Lady Buffs player to hit 1,000 career points. So why not hoops?

“Part of the reason is that I just started jumping about a year ago,” Tempel said. “And this last year Coach Marshall came in and that had a really big part in my decision.”

Track and field has come naturally to the Tempel family; just ask Taryn’s mom Kristi, who was a pretty good athlete in her day. That lineage has filtered down to all of her kids (Greyson Tempel signed to play quarterback at Pittsburg State; Dusty Tempel signed to play football and run track at Garden City Community College); now you can add Taryn’s name to a pretty impressive list. 

The senior, who finished second in the triple jump at the state track meet last season, already has a first-place finish this season in the long jump at Ulysses. It appears the sky is the limit.