She’s the fastest girls sprinter in Missouri history. Where will she compete in college?

Zaya Akins bounds westward down the northernmost steps of the Paseo Stairs, curls around the bottom and powers back up the southern flight.

Her father, Eli, stands at the top of the hill, videoing her workout while shouting instructions about technique, and encouragement.

This training session is a return to Zaya’s roots. Pounding up and down these stone walkways as a preteen helped mold her into the top high school sprinter in the Kansas City-area.

Zaya won eight state championships at Raytown South High School, holds the Missouri state record in the 200 and 400 meters and went undefeated in her Cardinals career. She has twice been named the Gatorade Missouri Girls Track and Field Player of the Year.

After primarily competing in AAU and regional events before high school, she has taken her talents to greater heights, most notably as a member of Team USA for the 2022 World Athletics U20 Championships in Cali, Colombia.

Not all went according to plan there, nor during Zaya’s last high school indoor season as she battled anxiety and injuries. The resilience she showed through those events, though, will serve her well as she advances in her career, wherever it takes her next.

Zaya signed with Kentucky in January, but then she de-committed and reopened her recruitment on Wednesday. Tim Hall, who would’ve been her sprints coach at Kentucky, was hired as the new head coach at South Carolina on June 23, and the Gamecocks are a consideration for her as she reevaluates her options. Several schools have reached out and the Akins are lining up visits with hopes of making a mid-July decision about Zaya’s future.

Whichever program lands the 5-foot-9 recruit will be getting a “complete sprinter” capable of excelling in the 100, 200 and 400 at the next level, coaches say. Regarding Olympic aspirations, Eli said the goal is at least a relay opportunity, if not an open spot, on Team USA for Paris 2024.

Akins won’t compete again this summer after finishing second in the 200 at the Great Southwest Track and Field Classic in early June in Albuquerque. Her final days in Kansas City are dedicated to recuperation and preparing for her next steps — with a little help from her first.

“This is where she built where she was to where she is now,” her father says of the Paseo Stairs. “Sometimes you gotta go back to the basics to visit some things and get some things from your basics to take into your future so that you can be a better runner.”

‘Sky’s the limit’

Zaya Akins, 17 going on 18, has come a long way in the almost nine years since she cried at her first club track practice.

“It’s a lot different now,” she said. “I’ve found my love for it and now I can’t go without it.”

She started training with Eli when she was 5. By middle school, the buzz around her was palpable.

Raytown South coach Thomas Stueve first saw her at a junior high meet at Raytown Central. Just a few years later, he was compiling a spreadsheet to help color-code and compartmentalize Akins’ college recruitment.

“Even as an eighth-grader, she looked the part,” Stueve said. “We kind of knew instantly that she’s something special.”

Stueve didn’t coach Akins until her sophomore year due to COVID-19, but she came into high school track well prepared.

Two-time Olympic sprinter Muna Lee began training KC-area athletes during the pandemic, and Akins worked out with the former Central High star.

“I was impressed because she had really good technique,” Lee said. “She’s also a lot bigger, a lot more fit, a lot more toned than most of the athletes I’ve seen in the city, and she already had very great times in the 400. It showed me that she really wanted to run.”

The Akins also developed a relationship with Clarence Cadenhead, who coached Lee and is regarded by Eli as “the track guru of Kansas City.” Cadenhead, known as “CB,” and Eli now run Top Tier Speed and Performance, Lee’s training business based at HyVee Arena.

Cadenhead told Eli they should get Zaya into more national events that would test her in ways local competition couldn’t. She thrived, winning the 400 at Nike Indoor Nationals as a junior and at the New Balance Nationals Outdoor the summer before her senior year. She swept the 100, 200 and 400 at the 2022 Great Southwest Track and Field Classic, as well.

The June 2022 USA Track and Field U20 Outdoor Championships in Oregon was another good challenge. Akins ran a 52.90 in the 400, finishing second in a field that included multiple college sprinters.

Her travels were largely made possible by support from Raytown. Eli previously told The Star that he used a GoFundMe to pay for expenses and the community stepped up to help.

For her local and national accomplishments, Akins is already firmly in the pantheon of great Raytown South track athletes, alongside such luminaries as Maurice Mitchell, a three-time NCAA champion at Florida State and 2012 Olympian.

The ultimate goal for Akins is to surpass Mitchell’s professional career, establishing Allyson Felix-esque longevity.

“I think that with hard work and the (college) coaching that she’s about to receive… I think sky’s the limit,” Cadenhead said. “We’ll just say, not only can she make the Olympics, but actually be on the podium.”

‘I’ve got a lot in me’

Eli was still en route to Colombia when he learned Zaya was having a panic attack — more severe than the usual pre-meet anxiety — ahead of the 400 heats at the World Athletics U20 Championships last August.

After a flight cancellation, Zaya arrived in Cali later than expected. She was alone in a foreign country without parental support, about to step onto a major stage.

In the 400 heats, she ran a 55.23, her slowest time since middle school. The next day, in the semifinals, she logged a 53.62, finishing 13th and missing the 400 finals by just over a second.

She rebounded in the 4x400 relay prelims with a 52.13, which Eli says was the fastest split on Team USA, excluding two runners for whom they didn’t have results. She still received a medal when her team won the finals the next day, but she wasn’t included in the race.

“Everybody knew that Zaya was the person to put (in the race),” Eli said, “but it’s politics when you get to that level.”

Adversity surfaced again during a November recruiting visit to Texas A&M. While partying with potential future teammates, Akins broke her pinky toe. This, after she had just recovered from bone stress injuries in both of her big toes.

She’d go on to miss most of her senior indoor season. It wasn’t easy watching teammates go full-speed while she was limited.

Her comeback, however, was one to behold.

In March, at the 2023 New Balance Nationals Indoor, Akins registered a record 53.45 to claim the 400 championship in just her third, and final, meet of the season.

During the high school outdoor season, she fought through more obscure foot and ankle ailments. In May, she became the Suburban Blue Conference champion in the 100, 200 and 400 in the first and last meet Raytown South hosted during her career.

Little more than three weeks later, she grabbed the triple crown again at the state meet. Watching her win the 200, Stueve said, was satisfying after she didn’t qualify for the finals in her junior year because of cramping.

Overcoming trials in the past year has shown Akins a lot about herself.

“I got a lot in me,” she said. “Even dealing with all that, I’m still a very strong and well rounded athlete. I’m actually really proud of myself.”

‘Everybody’s gonna know her name’

“Fight through it,” stands out among Eli’s encouragements as Zaya attacks the Paseo Stairs.

Succeeding in college and potentially at the Olympic level will require more refinements to her preparation. Giving up pizza, burgers and wings is a prerequisite, Eli said, but composure is even more important.

“The one thing she’s gonna have to get over is that anxiety,” Lee said. “She can still have it. It is a part of running — everybody has it — but she has to figure it out. When she gets that, she’ll be great.”

She has methods for fighting through nerves — foundations not unlike the Paseo Stairs that can assist her in the future.

On her right leg is a tattoo of 2 Timothy 1:7 — “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

Then there’s the phrase she started repeating to herself during AAU competition:

“I tell myself that I’ve got it,” Akins said, “and that I’m not gonna die.”

She also says she’s trying to enjoy the journey and not stress about Olympic expectations ... although that’s not to say she isn’t excited about possibly fulfilling her childhood dreams.

By the time she reaches the Olympics, the hope is that the announcers will get her name right. Last August, she posted a video to social media correcting all who mispronounce it.

For the record, it’s “Zay-uh, Aye-kins,” and those who know it believe others will learn soon enough.

“It’s gonna be pretty fun to watch her grow from the local kid,” Cadenhead said, “into the Olympian that everybody’s gonna know her name.”