Arcata High shot put star Skyler Collenberg heads to championship meet

Arcata High’s Skyler Collenberg turned a record-breaking spring into a ticket to the next level, throwing 61 feet, 11 inches in the 12-pound shot put and pushing his name into the conversation as the Humboldt-Del Norte League’s most accomplished high school thrower.

That mark did more than win meets. It broke a league record that had stood since 1971 and left Collenberg fifth in California, a rare position for a Humboldt County athlete in a technical field event. It also left him 5 feet, 7 inches beyond the school shot put record he broke in March, a sign that Arcata’s standard in the event has moved sharply in one season.

Collenberg’s season has been built on repetition as much as talent. He trains after school and keeps throwing at home when he can, with his mother serving as his throws coach and the Arcata staff watching him stack one record on top of another. That routine has carried him from school-record territory into a league mark that has lasted more than half a century.

The Arcata senior has not been a one-event specialist, either. Athletic.net lists a 2026 outdoor discus best of 176 feet, 4 inches and a javelin best of 105 feet, 11 inches, underscoring a spring in which he has produced first-place finishes across multiple disciplines. Humboldt Sports reported that he first broke his own Arcata shot put record with a 56-foot, 4-inch throw at the Cal Poly Humboldt High School Relays on March 14, then added the school discus record at the Jim Crowhurst Track Extravaganza with a 167-foot, 6-inch throw.

That kind of range matters for Arcata and for the Humboldt-Del Norte League. Collenberg’s rise shows a local track program that is not waiting for rare talent to arrive once in a decade. It is developing an athlete who keeps resetting the bar, event after event, and giving the county a statewide presence in a sport that rarely draws the attention football or basketball gets.

Collenberg carried that momentum into the North Coast Section Meet of Champions at Dublin High School on May 22-23, where he qualified for the CIF State Track & Field Championships in Clovis. He advanced to state for the second straight year and did it in two events, giving Arcata another reason to watch what happens next in a season already defined by record after record.