Her Name is Jayla, But You Can Call Her Jayonce
Tuesday, May 12, 2015 | Track and Field
By KELLY PRICE
GatorZone.com Correspondent
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – One morning, Jayla Bostic woke up in a fabulous mood. From that day on, she requested to be called “Jayonce,” a play on her name and the singer Beyonce.
At track and field competitions, where Bostic is a weight thrower during track's indoor season and throws hammer during outdoor season, her Florida teammates cheer her on with rounds of “Let's go, Jayonce!” Her coaches agreed to call her Jayonce if she met new goals during training.
Bostic says some freshmen on the team didn't even know her real name wasn't Jayonce -- a fact that bothered her parents so much they asked her to “please don't have people think that we named you Jayonce.”
The name just seemed to fit.
“Jayonce was something I started myself, but everybody kind of finished it,” Bostic said. “I've just always been a huge fan of Beyonce and I would always joke around and say I'm the missing person of Destiny's Child, but I think what stuck is the fact that she's so confident. That's something that, especially as a female athlete, is something to live up to.”
When surveying the hammer-throwing competition at collegiate track meets, Bostic sees a lot of aggressive-looking women. Meanwhile, her nails are painted pink and she's in her own element.
“I am the girliest thrower that you'll ever meet,” Bostic said. “When I compete against the other girls, some of them are a lot bigger than me, some of them are pretty aggressive, and then you just have me: My makeup is always done, my hair is always done, my nails are always done. So I kind of create my own environment.”
A senior from Wellington, Fla., Bostic has a personality as big as her six-foot frame.
Ahead of the Southeastern Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships that start Thursday in Starkville, Miss., Bostic continues to channel her Jayonce alter-ego to train harder and perform better.
She finished fifth at the SEC Outdoor Championships last year, throwing a personal best 59.09 meters/193-10. She also lifted the women's team to a first-place finish in the SEC Indoor Championships and a tie for third at NCAA Finals.
Many Gator fans recognize the Bostic family name due to her big brother, Jonathan, who was a linebacker for Florida from 2009 to 2012 and now plays for the Chicago Bears.
She and Jon had a playful sibling rivalry growing up as the two oldest children in the family.
“He'll send me a Vine of somebody like tripping and he's like 'Look, I found you,' ” she said, laughing. “The running joke of our family (is) there's three of us all together: I'm the Beyonce, my little brother is Kelly, and my older brother, Jonathan, is Michelle.”
But Bostic has never just been “Jonathan's little sister,” even while their time at Florida overlapped. They have competed in the same sports since before high school, each beating out the other with their respective strengths.
Track and field was an afterthought in high school for Bostic, though.
She says she was a cheerleader who played basketball, softball and volleyball at Palm Beach Central. Throwing shot put for track and field, where she was the only girl and was coached by the school's wrestling coach, was “just another sport” to add to her extracurricular activities. When she started talking with college coaches, though, she realized how much opportunity the competition held for her.
“I didn't know what I was doing, but for some reason, I kept winning and I kept beating everybody, and then when I got to high school, I just continued on in it,” Bostic said.
When she came to Gainesville, Bostic had to start back from scratch though, as she switched from shot put to the hammer and weight throws, which had very different spin techniques to execute. She had never thrown weights, and even with her shot put experience, was only taught by wrestling and cross-country coaches in high school.
Bostic has paved her own path at Florida, including a role as one of the recruiting chairs of the Florida Cicerones, the official ambassadors to the university, a club she calls “Swamp Squad.” She helps host potential student-athletes to “give them an accurate experience of what it's like to be a student here.”
In addition, Bostic recently graduated with a health science degree. She plans to take the MCAT in the fall prior to applying to medical schools.
“It's exciting because I've put so much work in being an athlete that is pre-med,” she said. “It is very hard to do, so it's exciting, but at the same time it's also scary because I want to still live with my parents, I don't want to grow up. I just wish I could do it again. It's just scary to be moving on from that monumental point in my life.”
