Beyond the Uniform: Navy Veteran Jake Troxell Finds His Footing at UCI
By Leah Fitzpatrick
5/22/2026
For the past two seasons, senior Jake Troxell has served as a steady anchor of leadership for the UC Irvine men’s track and field team. He qualified for the Big West Championships in the shot put and discus in 2025 and 2026, while setting personal records in both events this season.
Before starting his collegiate career, Jake served in the United States Navy as a logistics specialist for five years. During his service, he spent 11 months at sea across two deployments, lived in the Middle East for a year on forward deployment, and was stationed at two additional locations across the United States. His remarkable path to collegiate athletics has shaped not only his perspective and leadership abilities, but also the way that he competes. He brings an invaluable level of experience and resilience that sets him apart in the ring.
Jake began competing in track and field during his senior year of high school, originally as a runner. While he primarily focused on football and basketball, he did not receive collegiate offers out of high school. Faced with the decision of attending college or finding a job, he leaned toward joining the workforce and began considering a path into the military.
“I had a lot of family that served in the military so I always saw that as an option,” Jake said.
He visited a recruiting office to learn more about enlisting. When asked about his goals for joining the military, Jake's answer was simple: he wanted to travel.
“I wanted a way out of my small town in Indiana, and joining the Navy gave me the opportunity to do that,” Jake said.
With that, Jake was sold. He graduated from North Harrison High School in May of 2017, and was off to boot camp by July that same year. He spent two months at boot camp in Chicago before moving down to Mississippi for schooling, where he learned the ins and outs of his job. He worked as a logistics specialist with his day-to-day responsibilities including ordering, tracking, and receiving helicopter parts that were distributed across the base for maintenance and repairs.
After he finished school, he was stationed in Great Lakes, Illinois, working at a hospital for three months before being deployed for the first time. He was sent to San Diego for a month, then embarked on a six-month humanitarian mission to Southeast Asia aboard the USNS Mercy, a naval medical ship. Following that assignment, he spent another year and a half back in Great Lakes.
“You learn how to be on your own very quickly,” Jake said. “It completely changed who I am as a person.”
In his third year of service, Jake received orders for a forward deployment to Manama, the capital city of Bahrain, a small island nation off the coast of Saudi Arabia. During his time there, Jake worked in the mail room, a change of pace from what he was accustomed to.
“It was nice because it was a really different experience,” Jake said. “I was living overseas and working a normal full time job, just in the military.”
It was during his time in Bahrain that Jake began to question his future in the military.
“I realized I didn’t want to be in the Navy anymore,” Jake said. “This wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore, I wanted to get out and go to college.”
After a year in the Middle East, Jake was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for his final year and a half of his five-year contract. With the time left on his contract dwindling, he began to consider pursuing higher education. But it was his friends in the Navy who pushed Jake to pursue collegiate athletics.
“My friends thought that I should try to play football somewhere, but I didn’t think that I was a Division I athlete,” Jake recalled. “They were the ones who suggested that I look for an opportunity in Division III or community college athletics.”
Before the end of his contract, Jake was sent on deployment one final time on the USS Milwaukee (LCS 5) for five months in the Caribbean. While deployed aboard the ship, he worked alongside a helicopter squadron that routinely intercepted illicit drug trafficking operations in the Caribbean Sea, helping prevent contraband from reaching the United States.
Despite the challenges and discipline of his service, Jake recalls moments that stand out as some of the most meaningful of his life. During his final deployment in the Caribbean, he often took in the the environment around him, aware it would be something he would never experience again.
“One night I laid with two of my friends on the flight deck and we just stared up at the stars for hours,” Jake recalled. “I had never seen that many stars in my life.”
Jake completed his five-year contract with the Navy in July 2022. During his final few months of service, he researched colleges and junior colleges across the country where he could see himself living. With support from the G.I. Bill, he had the opportunity to attend nearly any school he wanted. A football coach at Golden West College in Huntington Beach encouraged Jake to come to California and play for the Rustlers.
“I drove all the way from Virginia to California in a two-door jeep,” Jake said. “It didn’t go fast, but I made it.”
Leaving the Navy was not simply a career change for Jake — it was a complete shift in identity. After spending five formative years in military service, adjusting to civilian life and rediscovering who he was outside of the Navy became one of the biggest challenges of all.
“The Navy was such a big part of my life and suddenly it was gone and it was like who am I?” Jake said.
Starting college is a major adjustment for any student, but Jake entered that experience at a much different stage of life than most of his classmates and teammates. He was a 23-year-old adjusting to life alongside freshmen just out of high school.
“For five years, someone told me what to wear, how my hair was supposed to look, what time I woke up — even how the toilet paper was supposed to be arranged in my room,” Jake said. “I had so much freedom that it felt like I was doing something wrong.”
Jake continued to navigate his post-military life while playing two years of football at Golden West College, where he earned all-conference honors as a tight end. Ahead of his second football season, Maryn Ciarelli, an assistant track & field coach at Golden West, encouraged Jake to try throwing. At the time, he was recovering from a broken wrist and couldn’t hold a shot put, so he began with the javelin.
“(Maryn) told me it would be like throwing a football,” Jake recalled fondly. “It definitely was not.”
Nevertheless, he began competing in the javelin, and once his wrist healed, he transitioned into the shot put as well.
“I just completely fell in love with it,” Jake said.
By the time that Jake finished his junior college career, he had become one of the best throwers in the state, earning All-American, All-State, and All-Conference honors in the shot put.
Jake’s connection to UC Irvine began through his throwing coach, Maryn, whose sister, Katelyn Ciarelli, serves as an associate head coach for UCI track and field. Through that family tie, Jake became increasingly familiar with the Anteater program.
“I talked to the coaches and just thought that they were so smart, knew so much about the sport, and were so respected,” Jake said. “If I wanted to throw far, improve, and get strong, I knew that this was the program. If I was going to throw, I was only going to do it at UCI.”
Drawn to both the coaching staff and the culture surrounding the program, Jake contacted Katelyn Ciarelli about the possibility of competing at UCI. After being admitted to the university, he officially earned the opportunity to join the team and compete for the Anteaters.
By the time Jake arrived at UC Irvine, his path looked nothing like that of a typical collegiate athlete. He spent years navigating deployments and intense military structures, all while learning to build a life far from home. His unique perspective influenced the way that he approached collegiate athletics.
“You join the military at 18 years old, and it forces you to grow up a lot faster than you expect,” Jake said. “Suddenly you’re in charge of things that are very serious — if you mess up, someone might die.”
Jake’s years in the Navy taught him the discipline, accountability, and composure that influenced the way he trains, competes, and leads within the UC Irvine track & field program.
Although Jake naturally stepped into a leadership role with the team, the continual adjustments back into civilian and collegiate life required its own learning process. After years in an environment built around structure and constant responsibility, he had to rediscover how to relax and connect with teammates outside of that mindset.
“The biggest thing for me was learning that I didn’t have to be so serious all the time,” Jake said. “I wanted the younger guys to feel comfortable having serious conversations with me, but also know that I didn’t have to be that way all the time anymore. I didn’t have to make everything a life or death situation.”
Although military service kept Jake in shape, the transition back into collegiate athletics was more difficult than he expected. The physical demands of football and throwing called for a completely different style of training than what the Navy had required of him. The daily routines of cardio and bodyweight exercises he had relied on were replaced by demanding Olympic lifts.
“You can’t really do Olympic lifting on a ship because the boat rocks,” Jake said.
While most collegiate athletes reach the end of their careers in their early twenties, Jake’s arrival in the sport came later and he is now preparing to finish his career at nearly 27 years old. By the time he seriously began throwing, most Division I athletes had already spent nearly a decade dedicating their lives to their sport. Yet his rapid improvement and adaptability reflected both his natural athletic ability and the discipline instilled in him by the military.
“I’m older and I have to take care of my body a little extra,” Jake said. “Coming from the military takes a toll on your body. You sleep in a bed that’s too small, you’re moving heavy boxes and pallets in the heat, it’s hard work.”
Jake’s teammates have embraced him throughout his career, and despite the age gap, he has grown into one of the more respected voices on the team. His experiences outside of athletics gave him a perspective that younger athletes naturally gravitated toward.
“My teammates and I are really close and I see a lot of them as younger siblings, so there’s a leadership role that comes with it and they come to me for advice sometimes,” Jake said. “But they’ll still joke around and call me old and grandpa.”
Years in the military also changed the way Jake handles pressure in competition. Compared to the responsibilities and situations he faced during his service, athletics became something he could approach with greater perspective.
“Throwing was a new sport for me and you’re the only one in the ring, everyone’s only watching you,” Jake said. “But I think my perspective helped me to know that sports aren’t the end all be all.”
Looking back on his unconventional path, Jake says he carries no regrets.
“I wouldn't change any of my experience,” Jake said. “I’ve been through some really tough times, but it made me who I am today. I love who I am, I love the people around me, and I love the people in my past.”
As he prepares to graduate from UC Irvine in less than a month, Jake plans to return home to Indiana and pursue a future in teaching and coaching. He will carry with him the lessons that shaped every stage of his journey. The Navy taught him discipline and resilience, while track and field helped him find identity, balance, and purpose beyond military service. In many ways, Jake has rediscovered who he wanted to become after the uniform came off.