His ancestors fled Latvia;
now he represents it
Staff writer
Noah Jirgens’ path to an international stage began long before he picked up a hammer.
It instead began with two boxes carried out of Latvia in the middle of the night when the Soviet Army threatened his family’s future.
Decades later, that legacy would carry Jirgens from a childhood in rural Marion County to dropping out of Fort Hays State University to finding direction in the Navy, and eventually becoming a dual citizen.
At 28, he finally donned and represented the carmine and white as a Latvian.
His family’s story was one of survival and few guarantees. His is one of what came next.
There were times when Jirgens, now a professional hammer thrower, wanted to walk away from the sport he grew to love. There were times when he needed growing up. There were moments when the next step was far from clear.
But a certain kind of relentlessness has remained throughout each chapter of his life.
“Someone like me has always relied on perseverance and persistence,” Jirgens said. “If I had any superpower that would be it. I don’t know how to quit.”
A kid from Lehigh
Long before Jirgens imagined wearing Latvia across his chest, he was a kid in rural Lehigh, with a discus in hand and a family history he was only starting to understand.
Jirgens was born in 1997 in Merriam. His family moved to the 80-acre property they still reside at on 260th Rd. in 2001.
Jirgens attended school in the McPherson school district, where his father, Matt, taught high school social studies and coached sports, including track and field, for 18½ years.
Noah, his brother Alex, and Matt rarely were far apart.
“I would drive to work every day, and they would come with me,” Matt said. “The Hillsboro bus would’ve come down, but … I was coaching sports and sponsoring clubs. So, we were together every day, every night, going to and from.”
The discus came early, too.
Noah can’t remember when throwing wasn’t part of his life. By middle school, it became more than a hobby and something he took seriously.
Soon, there was a throwing pad in the front yard — a roughly 6-by-6-foot slab of concrete Matt installed. It still gets its use.
Somewhere between throws, family stories from Latvia began to take on a different meaning.
Noah knew where he’d come from and what his great-grandparents risked to leave. He also knew what they needed to build a life in America.
Even as a kid, Noah could imagine himself carrying that history with him.
“I would be out there throwing the discus when I was in middle school, high school, and pretending that I was representing Latvia in the Olympics,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt a special connection, even in my make-believe world for them.”
At the time, it was only a game.
Noah wasn’t a Latvian citizen, had never visited the country at that point, and didn’t speak the language.
But the connection was there.
The through line of resilience
Aleksandrs and Lucija Jirgens, Noah’s great-grandparents, left Riga, Latvia, with two boxes.
That was all they could carry when they fled their homeland in the middle of the night, trying to stay ahead of the Soviet Army’s advance.
Aleksandrs had worked for the Latvian government before Soviet occupation. That created a fear that he could be deported to Siberia — or worse, executed.
“They were pretty much afraid of that, because he was a public servant of the previous free government,” Matt said. “So, they fled the country in the middle of the night with two boxes of stuff.”
They moved west through Nazi-occupied territory, traveled nearly 1,000 miles, and eventually reached a displaced-persons camp near Stuttgart, Germany.
Three families shared a shack about the size of the Jirgens’ living room.
It was there, near the end of World War II, that Noah’s grandfather, Andrejs — known affectionately as “Andy” — was born.
The family remained in the camp for five years. Returning to Latvia was not an option, as Aleksandrs could’ve faced imprisonment for leaving. They decided to leave for America under the sponsorship of a Lutheran church.
They first settled in Iowa and later moved to Milwaukee, where a large Latvian community offered a connection to home.
There they found people who spoke their language, shared their religion, and understood the music, food, and traditions they had to leave behind.
But the family still was separated.
Aleksandrs had tuberculosis and initially couldn’t immigrate. Lucija then arrived in America with two young children, unable to speak English and needing to rebuild a life while waiting for her husband.
“My grandfather had to stay behind for five years because he had tuberculosis, and they wouldn’t let him immigrate because he was sick,” Matt said. “So, this woman [who] doesn’t speak the language with two little kids shows up in America and has to learn the language and has to find a job.”
She did.
Lucija worked at chicken-plucking and bread factories until Aleksandrs could join the family. Eventually, he did.
Once Andy grew up and graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force and was stationed at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita. It was there that he met his wife of 51 years, Mary Brogan.
Andy later served in the Vietnam War and gained citizenship here because his work as a crash recovery member dealt with classified documents.
Andy and Mary raised two sons together, Chris and Matt. When Matt was about 6, the family moved to Toronto, Kansas.
Matt eventually met his wife, Melissa, and settled in Marion County to raise their sons Alex and Noah.
The family had spent years moving forward. Noah would later do the same, though not always in a straight line.
A setback turned opportunity
After high school, West Point showed some interest in Noah. But the idea of trading Kansas’ wheat, corn, and cattle for New York’s density seemed daunting. So, he chose to attend Fort Hays State University instead.
He arrived in 2017 as a three-sport athlete in high school, competing in track and field, swimming, and football at McPherson. But he later acknowledged that he didn’t yet know how to compete at the next level.
Academic struggles and poor off-the-track choices eventually led him to dropping out.
The path he had imagined for himself disappeared.
Should he try again at another college?
Should he walk away from the sport completely?
Noah instead enlisted in the Navy.
“That taught me how to have a goal and accomplish it,” he said. “I was kicking butt when I was in the Navy.”
He reached the rank of petty officer second class, equivalent to a sergeant in the Army. The Navy also gave him a structure that track and field hadn’t.
It forced him to mature and taught him how to set a goal and see it through.
During that time, he kept training and began coaching. He picked up the hammer throw, an event that became central to his athletic career.
Four years then passed.
When his service ended, Noah wasn’t the same athlete — or person — who had once dropped out.
“The thing that sets him apart from other athletes I’ve coached is he’s a little bit more mature,” Glenn McAtee, one of Noah’s former coaches, said. “I think four years in the Navy taught him a lot of good … self-discipline.”
Growing up Catholic, he also began to see his experiences through his faith a little more clearly.
“It was a divine intervention of God taking the steering wheel,” Noah said. “I’ve had some things that I’ve failed at or whatever, but then something better comes along, you know?”
When a career began to take off
While stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, Noah met McAtee, who coached throwing events at Clemson University in South Carolina.
The two built a relationship that extended beyond the throwing pit.
“He took me in when I was nothing,” Noah said.
Once a month, Noah made a six-hour drive north to train with him. McAtee said Noah understood the discus and shot put well but knew less about the hammer and javelin events.
So, McAtee started with the basics.
“The conversation that we had was that I would help him learn those events,” McAtee said, “and I said, ‘The best way for you to this is I need to teach you the hammer throw first.’”
The hammer throw is the most complex of the throwing events. The thrower’s upper body has to stay relaxed while controlling the weight while the lower body rotates around a circle before a 16-pound ball attached to a handle spinning at 60 mph is released toward the field.
For Noah, though, the mechanics quickly became something he geeked-out over.
“I started learning the hammer, and the hammer started going farther,” he said. “Now that feeling to me is so much better. The relaxation and the pull of the shoulders, and your jaw on a really good throw … feels limp.
“You’re just, like, droopy — almost like a zombie. And that ball is just stretching your arms to the field. You can hear your feet [slide around], and it’s just the best feeling ever.
“I’m addicted to it.”
While training with McAtee, Noah spent six months living in his South Carolina home and worked in Clemson’s human resources department — a skill he acquired in the Navy — while gaining valuable hours in throwing pits.
What began as a coach-athlete relationship became something closer to family.
“He’s maybe closer to being our son than he is just being a guy that I coach,” McAtee said, “because he’s lived in my home and really, really became part of our family.”
Noah’s own family never forgot the gesture.
“This guy took him in, and he’d have him over, and they’d work on his throwing,” Matt said. “I really admire this because this is a stranger. He didn’t know Noah.”
The experience gave Noah another base as he moved into his career’s next chapter.
When his Navy service ended, he arrived at the University of Texas-El Paso with a greater sense of who he was and where he was headed. The Miners were the first school to show interest, and Noah chose to use his GI Bill benefits.
Progress became gradual: a few meters tacked on here, a few more there.
After two seasons, Noah graduated with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. He still had an indoor season of eligibility remaining, but wondered again whether it was time to call it a career.
Then he met Mike Judge at Kennesaw State University, whom Noah had only briefly encountered at previous meets.
Noah talked to other coaches at Kennesaw State, and Atlanta felt like the right fit. It became another destination where he thought he could take another step.
Judge had spent more than 25 years coaching athletes and heard plenty of parents proclaim their kids were going to be the next Olympic gold medalists.
The words were easy.
Actions, he said, ultimately determined how high an athlete’s ceiling could reach.
“The amount of work you have to do, the amount of progress you have to make,” Judge said, “the amount of stress it takes to be an Olympian, that’s why there’s so few.”
Judge has helped get throwers to that level, however. He still coaches and trains one of the United States’ top hammer throwers, Daniel Haugh, giving Noah a first-hand look at what is required to reach that level.
“He could have gone somewhere else and had a great coach, but not had a great training partner,” Judge said. “He told me at practice, ‘I would pull up videos of Daniel to watch. I don’t have to anymore.’”
Noah competed in one attached indoor season for the Owls during the 2025 to 2026 school year, primarily in the weight throw — an event similar to the hammer throw but specific to indoor meets. He is remaining at Kennesaw State to complete his master’s degree in sports administration while continuing to train.
Under Judge’s tutelage, Noah’s hammer throw climbed to 66.44 meters during an unattached meet in April — a solid jump in his progress, and a few meters shy of 70. The season before, at UTEP, his best throw was 60.52 meters.
Finally, in early June, Noah eclipsed 70 meters with a 70.41-meter throw at the 2026 Georgia State Hammer Championship.
But even at just more than 70 meters, Noah still is not yet at an Olympic-caliber level. It took a throw of 75.25 meters to make it out of qualifiers at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“[He’s] got to do 72 to 73 next year,” Judge said. “And at 75 in 2028, he’ll be an Olympian [for Latvia].”
No longer is the gap theoretical. It’s measurable.
For an athlete who already has added nearly 30 meters to his hammer throw since his days at Fort Hays, it is a target Noah said he believes is worth chasing.
Noah, now at 5-foot-10 and 230 pounds, already had the strength. Consistency remained the next step.
“What I’ve helped him with is having a repeatable pattern,” Judge said. “You just don’t go and close your eyes and go crazy and hope for the best. It’s setting up a pattern and putting together a nice throw that you can repeat.”
The same discipline has extended beyond the throwing circle, from recovery and diet to the relationships and habits that shape athletes’ lives.
Becoming Latvian in more ways than ancestry
After Noah’s grandfather, Andy, died in 2018, he and his father made a trip to their homeland the next year.
It was there that Noah truly got to immerse himself in his ancestry — and saw a path to the Olympics, perhaps unknowingly.
Since 2024, he’s returned to Latvia and competed internationally, staying with second cousins, aunts, and uncles.
He’s beginning to pick up the language, starting with a book of Latvian swear words, given by friends, that still sits on his living room coffee table. Even while at UTEP, he befriended Latvian beach volleyball player Krista Paegle. (She helped pioneer the sport there, but that’s a different story).
“Obviously, when you learn any language, you learn the cuss words first,” Noah said with a laugh. “Then you figure out how to speak it after.”
During his first two years competing internationally, Noah hadn’t yet gained Latvian citizenship. He could compete unattached, meaning there were no medals to his name despite out-throwing the competition.
That made his family’s paperwork more than a formality and entry point to his heritage.
For Noah and his family, the path to citizenship depended on proving their lineage and documenting their connection to Latvia.
They had kept that proof intact.
Matt still carries a manila folder containing family documents, from photos to passports to birth records.
“You had to prove that they were citizens, and then you had to prove that you were of that lineage,” Matt said.
By 2025, Noah’s childhood dream became something tangible when he gained Latvian citizenship that March. More than a year later, he received a passport necessary to compete in a Latvian uniform.
The documents that had connected him to a family he had never known in Latvia now connected him to the country itself.
‘Opening a box of gold’
In July and August, Noah finally wore the carmine and white for competition.
The days of pretending were gone.
A kid who once stood on a concrete slab in rural Kansas and imagined representing his relatives was now doing it for real.
“They gave me the uniform, and it’s like opening a box of gold is what it’s like,” Noah said, grinning. “To finally see the jersey right in front of you, like, ‘Yeah, I am a Latvian national hammer thrower. That’s what I set out to do.’”
He finished first at the Latvian Championships with a mark of 61.65 meters July 25. A week later, Noah followed with a 65.38-meter toss at the Baltic Team Championships and placed second. Those were his first competitions after becoming a citizen.
For Noah, the results mattered.
But the country’s name printed on the front of his jersey maybe mattered more.
A family that once fled Latvia with two boxes had, generations later, found a way back home.
“I know my dad would be very proud,” Matt said. “The Latvian people, they have been through a lot of tough times, and yet, they remained.”
Noah returned home to Lehigh this past week to help his father build a barn on their property during a week of grueling heat.
Soon, he’ll head back to Atlanta to train, progress in his master’s degree, and continue chasing a goal that once existed only in dreams.
For now, though, the next step is the same as it always has been: Keep working. Keep throwing.
Noah has a chance, Judge said.
“Noah’s starting to see that,” he said. “As long as Noah’s willing to live that lifestyle, Noah has a shot at making it.”