In August 2004, junior Jillian Drouin came to Syracuse on athletic scholarship from Corunna, Ontario. In her three years on SU's track and field team, she has established herself as a talented multi-event athlete.
On Saturday, Drouin and the rest of the Orange track and field team will compete at the Penn State National Open.
Drouin holds school records in both the heptathlon and outdoor high jump. Last season, she placed 24th at the NCAA Outdoor Championship in the heptathlon and second at the Big East Outdoor Championship, where she was all-conference and set a school record with 5,287 points.
Drouin hopes her triumphs in last year's outdoor season will help bring similar results to the present indoor season. This past weekend at the Upstate Challenge in Ithaca, she placed second in the high jump and long jump competitions, qualifying for the ECAC Championship in the high jump with a mark of 1.70 meters. Drouin also had a Big East-qualifying distance of 5.52 meters in the long jump.
Drouin's ultimate goal is to qualify for the indoor NCAA Tournament. Throws, jumps and multi-event coach Enoch Borozinski doesn't think it's out of the question. "I think she's got a very good chance," Borozinski said. "She probably doesn't want to hear this, but it's probably going to come down to her 800 meters and how hard she works to run that."
Drouin admits that her personal Achilles' heel is in the 800 meter. She said that since she was never a great runner in high school, she's had to work hard at conditioning and improving her 800 time. Borozinski is confident that if Drouin succeeds in improving upon her 800 meter, she'll be one of the top candidates to qualify for the NCAA's.
"Her hurdles are going great," Borozinski said. "She's probably the strongest high jumper as far as the heptathlon in the country. Her long jump, as we saw this past weekend at Cornell, is improving by leaps and bounds.
"It's just that 800 is a lot of points on the indoor scale, and that's what I'd really like to see is her to really bite the bullet and run that hard. And if she does that there's no doubt in my mind that she'll make it into the NCAA's."
Drouin attributes much of her success to a strong training program. Heptathlon athletes' practice schedules are generally much longer than most of the other athletes because they have to train for three or four events each day. In addition to the importance of the physical element in training, Drouin explained that there exists a significant mental component.
"There's mental preparation before everything," Drouin said. "You just psyche yourself up for the meet and make sure you know what you're going to do for the day. But when it comes down to the actual event you try to think as little as possible and just rely on your practices to carry you through things."
Borozinski has been very impressed by Drouin's ability to stay calm under tense and often stressful situations, saying that she's not the type of person who gets "mentally frazzled" when things aren't going right.
Drouin identifies Borozinski as an important person in her growth as an athlete.
"Coach B is always a big thing," Drouin said. "He's really supportive and trying to improve everything we do, but at the same time he's never putting us down, and for me that's a big factor because I'm that type of person that needs that positive reinforcement all the time."
Borozinski believes Drouin has made significant improvements, but still has much to accomplish.
"It's a big year, penultimate year going into her senior year," Borozinski said. "This is a good year where we'll really make some breakthroughs in a couple of events that I think are really going to pave the way for her."
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