Former Oregon star Lauryn Jordan has every intention of coming back to Eugene to compete in the Olympic Trials.
Just not until 2012.
Last seen in an Oregon uniform at the 2007 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships, Jordan is now a graduate assistant coach at Northern Arizona University and it’s that first word in her title that is keeping her from being able to compete in the 2008 Trials.
She still trains, she said, but her studies take up too much time to be able to put in a full effort to be at her best this summer.
“I don’t have time to train for a heptathlon,” Jordan explained. “Graduate school is very time-consuming and so is training for a multi event, so I have to pick and choose and get my priorities straight.”
Those priorities these days include finishing her master’s degree in educational leadership. Jordan, who received her bachelor’s degree from Oregon in psychology in 2006, hopes to move up the coaching ranks and run her own program at an NCAA Division I school one day.
For right now, though, Jordan has a squad of about five jumpers, seven hurdlers and one multi-event athlete to coach.
“I’m doing a little bit of everything,” she said.
Jordan’s path to Northern Arizona was a combination of her desire to coach and her desire to continue her education.
“I knew that I wanted to continue my education, but I knew I didn’t want to pay for it, so I was looking around and I talked to (Oregon sprints and jumps) coach (Robert) Johnson,” she said. “I saw an ad on the USATF Web site saying that Northern Arizona had an opportunity so I submitted my résumé and I called my coach, told him to call the coach at Northern Arizona University and they were looking for a female, so basically I had my foot in the door there.”
Since arriving in Flagstaff, Ariz., in October, Jordan has had to learn how to balance her responsibility to her studies with her responsibility to her coaching duties.
“At first it was kinda overwhelming, ’cause as a grad assistant you should have the desire to become a coach before anything,” she said. “Being a grad assistant is supposedly getting your foot in the door to becoming a coach, but it’s kinda hard for me not to take advantage of the opportunity that’s in front of me of getting my master’s. We just had a conversation about that, balancing it and spending more time with the coaching, it may sound weird, rather than school.”
Jordan said she still stays in contact with many of her former coaches and teammates in Eugene.
“I pretty much keep in touch with everybody,” she said. “They always tell me their marks, what they did in the weight room, so we’re pretty close.”
Having exhausted her collegiate eligibility after the 2007 indoor season, Jordan competed a few times outdoors representing Team XO, a post-collegiate group based in Eugene. She met the Olympic Trials ‘B’ standard at the Mt. SAC Relays heptathlon in April 2007, but hasn’t been able to compete this season because of her coaching responsibilities.
“I was gonna compete indoor, but I’m listed as an actual assistant coach, so I have to coach my athletes,” Jordan said. “I don’t have time to warm up, I was always on the move and I actually had to set up meets, so I had no time to compete.”
Once she wraps up her degree, Jordan says she’ll jump right back in to competing in the heptathlon in 2009.
“I haven’t hit the marks that I want, so I can’t really quit until I do,” she said.
Jordan, who is in the top-five all-time at Oregon in four outdoor events (long jump, triple jump, high jump and heptathlon) and still holds the indoor long jump record, would still like to be competing at a high level in four years.
“I know I’ll be 28 years old, but I want to come do the Trials in 2012,” she said. “I have to. I missed this one and I wanted to experience it at Eugene, but that’s not available. I have to do what I have to do with education.”
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