When Rachel Yurkovich arrived at Oregon, expectations were sky high. She was coming off a high school career that ranked with the best in the country.
As a student at Newberg High School, about 100 miles north of Eugene, she had the third best throw in the high school ranks as a sophomore, with her best of 157 feet 9 inches. As a junior, she led the nation at 161-11.
Her senior year, she set the national high school record in the Team XO Invitational at Hayward Field, then went on to win her second Oregon state high school championship (172-8), the Golden West Invitational (167-5) and the U.S. Junior Championships (166-1). She then took fifth at the U.S. Championships before coming back to win the Pan-American Games Junior Championships.
Yurkovich played volleyball as a freshman, playing in seven games and recording three kills, before giving that up to concentrate solely on track and field. She improved yet again with the javelin as a freshman, extending her best to 179-10 at the Oregon Preview, her first competition as a Duck at Hayward Field. After winning the Pacific-10 Conference championship and the NCAA West Region championship, she finished seventh at the NCAA Championships.
She repeated as Pac-10 and West Region champion and extended her personal best to a school- and conference-record 189-11 in March. After a fifth-place finish at the NCAA Championships and a sixth-place finish at the U.S. Championships, Yurkovich and her coaches decided to take a different tack.
They noticed that in both her previous two years, her best throws came in March, then she never bettered them. Arm injuries cropped up. She felt fatigued. To try and counter that, she cut down on the number of competitions. She only threw in three meets before the Pac-10 Championships and even then didn’t worry too much about how she did, more about how she felt.
It worked, as Yurkovich PR’d in late April, extending her school and Pac-10 records to 191-1, and won her third Pac-10 and West Region championships.
She then broke through to win her first NCAA championship with a throw of 185-7, despite entering the meet with a season best more than 10 feet behind Purdue’s Kara Patterson.
She will enter the U.S Olympic Track & Field Trials with confidence knowing she can be competitive with the best, but knows that the Trials will be different from the NCAA meet.
“Knowing I can beat people that are ahead of me, that made me a little more comfortable, but other than that, it’s a completely different atmosphere, it’s completely different people and a different level,” she said.
She will need to rise to that level in order to make the Olympic team. With only Patterson and Kim Kreiner having hit the Olympic ‘A’ standard of 198-6, if no one else hits that, those two will represent the U.S. in Beijing.
Yurkovich hopes to hit that mark, but says she won’t be too disappointed if it doesn’t happen.
“It is the end of the season, but I’ve been training for it forever and so I hope it works out and I hope that everyone in the stands and the atmosphere can help, but what happens happens.
“My goal is just to do well, have a good throw and be happy at the end. Of course I want to get that ‘A’ standard, but if it doesn’t happen then it doesn’t happen. I’ve had a great season up to this point,” she said.
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