Oregon Daily Emerald: What’s the biggest difference between Canada and the U.S.?
Brianne Theisen: Everything’s a lot more intense here. School at home, sports aren’t such a big deal, like we don’t have facilities like this (gesturing to Hayward Field). As far as sports goes, they take everything a lot more serious here, and it’s a bigger deal which is awesome because you obviously feel more motivated to do things.
ODE: Did you look at any other schools or just Oregon?
Theisen: I went to Syracuse, but this by far – it was an easy decision. I came here and right away I was like ‘This is where I want to go.’
ODE: How was the Oregon Preview, your first meet at Hayward Field?
Theisen: It was different than I expected. I had heard lots of this about how it was going to be, so I was kinda expecting it. I think I expected that many people, but not them to be so into it. You’d go into the stands and people don’t even know you but they’re like ‘good job’ so I think that that was really cool and just the intensity of it all. It wasn’t even a big meet but… I don’t even know what to expect when the bigger meets come, so I loved that.
ODE: Were you happy with your first heptathlon this year (she had a personal best 5,575 points at Sacramento State last weekend)?
Theisen: I was so happy. The first time I usually do a hep is in June, so it kinda worried me a bit doing a hep this early because I’ve never done that before, but I was feeling so good in practice since coming back from Christmas break and the first meet I couldn’t believe how well I did in my events because I never usually run or jump that far this early. So going into it, I felt pretty good about it, but I never expected to do that well. My second day usually isn’t that good, but it went really well so I’m happy with it, obviously.
ODE: What’s your favorite event?
Theisen: That’s tough to say because I like a lot of them. I really like jumping but I also like hurdling quite a bit. I’d say it’s probably between long jump, high jump and 100m hurdles.
ODE: What’s your favorite thing to do in Eugene?
Theisen: I hang out with the team quite a bit, lots of people on the team. We’ll just do anything, like go to the movies and stuff like that. Everybody seems pretty close and gets along really well, has a lot of stuff in common.
ODE: What’s something people don’t know about you?
Theisen: I feel like everybody knows everything about me… (laughs) I took piano lessons for six years. I played piano and sucked in one of the recitals and quit.
ODE: Favorite place in the world?
Theisen: China’s probably the coolest. I went to Beijing (for the World Junior Championships in 2006). People are probably like ‘I can’t believe you thought about this,’ but the shopping was crazy. There was lots of stuff to do there. You could see both sides of it, like you could see there’s really rich sides of it and then kinda more poor sides of it. We got to go touring a lot. We got to see all these temples and stuff which was really cool. I enjoyed it the best.
ODE: Do you have a shot to go back to Beijing (representing Canada) for the Olympics?
Theisen: At the beginning of this year I didn’t think there’d even be a chance, but so far the year’s been going really well. It would be a pretty big, big huge thing if I made it. I guess it’s not out of the question. I know it’s not really a for-sure thing.
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Brianne Theisen | Athlete of the Week
Daily Emerald
April 4, 2008
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