Brooklyn James has another busy weekend in front of her.
The Utah junior will be on the start line of a heat of the women’s 800 meters at 1 p.m. Saturday, the second day of the Hayward Premiere track meet at Hayward Field in Eugene.
On Sunday she will suit up for Utah’s 1 p.m. soccer game against Oregon State.
Two days, two teams, two Division I contests, all worked around the class schedule for a degree in communications with a design minor. It’s a load.
“Once we figured out a schedule and all of the coaches and me were on the same page, it’s been good,” James says. “Just really busy.”
Talk about multitasking.
“She has to be excellent at time management, really focused and be able to be compartmentalized a little bit,” Utah track coach Kyle Kepler says.
How she does it while staying outwardly unflappable and completely focused remains a mystery.
“Your guess is as good as mine, to be honest with you,” Kepler says.
It’s not exactly uncharted territory. James starred at Clackamas High School, where she was the 2018 Oregon Class 6A champion in the 400 meters, an all-conference soccer player and team captain of the Portland Thorns Soccer Academy.
She competed in both cross country and soccer in the fall for the Cavaliers, so she has done this two-sport, one-season thing before.
“Obviously, it’s way different at the college level,” she says.
She arrived at Utah in fall 2018 as a two-sport athlete. The plan was to play soccer in the fall and track in the spring. Sure, there was an indoor track-early soccer season overlap. But it was manageable.
Brooklyn James' schedule has been busy with the college soccer and track seasons running concurrently this spring. Photo by John Vu/Utah Athletics
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Pac-12 canceled spring sports and most fall sports, moving soccer to the spring for the current school year. Then it got complicated.
James decided she didn’t want to miss either the soccer or track experiences this year. After some initial reservations, Kepler and Utah soccer coach Rich Manning decided they would let her try.
Kepler says he and Manning told James there “are no expectations from either staff. You can choose one and nobody is going to be mad or upset. We truly meant it, and we mean it now.
“But just to do two, one in the fall and one in the spring is hard enough. To try to do it now, when the teams are traveling — some of the travel weekends she has had have been just bizarre.”
James splits her time between the two teams’ practices. The coaches, strength and conditioning staff and trainers keep a close eye on her workload.
They make adjustments depending on what the competition schedule will be in a given week. James sat out Friday’s soccer game between at Oregon so she could stay fresh for Saturday’s meet.
“This is an experiment for all of us,” Manning says.
James is a good enough soccer player to be a part-time starter at forward. She has the speed to stretch the defense, and is an excellent on-ball defender.
“She presses on defense really well and allows us to win the ball higher up the field for sure,” Manning says.
James has settled in at the 800 for the track team with a personal record of 2 minutes, 8.57 seconds. Kepler figures she has a shot at making the Pac-12 final and securing a shot at the NCAA regional meet.
Once there, well, who knows?
It’s possible James is limiting her ability to reach her potential in either sport by determinedly pursuing both. To an extent, she agrees.
“I absolutely feel that way,” she says. “But I just know I’m giving myself every opportunity to do these sports. There are some takeaways and drawbacks. But I think for the most part I’m happy with the decision to give myself a chance to compete.”
-- Ken Goe for The Oregonian/OregonLive
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