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Ready to Release her Pent-Up Passion
After Long Recovery from Injury, Multi-Talented Aanstad is Back in Action
Brittany Aanstad cleared 5-4 1/4 in the high jump two weeks ago.
1/28/2010 1:50:38 PM
Falcon 5K Fun Run/Walk set for Saturday morning
SPU track weekly release
SEATTLE – It was frustrating enough that she couldn’t throw her beloved javelin while recovering from major elbow surgery.
But what really got to Brittany Aanstad was that she wasn’t allowed to do anything else athletically, either. No running, no jumping – nothing.
So the Seattle Pacific track and field standout – a junior in the classroom, but just a sophomore sportswise – was equal parts eager and anxious to slip into her uniform and lace up her shoes for the start of the indoor season earlier this month.
“I’ve really built up the anticipation to compete, and I want to enjoy it while I do compete” said Aanstad (Lake Stevens, Wash./Lake Stevens HS). “It has been over a year and a half since I competed. It was the hardest thing last year coming out to practice and running all these hard workouts.
“It was like, ‘When am I going to see the results?’”
She saw some on Jan. 16 at the UW Indoor Preview, placing ninth in the high jump and 19th in the long jump.
And for the most part, she liked what she saw.
“I felt a little bit rusty, honestly,” said Aanstad, who cleared 5 feet, 4¼ inches in the high and flew 16-9¼ in the long. “It took me a little while to adjust. And I definitely was a little rusty on technique.
“That’s why it was exciting to hit my marks, knowing that I still didn’t feel quite right.”
Aanstad will expand her entry card for this week’s UW Invitational, taking part in the pentathlon – 60-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, long jump, and 800 meters – on Friday beginning at 3 p.m. at the Dempsey Indoor facility on the University of Washington campus.
“If it’s anything like the last meet, I probably will be satisfied with it – I would hope to be,” Aanstad, satisfaction being relative to where she is on her comeback trail.
SHOOTING FOR SEVEN
Ultimately, Aanstad is pointing toward the outdoor heptathlon, a seven-event, two-day test that takes in the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200 meters, javelin, long jump and 800 meters. The winter season will offer her a chance to try all of those except the javelin (not contested indoors) and the 100 hurdles (the indoor distance is 60 meters).
“Overall, the jav is my best event. But in the hep, I don’t know if the jav would bring me the most points,” Aanstad said. “It would depend on the jav or the high jump, and it would depend on the day.”
Aanstad’s friends and teammates from high school might be surprised – even a little stunned – that she’ll be in the 60 hurdles and the 800 on Friday. That was unheard of during her days at Lake Stevens.
“In high school, there wasn’t one time I ever set foot on the track – not until my first meet in college,” Aanstad said. “Running wasn’t in my vocabulary.
Suffice to say that Aanstad played to her strengths in high school. She won the Class 4A state javelin title as a junior and senior, and was second in the high jump as a senior.
Taking her talent from Lake Stevens south to the Lake Washington Ship Canal, Aanstad won the 2008 Great Northwest Athletic Conference javelin title with a toss of 147 feet, 10 inches. That was just five inches shy of her best mark of 148-3, which she established a month earlier at a meet in Bellingham.
FIRST A TWINGE, THEN A LONG TREK BACK
It was at that GNAC meet where Aanstad first knew something in her right (throwing) elbow didn’t feel quite right.
“I kind of threw right through it,” Aanstad recalled. “I was practicing before our next meet, and I just noticed that it kind of hurt. I tried to throw, and it wasn’t really happening.”
Aanstad traveled to Walnut, Calif., for the ’08 nationals, and had every intention of throwing. The doctor there thought otherwise – and Aanstad had no choice to but to sit and watch, rather than compete.
“It was rough, but I kind of knew that my elbow was in bad shape,” said Aanstad, a physical education/exercise science major. “I knew that if I did throw, it probably was going to be very painful – or not pretty.”
A few weeks later, she had Tommy John surgery – named for the former major league all-star pitcher who was the first to undergo the then-revolutionary procedure in which an entire ligament is removed and replaced with either another ligament or, in Aanstad’s case, replaced with one from a cadaver.
The full recovery time is one year, which wiped out what would have been Aanstad’s sophomore indoor and outdoor track seasons.
But, as SPU coach Karl Lerum said simply, “I don’t think she wasted her year, that’s for sure.”
Indeed, after spending the first month following surgery in a cast and sling, then going almost five months more before she actually picked up something to throw, Aanstad was ready to get back at it in any way possible.
“I started throwing a softball with (SPU trainer) Jason Durocher, just so I could get the motion,” she said. “Then I was throwing a baseball 50 yards or so, and after that, I threw a light, light jav.”
But the javelin isn’t all about throwing it. So while recovering, Aanstad worked on every aspect of the jav except throwing. And track isn’t all about just the jav, so she also did whatever she could to improve on the other portions of varied repertoire. This past fall, she even worked out regularly with the cross country team, calling that “a good experience.”
Said Lerum, “She’s a talented athlete in many events, and I think she looks to have a good future in the jumping events. She’s so eager to learn, and she’s extremely coachable. She’s an exciting person for me to work with because she can transfer (coaching) cues into physical acts.”
Aanstad is eager to keep learning – even more so after the injury forced her to the sidelines.
“I’ve always had a passion for track and field,” she said. “The anticipation is just sky-high.”
And Brittany Aanstad is starting to see some results.
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