For U decathlete, risk has reward

Jack Szmanda admits he is a bit crazy because of the pursuit he chose.

But the Gophers decathlete, who will compete in the NCAA track and field meet starting Wednesday at Drake University, always has been a daredevil.

He grew up in Wausau, Wis., next to a ski hill.

"I went off a couple of jumps that I shouldn't have and tried things -- I have broken many bones," Szmanda said.

His injuries have come ski jumping. Or skateboarding. Or mountain biking. Even pole vaulting, which he says came easily to him in high school.

"[The pole vault] is pretty extreme," Szmanda said.

The event is still his best, but now the 6-3, 210-pound architect-in-training has diversified. He is one of the best college-age "multis," which is how athletes in decathlons, heptathlons and pentathlons refer to themselves.

That score is the sixth-highest in the country going into the national meet. It also means Szmanda probably will qualify for the U.S. Olympics trials on June 22 and 23 in Eugene, Ore. He is only 30 points short of the automatic standard in the decathlon, and has met the B standard.

"I never thought I would be at this level," Szmanda said. "It is kind of surreal."

"When we initially looked at him, we thought he would be pretty good," said assistant coach Paul Thornton, who came to the Gophers the same year as Szmanda, a redshirt junior. "[But being] able to place second at the Big Ten meet and you are able to break the University of Minnesota mark, you can never speculate that. And this is [only] his third year doing it, so there is a lot of room for him to actually grow."

Szmanda became comfortable with a heavy workload as an all-conference football player at Wausau Newman High School. He was a hurdler, high jumper and pole vaulter in track, and was a state champion in the latter event.

"They are the three most technical events in the dec," Szmanda said, "so it was easier to transition to just the decathlon [as a Gopher]. It was a good fit. I feel like training for one event would get repetitive and boring."

In the first of his two decathlons this spring, Szmanda set six personal records at the Mt. Sac Relays in Walnut, Calif., on April 20-21. The Big Ten meet in mid-May in Madison, Wis., was his second test.

"It was great weather, [my] training was where it should have been," Szmanda said. "I was feeling good body-wise. I wasn't sore. I wasn't tired. And it all came together."

He set PRs in the first two events, the 100-meter dash and the long jump, his most inconsistent event.

Then the second day he almost no-heighted in the pole vault, needing three tries to clear his opening height (16 feet, 3 inches).

"I was a little tired from doing the open vault the day before [where he finished third, at 17-3] and the first day of the dec, so I was having a hard time getting down the runway," Szmanda said. "I was putting together the best dec of my life and I was pretty nervous."