Ex-Swedish Track Star Warms Up in Texas, but She Settles on UCI

Karin Grelsson, an already-successful and even more promising freshman for the UC Irvine track-and-field team, made her way from Eskilstuna, Sweden, to Southern California by way of Beaumont, Tex.

That’s an unusual journey. But Grelsson has an unusual story.

Grelsson, a four-time Swedish junior national long-jump champion, was a friend, in Sweden, of Lena Erikson, who was a student at Lamar University in Beaumont. Lena’s brother, Olympic high jumper Thomas Erikson, also had attended Lamar. She urged Grelsson to contact Lamar about a track-and-field scholarship.

Grelsson, who said she was a “little burned out” with her training in Sweden, called Lamar Coach Sonny Jolly, readily accepted the scholarship offer and moved to Texas.

“For me it was my first time in America,” Grelsson said. “Instead of being in cold Sweden, I was in Texas. I was excited to be in a new place. I expected really a lot--good coaching, good facilities. But when I got there, there was no program.”

Well, that’s overstating the situation. There was a very solid men’s program. And there had been individual women competing for Lamar for a couple of years. But when Grelsson arrived, she was one of five women on scholarship.

“They didn’t care what we did, and I wasn’t able to practice hard by myself,” she said.

When she visited California during spring break last year, she saw an alternative. “My friend told me, ‘What are you doing in Texas when you could be out here?’ ” Grelsson said.

She didn’t have an answer. So, when she returned to California after her spring semester at Lamar, she looked into the possibilities at other schools. She inquired at San Diego State and Cal State Fullerton, but neither had a scholarship available for her. Then “a guy at Laguna Beach High School” told her about UCI, and she drove to the university.

Lamar had withdrawn Grelsson’s scholarship, so she was free to transfer without any NCAA restrictions.

The Lamar coach explained: “I would have been glad to keep her at Lamar. There’s an awful lot of talent there. But she wasn’t happy, so I told her that if she could find a school where she’d be happier, I’d sign the release.

“I didn’t think she really gave it much of a chance. She came in at midterm and didn’t have time to adjust. She had some injuries that kept her out of some big meets. It just wasn’t a happy year for her.

“I’m sorry that she thought we didn’t care. She knew before she came here that we would have just a few women. I told her it would double the next year and double again the year after that. We were building. The year she came in, we still didn’t have women’s competition in our (Southland) conference. I was concentrating on the men’s program more, then. So there’s some truth in what she said; just not quite the way she said it.

“I wish she had been happier here. We just won our ninth straight men’s conference title, and our women finished second. We have 12 women on scholarship now. We could have used her.

“How’s she doing?”

Grelsson has recorded this year’s second-best distances in both the long jump and the triple jump in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. and has competed in the javelin, high jump and 100-meter hurdles.

She competed in her first heptathlon of the year two weeks ago at the Lady Bronco Invitational at Cal Poly Pomona and scored 5,250 points, just short of the NCAA qualifying mark of 5,350.

The first time she competed in the triple jump this season (Feb. 22), she broke the UCI record by jumping 37 feet 7 inches in a three-way meet against USC and Cal Poly Pomona. In her second triple-jump competition, she broke her own record with a jump of 39 feet 1/2 inch, despite being a foot behind the board when she took off.

The record is surprising, considering that she learned the hop-skip-and-a-jump only a few months ago. The triple jump is a relatively new event for women’s track and field. It has been a women’s National Collegiate Athletic Assn. field event for only two years. It wasn’t included in international competition for women, either, so Grelsson had not been exposed to it in Sweden.

“She’s got a lot of potential to become very good,” said Kevin McCarthy, a UCI assistant coach. “She has great natural coordination and a heart of desire.”

McCarthy thinks the triple jump may become Grelsson’s best event.

“Any time you go 39 feet without working on it, you have potential,” he said.

The heptathlon also is a challenge because it requires versatility and the desire to push the body through seven events--long jump, high jump, javelin, shot put, 200- and 800-meter dashes and 100-meter hurdles.

Grelsson seems to be up to the task. Her sturdy, 5-foot 8-inch frame suggests the strength necessary for the throwing events, and the spring in her stride shows the power needed for the jumps.

“You have to be a little crazy to be a heptathlete,” McCarthy said. “You have to put in long hours. She’s willing to work out. . . . I don’t have to look over my shoulder with her. She wants to be good.”

Grelsson always has wanted to be good.

When she was growing up in Skelleftea in northern Sweden, Grelsson’s family lived near an all-purpose sports arena, where she watched, and participated in, various sports. Her home was near a ski area, where she excelled at cross-country skiing, finishing second nationally in her age group when she was 14.

At 15, she moved with her family to Eskilstuna in southern Sweden and traded skiing for soccer and track and field. After competing for both the junior national soccer team and the junior national track-and-field team for one season, she gave up soccer to concentrate on track and field.

Now, she’s back to both. She will play for the UCI women’s soccer team next year. McCarthy, for one, is glad to hear it.

“Athletes tend to burn out as the months go on,” he said. But, then, he teasingly warned Grelsson about the hazards of the soccer field--bruised shins and broken ankles.

Grelsson is not worried.

“You’ve got to let yourself do other things because if you are always out on the track you get sick of it,” she said.

McCarthy said Grelsson’s only problem is that she often tries to do too much. “Lots of times I have to cut the workouts short because I don’t want to be out here for five hours,” he said.

And, McCarthy said, Grelsson is the type of person who wants things now. She doesn’t want to put things off until later.

“That’s true,” Grelsson said, “because I’m a person who doesn’t like to lose. I’m a winner. All the times when I was growing up and I didn’t do well, I’d get really frustrated.”