UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Hard Work Is a Way of Life for Fearnley

Imagine the Tasmanian Devil in track spikes and you have a fairly good description of Trindl Fearnley, UC Irvine heptathlete.

Long jumping, high jumping, shot putting, hurdling, sprinting . . . Every afternoon, Fearnley is an on-the-go track-and-field show, zipping from one event to the next like a pinball with a purpose.

To develop her skills in the heptathlon’s seven events, Fearnley, a senior, works out four to five hours a day.

Add to that 16 quarterly units of academics and 15 hours a week as a marketing representative for an Irvine insurance broker, and you have a student-athlete on the move.

But Fearnley, 22, doesn’t stop there.

For one thing, there’s always cleaning to be done, and Fearnley, a self-described neatness freak, can’t seem to stop scrubbing.

“Oh, yeah, I clean ,” Fearnley said. “It’s bad. It’s like compulsive behavior. I mean, I’m real tidy.”

Said her boyfriend and teammate Mike Morales: “She says she’ll just clean one room, then one room sort of blends into the next. It’s funny, when you look back, you realize how nutso she is.”

When she isn’t studying, cleaning, working or working out, she’s at rest. Of course, for Fearnley, that often means playing tennis or riding her bike.

“She’s definitely an overworker,” assistant coach Kevin McCarthy said. “If I told her to climb a mountain, she’d climb a mountain.”

“And,” added head Coach Vince O’Boyle, “She’d sing at the top too.”

Fearnley, one of Irvine’s three team captains, doesn’t mind the teasing from coaches and teammates. She realizes that some see her work ethic as, well, a bit beyond reasonable.

“I think people see me as a maniac,” Fearnley said. “They say, ‘You’re always working out.’ But it’s not like that really. I guess you could say I’m addicted to it, but that’s only because I want to be the best I can be.”

Fearnley’s reputation for dedication has developed over four years at Irvine. A former sprint standout at Edison High School, Fearnley came to Irvine hoping to improve her times in her favorite event, the 200 meters.

But while her freshman year was successful--Fearnley helped Irvine set four school records in sprint relays--she hit a lull in her sophomore year, despite plenty of hard work. Some say the lull was caused by the work.

“She’s kind of had a string of injuries and, in my opinion, it was because of not listening to her body, of working too hard,” said Morales, UCI’s All-American hammer thrower. “She’ll prepare for a meet so much (that) she winds up doing more harm than good. I guess it’s just part of her personality, but she’s crazy.”

Toward the end of her sophomore year, Fearnley switched to the heptathlon. That summer, she spent hours each day going through each event, learning all the complex techniques as fast and as best as she could. In addition, with Morales’ encouragement, she started an intense weight-lifting program.

“I was lifting like a maniac,” Fearnley said.

Then, three days before the Big West Conference Championships last year, Fearnley pulled a hamstring muscle during a hurdle workout. Her season was finished. Her conference debut was reduced to watching from the stands.

“It was totally the worst,” she said.

This year, Fearnley is trying to make her final season at Irvine her best. Two weeks ago, in a meet at Cal State Los Angeles, she scored a personal-record 4,577 points--despite falling in the 100-meter hurdles, the first event.

“She was mad, but instead of giving up like some people would, she never did,” McCarthy said. “She swore a little, but realized it was over and in half an hour she went into the high jump and jumped four inches higher than she ever had in her life.”

That, McCarthy said, reflects a welcome change in Fearnley’s attitude, one that makes a smarter, healthier Fearnley.

Said Fearnley: “I have some goals, sure . . . But I think I’ve learned to do it for the right reasons. I do it because it’s fun. And because this is the only time in my life I can do what I’m doing.”

The Irvine men’s swim team did something last Saturday no other team has done in 15 years. It defeated UC Santa Barbara, the 11-time Big West defending champion, in a conference dual meet.

“That was a biggee,” Coach Charlie Schober said.

The last team to beat UCSB in a conference dual was Irvine, in 1975.

Irvine, which will meet UCSB again next week at the Big West championships in Long Beach, had several key contributors, but All-American Brian Pajer probably had the biggest victory, upsetting conference leader Glenn Peoples in the 200 breaststroke.

With that victory, Pajer, a senior, finishes his four-year collegiate career undefeated in the event in dual meets. Pajer is ranked by Swimming World magazine as the eighth-fastest American in both the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke.

Anteater Notes

After being benched in a game against Pacific last week, Jeff Herdman played one of the best games of his career against New Mexico State. Herdman, who was benched for what Coach Bill Mulligan described as “childish” behavior in games and practices, scored 22 points, making eight of 14 field goals in 26 minutes off the bench. . . . Irvine opens its track and field season at 11:30 a.m. Saturday with a home meet against Cal Poly Pomona and UC San Diego. Decathlete Matt Farmer will compete in a pentathlon championship at Louisiana State this weekend. . . . The golf team finished second in the UC Davis Invitational last week with a 54-hole score of 906 behind winner Cal State Northridge (884). . . . Water polo players Chris Duplanty, Julian Harvey and former Anteater Mike Evans will represent the Newport Water Polo Foundation when they play Club Partizan, Yugoslavia’s premier club, Sunday at Newport Harbor High School. . . . The men’s volleyball team won its first match of the season with a 2-15, 15-10, 15-10, 15-12 nonconference victory over UC San Diego Saturday. The Anteaters are 1-6 overall, 0-6 in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. . . . The baseball team (2-6), which plays Cal State Dominguez Hills Friday at Irvine, has lost senior first baseman Brian Young for four to six weeks because of a knee injury he suffered against Cal Poly Pomona last Friday.