Running Huskies
UConn hosts Big East Championships aiming for sweep
STORRS — The first thing Patricia Mroczkowski did after clearing the 6-foot mark in the high jump competition at LSU’s Joe May Invitational in early April was run over to her UConn track and field teammates and embrace them in pure excitement.
Clearing 6-feet had been her goal since her senior year at Berlin High. It was still her goal as her freshman season at UConn was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And it remained her motivation even when her own battle with COVID resulted in a six-month fight with myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle. Last year she could hardly walk two flights of stairs without heart palpitations. She wore a heart monitor and visited the hospital monthly to help manage her increased heart rate.
“It was pretty awful, like I just thought that I was never really gonna progress and I was having everything chop up my seasons,” Mroczkowski said Monday.
The 2022 season is the first time during her college career that Mroczkowski feels herself. She’s healthier and has found ways to manage the lasting effects of myocarditis without having to take time off from track.
“I just really had to think like, ‘This is my whole life, basically.’ I really care about track to my core and it’s something that’s really important to me and I can’t really be down on myself. I also have teammates that look up to me,” she said. “It’s always been so frustrating because all I’ve wanted to do is prove myself and coming to school for track, like all I’ve wanted to do is improve as an athlete.”
The junior leads the Big East in high jump and is the favorite to win the conference event title this weekend at the Big East Track and Field Championships Friday and Saturday in Storrs.
It’s the first time UConn has hosted the outdoor conference championship since 2007 (the program was scheduled to host last spring but the event was moved due to COVID), and both its men’s and women’s programs are heavy favorites to win the team titles.
Mroczkowski is one of 14 Huskies ranked inside the top-10 of their event in the Big East heading into this weekend. Five school records have been rewritten, including two from Connecticut natives in Norwalk senior Eric Van Der Els (ran the 5000 meters in 13 minutes, 36.28 seconds at the Virginia Challenge) and New Milford senior Mia Nahom (ran the 5000m in 16:00.35, also at the Virginia Challenge).
“I had a lot more fun
racing this year,” Nahom said. “There’s just more energy. I think just coming off of COVID last year was hard on everyone, so then coming in this year and having so much momentum all the time, it’s like, ‘This is so fun.’ I’m so excited for the future of the program and jealous that I won’t be here because it’s just going in such a great direction.”
Nahom concludes her collegiate track and field career within the next month, starting with this weekend’s conference championship and perhaps ending at the NCAA Championships in June in Eugene, Ore.
The fifth-year senior, who graduated Monday, sees more confidence in herself during races since the season began. No longer is she waiting to be in the ‘right race’ to be fast, but she’s grown the mental strength to control her own pace.
“I just have more confidence where like I can make myself fast,” she said. “That sounds silly but it’s like I just feel a little more control in races, like I’m not just following people. I’m deciding what I want to do and confident in my moves.”
While the men’s program has won five outdoor Big East team titles (including most recently in 2021 with a conference record 294 team points), the women’s program has won just two, winning its last one in 1995. The programs have never swept the outdoor Big East titles.
This weekend also marks the final team event for the Huskies’ longtime head coach, Greg Roy. After 37 years, Roy, UConn’s director of cross country and track and field, will retire following the outdoor season.
The Big East Championship will be his final time coaching the entire team before it’s condensed for the NCAA Championships next month.
“The last time we hosted the Big East championship, these kids were either going into or graduating kindergarten,” he said. “This is fantastic and to have a shot to win both, like we did indoors, is really exciting. … On some level, I’d like to be getting on a plane and going someplace and just sitting and relaxing, watching the kids compete but on another level, it’s just really really great to have it at home for the last goaround.”
Mroczkowski enters the conference championship hopeing to break the current school high jump record (1.88 meters or 6.16 feet, set in 2004 by Deirdre Mullen).
She won the indoor Big East high jump title in February with a jump of 1.81 meters (5-feet, 11.25 inches) for her first conference title. Her personal best of 1.83 meters (just over 6 feet) in the outdoor event at LSU in April tied her for No. 12 nationally in the event.
“I almost looked at it as though it’s the beginning of her career because it was a really really tough competition,” Roy said of Mroczkowski’s PR. “The two things, the performance and the championship, together, I think really elevated her to a point where it’s like, ‘OK, we’re really gonna get working, get going with Patty Mroczkowski now.’”