Which is better, to be good at a lot of things or to be excellent at just a few?
Lawrence Today magazine, Fall 2002
By Joe Vanden Acker
The old adage says, jack of all trades, master of none. Someone forgot to tell Sarah Slivinski, '03, about that one.
The native of Eagle River is intimately acquainted with the term multi-talented. Slivinski excels in numerous events for the track team and is a midfielder for the highly successful women's soccer squad. Not to be outdone by her feats on the athletic fields, she is carrying a double major in anthropology and classics and is a six-time Academic All-Midwest Conference selection.
"The more involved I am, the better," says Slivinski, who also is senior class president. "I like to be busy. It's more fun that way."
What Slivinski sees as fun during a track meet, the rest of us might view as torture. She competes in as many events as she can handle, moving hurriedly from the long jump to the hurdles to the javelin.
"She's able to do a lot of different events and do well in them all," head track coach Matt Kehrein says of Slivinski. "She's not gifted in one event, but it's hard to tell because she runs so many different events so well."
Slivinski displayed her various talents at the Midwest Conference (MWC) Outdoor Track Championships in May, placing in five events and scoring 15 of Lawrence's 98 points.
"The thing I always ask myself is, 'How am I going to get the most points for the team?' Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing eight events," Slivinski says.
She placed fifth in the javelin (99 feet, 11 inches), fifth in the high jump (5-0), sixth in the long jump (16-6), sixth in the 400-meter hurdles (1 minute, 9.78 seconds), and eighth in the triple jump (32-8.5).
"She's such a great addition to the team and scores so many team points that it's hard to hold her back," the coach says.
Still, the notion of holding her back has crossed his mind. Kehrein says that, if she concentrated on just a handful of events, she would see dramatic improvement in those areas. Slivinski competes in events -- high jump, long jump, triple jump, hurdles, and javelin -- that require extensive technique training. Kehrein points out that doing all of those over the course of a lengthy indoor and outdoor season causes a tremendous amount of wear and tear on an athlete's body. Trying to do all of them well requires the skill of a juggler, the balance of high-wire walker, the heart of a lion, and time -- lots and lots of time.
"I'm always the first person at practice and the last to leave," says Slivinski, who is one of the team captains. "I'm there from three o'clock to seven o'clock. It's a time crunch."
When Slivinski scaled back a bit and concentrated on the hurdles, she promptly broke the school record in the 400 hurdles, turning in a time of 1:06.09 at the University of Wisconsin's Twilight Meet on May 4.
"If I could concentrate on one or two things, I know I could improve them enormously, but then I couldn't do all these other things that I'm kind of good at," says Slivinski, who seems to revel in her role as the team's quick-change artist.
As much as Kehrein appreciates her potential as a specialist in one or two events, he also knows that her versatility may open other doors. Forced to practice so many events, Slivinski is a natural to compete in the pentathlon (long jump, high jump, shot put, 55-meter hurdles, and 800 meters) indoors and the heptathlon (long jump, high jump, shot put, javelin, 110-meter hurdles, and 800 meters) outdoors.
If forced to make a choice, Slivinski says the 400 hurdles is probably her favorite event -- which comes as no surprise to those who know this driven woman, because it is one of the toughest events in track, requiring one to run a full sprint for 400 meters and -- oh, by the way -- jump over a bunch of hurdles. It's an event known to bring even the toughest athletes to their knees.
"That's why I like it," Slivinski says. "Because it's such a challenge. The bigger the challenge, the better it feels to do well."
Kehrein agrees that the hurdles are the young athlete's strongest event. "We saw that when she was able to run them more often this year," Kehrein says. "She's a good jumper, but the hurdles are probably her best event."
While running the hurdles may be Slivinski's personal house of pain during track season, she dishes out agony to other players when fall rolls around.
On the soccer field, she never tires in her midfield position. She transitions from offense to defense effortlessly and leaves the opposition gasping for air. "I'm going to run my girl [the player she's defending or who is defending her] into the ground until she has to sit down," Slivinski says, matter-of-factly.
Head women's soccer coach and assistant track coach Moira Ruhly, herself a standout in soccer, cross country, and track at Providence College, has heard opposing players mutter about having to deal with Lawrence's version of the Energizer bunny.
"One person she was marking asked her coach if she could come out of the game because she could not hang with Sliv anymore," Ruhly says.
Translation: The opposition had had enough, while Slivinski kept going and going and going.
Slivinski was a pleasant surprise for Ruhly, when they both arrived at Lawrence in the fall of 1999. The coach was immediately impressed with this young woman who, in fact, had not been recruited to play soccer. Ruhly first saw raw talent, but she says Slivinski has since worked hard on her skill with the ball and become a complete player.
"She is a world apart, because her determination, more than anything, has driven her to be a great student-athlete." says Ruhly, citing Slivinski's work ethic and contagious enthusiasm. "She takes advantage of every opportunity she has as an athlete. In soccer, she's that spark that every team needs. When she goes in there, the outlook of the team changes."
Slivinski is just as important to her team and the Lawrence community off the fields of play.
"She amazes me in all she does, in all the groups she's involved in, and by the care and concern she has for her teammates," Ruhly says. "Her peers really listen to her, and, as a coach, I listen to her too.
"She exudes positive emotion all the time. We will be at a loss when she graduates, but it will be interesting to see what she does in her senior year. I know she has a lot of expectations, and she's set herself up for a great senior year."
The year will be a busy one. Along with three sports seasons -- soccer, indoor track, and outdoor track -- she must complete her academic requirements. And, in typical Slivinski fashion, why finish one major when you can have two? She says she started out with an anthropology major but realized after her sophomore year that she had taken so many electives in classics, it seemed logical to add that as a second major.
She expresses a great interest in archaeology, especially Mediterranean archaeology, and spent the summer working on digs for the Wisconsin Historical Society.
"We're finding all kinds of stuff," she said recently. "I'm doing what I most want to do, and I'm getting paid for it -- what a bonus!"
She is undecided about what to do after Lawrence but is considering graduate school. Based on her track record (and soccer record, etc.), those who know her surely suspect that Slivinski won't limit herself to just one pursuit in life. Why would she, when there are so many places left to explore?