Wolf Pack runner’s intensity is driving force
Nevada cross country runner Natalia Jarkawa overheard one of her teammates jokingly tease her Polish accent at Friday’s practice.
“Hey, I heard that,” she said as she was still running, long after her teammates had stopped.
Her teammates said after having her calves massaged last semester, Jarkawa said, “Ouch, my cows heard.”
Jarkawa, who speaks English very well for a second language, has a heavy accent that might confuse the words cows and calves, but that doesn’t keep her from losing her happy personality or her undying intensity as a runner.
“She is a very intense person,” Nevada cross country coach Kirk Elias said. “She has high expectations, and when she doesn’t meet those expectations she’s very hard on herself.
“She was really hard on herself last year, especially with all her injuries,” he said.
Jarkawa suffered a stress fracture in her foot last year. The injury forced her to start exercising in the pool and on a bike to stay in shape, but while she was riding her bike last year Jarkawa was thrown off and suffered a clavicle injury.
“I’m getting back in shape and I’m very excited to start competing again,” Jarkawa said.
Jarkawa recovered from her injuries last year to place sixth in the 5,000-meter race at the Western Athletic Conference Indoor Championships. Even with the injuries, Jarkawa was named to the 2007 WAC Cross Country first team.
The native of Sosnowiec, Poland also finished 27th at the Sacramento State Jamboree with an 18:46 mark in the 4K, which was 17 seconds faster than her time last season.
“We have such good talent this year,” Jarkawa said. “Expectations are high.”
Jarkawa, 22, is in her senior year at Nevada. She likes living in America, but says she misses her mother and aunt in Poland, as well as the food.
“I miss the food (back home),” she said. “The food here is terrible. It can be hard to stay in shape because everything is so fast. It’s easier to just put something in the microwave and make food fast.”
Jarkawa goes home each summer to her mother in Poland and their house that the family has owned for several generations, even through World Wars. Jarkawa never met her grandfather, but remembers many stories her mother told her about him fighting in World War II against Germany.
“I hear about the war stories a lot,” she said.
After Germany’s annexation of Poland, Jarkawa’s grandfather spent time fighting in England and Italy. In Italy, he fought in the Battle of Monte Cassino, which had 54,000 casualties among the Allied Forces alone.
Jarkawa also said her mother talks about the desert terrain her grandfather had to fight in and compares much of that terrain to Reno. Even though her mother hasn’t visited Reno she has a strong interest in its Wild West appeal.
“(My mom) really loves reading books, especially westerns,” Jarkawa said. “She really wants to come to see the Sierra Nevadas.”
Jarkawa calls her mother two times a week. She also has twin siblings in London and is looking forward to becoming an aunt next month when her 27-year-old sister gives birth to her first child.
“We are all very close,” Jarkawa said. “It’s hard being away from them.”
Jarkawa said she chose Nevada over other schools because of its higher altitude and her approval of Nevada cross country coach Kirk Elias.
Elias was given a lead about the skilled Polish runner from Minnesota cross country coach Steve Plasencia, who went on a recruiting tour in Europe.
“(Plasencia) came back with too many possible recruits so he told me of a couple,” Elias said. “That does happen a lot, if someone goes on a recruiting tour and comes back with too many player names.”
Elias started with e-mail and then a phone call to Jarkawa. He said he didn’t want to push her too much.
“I don’t try to make people come here,” he said. “I just tell them about the school and my program. I don’t push too hard. I let them make the decision for themselves.”
Jarkawa loves the motivation Elias gives during races. She feeds off his yelling during races, she said.
“It motivates me,” Jarkawa said. “It keeps me going.”
On Friday, the cross country team practiced alongside the ski team and a dozen Nevada baseball players at Wolf Pack Park. The practice got chaotic at times with so many runners, but as practice continued most of the players went away. The baseball team left, the ski team left and the cross country team stretched after a long early morning practice, but Jarkawa was still running. She was the only person running, long after there had been three teams on the field at once.
“She’s very serious about what she does,” Nevada runner and Jarkawa’s roommate Amanda Moreno said. “She’s intense. She’s intense. That’s a really good word (to describe her).”
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