A&M's Fitzpatrick showing versatility going into NCAA Track Championships

Daphne Fitzpatrick went from passing through balls, avoiding defenders and flying down the wing to throwing something that looks like a ball, clearing hurdles and sprinting down a straight-away.

It was a change that involved more than abandoning one sport for another.

Fitzpatrick took her soccer skills, gained primarily from playing with the Challenge Soccer Club, to Oklahoma. But before she could go through an offseason with the Sooners, she was back in South Texas hoping to catch on to the Texas A&M track team.

"It was very difficult, especially telling my parents 'I'm going to make you pay for school now ... but I'll be closer,'" said Fitzpatrick, who graduated from Katy High School. "It was a very difficult transition, not only just the money, but the pride issue, because you work all your life in club to earn that [scholarship] and to give it up so easily."

It had nothing to do with playing time. Fitzpatrick started 12 games as a freshman for the Sooners, scoring two goals, one against A&M at the Aggie Soccer Field. Fitzpatrick simply said it wasn't the right fit for her, so she went looking for another avenue.

"I was just over it at that point, but I didn't want to be done with college athletics," said Fitzpatrick. "I went to state my senior year in high jump so I came here originally just for high jump."

Of course it wasn't a given she could crack a team that was on the verge of winning multiple national titles.

"The running joke was she was so nervous that we didn't even want her at all to be on the team," said assistant A&M track coach Jim VanHootegem, who works with the jumpers and multi-event athletes. "I was like, 'We don't have any scholarships for you,' and she was like, 'I just want to know if I can be on the team.'"

Fitzpatrick made it to A&M the next fall but could only work out with the team and run unattached in meets, having to redshirt because of NCAA transfer rules.

Then as soon as workouts began, there was another twist.

"It was after a first sprinting workout. This girl that was a freshman doing the heptathlon sparked my interest in the event," said Fitzpatrick. "So I asked [coach VanHootegem] what do you think if I did this and he was on board from there."

VanHootegem barely missed a beat in reacting to Fitzpatrick's request.

"I said, 'You'd be great for it,'" VanHootegem said. "We don't tell people to do the heptathlon or decathlon. It's let them come discover it because it is a pretty big investment training for all the events crossing over all the disciplines."

There was also the tiny matter of knowing exactly what the heptathlon was.

"I wouldn't have been able to name all the events," Fitzpatrick said. "And never in my life did I think I'd be throwing a shot put. I'd never done javelin, never done shot put. I did long jump but not really, and the 800. Never did the distance."

During her redshirt season, Fitzpatrick showed promise in a couple of relays and broke a personal best in the high jump at 5-foot-8.

"The first year she came in we were wishing she could be eligible and then the second year when she became eligible she really wasn't doing that well," said Van VanHootegem. "And like most people that don't do well, they get injuries, so she ended up limping her way to seventh or eighth in the Big 12 meet."

Fitzpatrick came back her junior season and despite some residual effects from her injuries -- stress fractures -- she scored a personal best of 5,395 points at the Texas Relays to make the NCAAs.

She entered the meet ranked 18th and finished the same, scoring 4,961 points despite taking a fall while warming up for the first event, the 100 hurdles.

This season, Fitzpatrick, who graduated in December, flirted with the school record at the Texas Relays, missing Kaleen Madden's 1993 mark of 5,642 by four points.

The next time out, at the Big 12 meet, Madden's mark didn't stand a chance as Fitzpatrick topped her personal best in five of the seven events to total 5,811 points and a silver medal.

"I was very excited about that," Fitzpatrick said. "I did more than I thought I could possibly do because if you summed all my PRs prior to that meet it wouldn't have made that score."

The mark put her at fourth going into the NCAAs, which starts on Wednesday at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, Iowa.

"A 200-point improvement then a 150-point improvement," VanHootegem said. "We feel pretty good if you continue to perform at the level you've already performed at, maybe a little better with the environment that brings out something a little better. Traditionally, her score would score at the national level."

The 5-foot-11, 23-year-old's best events are the high jump, javelin and 200 meters.

The discipline she had the most trouble in but has improved the most in is the long jump, bettering her mark of two years ago by about two feet.

"That year of me just training really helped out rather than me just being thrown into the pentathlon without the background for it," Fitzpatrick said. "It gave me a chance to work on the basics, start over at the ground level and work up."

NOTES -- One of Daphne Fitzpatrick's highlights at A&M had nothing to do with the heptathlon. She ran a leg of the hurdles relay at the Penn Relays this past season in front of 30,000. The team needed a fourth because it only had three hurdlers from the team that won the year before. "I never thought I'd be in a relay at Penn, so to be a part of one those wins is something I'll never forget," Fitzpatrick said. "The people on that team were great and even though I wasn't running the times they do they never second guessed what I could do for them." ... Fitzpatrick's club soccer team included former A&M players Amber Gnatzig, Nicole Ketchum and Whitney Hooper. Her goal against A&M tied the game at 1-1, but the Aggies went on to win 6-1. ... Fitzpatrick said if she could change one thing about the heptathlon, she'd make the 800 meters a 400.

What: NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships

When: Wednesday-Saturday

Where: Drake Stadium, Des Moines, Iowa

Favorites: Men -- Texas A&M, Florida, Florida State; Women -- Texas A&M, Oregon, LSU, Texas

Defending champs: Texas A&M in both men and women.

A&M participants: A&M will have 25 participants and will be represented in 10 events in each division.

TV: 6:30 p.m. Friday, CBS College Sports; Noon, Saturday, CBS.