After recovering from injury, Buice to compete in 1st meet since February
Jon Buice still can’t stand running.
‘Seriously,’ Buice said. ‘I hate it. I am not the swiftest person at all, but the 1500s, those kill me.’
After tearing the labrum in his right hip in a high jump leap last season, the senior pentathlete is still trying to find his groove.
Three months of rehab, one summer surgery, and a hurdle re-injury later, Buice is still trying to get back to full strength. With much more time for competing and far less as a spectator, Buice will take part in his first outdoor competition – his first overall meet since February – this weekend at the Arizona State Sun Angel Relays.
Though there might be occasional pain, Buice is not willing to classify the injury as a hindrance. Still, with the 60-meter dash, the long jump, the shot put, the high jump, the hurdles and the 1,000 meters, any given weekend can be a strenuous test for a rehabbing pentathlete.
With Buice currently at about 75 percent, assistant coach Dave Hegland was proud of the progress he has seen from him since the winter months.
‘Now that he’s healthy, he’s looking forward to get down there and doing some good things,’ Hegland said. ‘Everybody has to get comfortable. A lot of this prep is for our postseason meets.’
The meet looked at with perhaps most urgency is the Big East Outdoor Championships starting on April 30. Buice is looking to take first place in the decathlon and recapture the formula for success that he found last season. Buice broke his own school heptathlon record as junior last February in a second-place performance at the Big East Championships with a total of 5,399 points.
‘That was overwhelming,’ Buice said. ‘It’s strange, you train for these types of things but you may never, ever have a perfect day. But I had pretty close to a perfect day. When you put it all together, it couldn’t of been better.’
Buice does not view the transition from seven to 10 events as a drastic one. Instead, he is mostly concerned with all the running involved. Long-distance running in particular should test his healing leg, but Buice maintains a certain level of understanding.
‘It’s not that I look at it to beat it (the 1,500 meters), it’s just it’s the last event,’ Buice said. ‘It’s not hard to finish, it’s just terrible exercise. It’s all endurance.’
Perseverance is not a foreign concept to Buice, who has seen the field just once during his final year. Reflecting on his career at SU and looking forward to any possible benchmarks for the remainder of his senior season, Buice is able to keep everything in perspective.
‘I just want to make coach happy,’ Buice said.
Assistant coach Enoch Borozinski was a multi-event athlete himself and won an NCAA national championship as a decathlete at Nevada-Reno in 1994. With his players currently holding 10 school records in field events, Buice understands the opportunity in front of him.
Borozinski, however, will not be the only happy coach if Buice can bring home another Big East title and break the decathlon record.
SU head coach Chris Fox has seen Buice grow from a ‘scrawny’ high school high-jumper into a dominant multi-event force, and is excited to see what he can do in the upcoming meets.
‘He’s put a lot of work in the weight room,’ Fox said. ‘He’s a tough kid, and definitely the type you want in your program.’
