May 27, 2008

LONG BEACH - The adrenaline has been pumping, full throttle, over the past few weeks for Jessica Branker.

After gearing up for the Big West Conference Track and Field Championships at Cal State Northridge two weekends ago, "it was time to buckle down and get ready for (class) finals," she said Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after going through commencement exercises, where she picked up her degree in kinesiology.

"Now it's time to hydrate, get focused and put on the spandex and running shoes," she said, alluding to her next point of focus, the NCAA West Regional Meet at Cal State Northridge today and Saturday.

Branker is one of 18 LBSU athletes - 11 men and seven women - who will compete in individual events at the meet.

The 49ers also will be represented in the men's and women's 400 relay, as well as the men's 1,600 relay.

If all goes well for Branker today during heats and Saturday during event finals, it's on to Des Moines, Iowa, in two weeks for the NCAA Championship meet at Drake University.

"And that would be a neat way to close out my stay at Long Beach," she said.

Branker, who is No. 3 on the school's all-time list in the sprints, "is the prototypical athlete in our program that we take so much pride in," LBSU Coach Andy Sythe said.

It's not as if Branker has not run into a speed bump or two along the way to Northridge this weekend, mind you.

The 2003 graduate of Temescal Canyon, where she also was a soccer standout, suffered a strained right hamstring early in the spring of what should have been her junior season two years ago and ended up being granted a medical redshirt when the injury kept her from competing in any meets.

"I basically went about eight months without running (competitively)," she said.

During that time she picked up 15 pounds and the realization of "how much I loved this sport," she said.

"It was the first injury I'd ever had. It ignited the fire and passion in me."

She'll return to the track where she clocked career-best marks (11.52 and 23.53) two weeks ago at the Big West meet.

And that is despite a bout with tendinitis in her right foot that left her on crutches for about three weeks late in the fall.

"I was freaking out," she said. "I thought it might be a stress fracture. I'm still wearing the orthotic in my shoe."

The season off taught her a lot about stress, though, and more specifically, how to avoid it.

"To me, track and field is a very spiritual thing," she said. "And I've learned to relinquish things I can't control, and control what I can control. I try to walk away from every race with a little chunk of something, good or bad, and build upon it."

She walked out of her last final in a statistics class last Thursday afternoon "with a huge smile on my face," she said. "There was hardly anyone still around on campus. It was an eerie feeling. Then I walked out on the track and there was no one there. I thought, 'Oh, my gosh ..."'

Yep. It's almost time to move on - a few weeks from now, that is.

"Running at the nationals," she said, pausing. "The last race (as a 49er) ... that's when all of this will finally sink in."