Norwin grad Aleks Brozeski delivers championship performance at PSAC indoor meet

After Slippery Rock sophomore Aleks Brozeski won the PSAC championship in the women’s indoor triple jump, her event coach, Tabitha Bemis, was asked about the victory by one of her fellow coaches.

The Norwin grad’s performance came as a bit of a surprise. On paper, at least. Brozeski entered the event seeded seventh but wound up on top of the podium after reaching 11.78 meters, a personal best.

Bemis thought for a moment, and the only response that came to her mind was: “It was loading.”

By “loading,” the second-year assistant coach meant she believed Brozeski had been building toward that performance for some time. She just happened to deliver it at the perfect moment.

“I kind of knew that she was capable of it,” said Bemis, a PIAA Class 2A champion in the 100 hurdles and long jump at Quaker Valley. “It was just: When is she going to put it together? All of these things started to click. … It was ready. It was there. It was just: Are we going to do it all at the same time?”

Said Brozeski: “I had some nerves going into the competition. But I looked at my competition, and I looked at their numbers and I told myself that even though I was seeded a little bit lower than I would have liked to have been going into it, I knew that I could jump and be up there with the other girls.”

Brozeski said the build-up to her title-winning jump started a couple of weeks before the PSAC meet. She was coming off what she considered to be a sub-par performance in the triple jump, so she sat down with Bemis to watch video and dissect exactly what was holding her back.

One habit Brozeski has been trying to break for some time is the tendency to point her toes through each phase of the triple jump. That, she said, comes from being a dancer in her youth, and she still lapses into it once in a while.

She has had to learn to stay more flat-footed through her motions to help maximize distance and minimize injury.

Bemis also pointed out that, during the first phase of Brozeski’s jumps, her legs weren’t always getting into the correct positions. They drilled that portion of the skills fervently as PSACs approached.

Brozeski credited Bemis with a big part of her success, which also includes a third-place finish in the PSAC outdoor triple jump last spring.

“I think the biggest thing is she is able to gauge all her athletes’ emotions and is able to be there for what we need at the time,” Brozeski said. “Everybody has their own things and cues that they have that she knows and remembers, which is really awesome and helpful during practice.

“She can be talking to one person and watching somebody else jump and immediately know what they have to do to fix their jump. I give a lot of props to her.”

Brozeski, meanwhile, has become a help to Bemis. The coach said she uses Brozeski as the “temperature gauge” of the jumpers: “I can tell if we’re doing too much of something or not enough of something based on where she’s at in terms of training.”

On a more tangible level, Bemis said Brozeski has all the makings of a successful jumper: height, speed and, of course, natural jumping ability. But it is her mental strength, Bemis said, that sets Brozeski apart.

“She always approaches it with an open mind,” Bemis said. “She’s not too flustered in the moment. … She just kind of rolls with the punches and knows, ‘I’m going to have my good days, and I’m going to have my bad days but I’m going to give 100% effort on every one of those.’ ”

Brozeski said her cool demeanor comes from growing up in a sports family. Both of her parents were college athletes, and her father, Dave, served nine seasons as Norwin’s football coach.

The biggest lesson she learned, she said, was there’s always the next jump and no matter what happened on the previous jump — good or bad — it is in the past and can’t affect the next one.

“That’s definitely a mindset that has helped me a ton throughout competing,” she said.

Brozeski’s “next” is outdoor season, which got underway with a pair of meets in Myrtle Beach, S.C. With the PSAC indoor championship fresh in her mind, she is setting her sights on bigger goals.

She said she always envisioned qualifying for the NCAA championships, and now that seems like it could become reality sooner rather than later.

Brozeski wants to reach 12 meters (about 39 feet, 4 inches) this spring as well as win a conference outdoor title to match her indoor title.

In the bigger picture, she said she would like to try to equal or surpass her coach’s college marks. While at Edinboro, where she earned All-American status in the indoor hurdles, Bemis set the Fighting Scots marks in the women’s indoor triple jump (12.44 meters) and outdoor triple jump (12.88).

Bemis said she would be OK with that. In fact, she almost expects it.

Besides having one of her fellow coaches ask about Brozeski’s PSAC title, Bemis also had one of her athletes comment on Brozeski’s performance and how good it was. Bemis agreed but with a caveat.

“I was like, ‘Yep. And there’s still more to work on.’ ”