The number sounds big: 14 freshmen women on the track and field roster. But coach Edrick Floreal says the quantity is secondary to the group's team-changing quality. And that's still not the whole story. This is a set of athletes who picked Stanford in response to what he calls the most plainspoken recruiting he ever conducted.
Join this program, he told them, and your studies and personal adjustments will be more challenging. But, he added, it also will make you a better individual and competitor, and it will make you proud. "Being admitted to Stanford is special," declares Floreal. "It's a cut above."
"He made it clear that it was going to be hard work here," says Carissa Levingston, who set Oklahoma high school records for the 100- and 200-meter dashes. Levingston appreciated both the direct talk and the incentive to perform in an elite environment. She arrived on the Farm intent on demonstrating a disciplined attitude on and off the track: "You figure out what you have to do rather than what you want to do."
That's the same approach espoused by Karynn Dunn, a long jumper/triple jumper/hurdler who wants to be pushed to her fullest potential—by her teammates as well as by her coaches. "I like being with athletes who I know could beat me," says Dunn, who was the top-rated long jumper in the nation as a high school senior in Southern California.
When Floreal decided to sell recruits on the value of proving themselves at Stanford, he knew how exacting he would sound compared to rival coaches with a glibber spiel. As it turned out, his blunt style resonated with many high achievers and enticed an impressive breadth of talent to the men's and women's teams.
Levingston has drawn particular attention because she gives the Cardinal an important added dimension. "We're traditionally not a sprint school," Floreal points out. He thinks Levingston can excel almost immediately and perhaps even qualify for the NCAA indoor championships in March. At a January meet in Albuquerque, she ran the seventh-fastest 60 meters in school history, 7.59 seconds, in the prelims and finished sixth in the final.
At the start of the year, Floreal judged that both his squads would compete strongly throughout the indoor and outdoor seasons thanks to more balanced contributions across all running, jumping and throwing events. The men's roster is even heavier on freshmen than the women's with 16, and Floreal hopes the success of his no-nonsense recruiting approach will stir a chain reaction. "One recruiting class can lead to another that's even better," he says.
Notably among the women, Floreal has sensed what he calls "the magic of that many freshmen developing a bond." They hang out together—"We might all go to one person's room," says Dunn—and they mesh comfortably. "I think we're serious when we're supposed to be serious, and other times we're just goofy and laid back," Levingston says.
They've also caught the attention of upperclassmen, who realize they've got an intense batch of up-and-comers on their heels, says Floreal. Overall, he concludes, "I think our team has become more of a team." Throughout the women's squad, proven groups of veterans are being bolstered by freshmen who have the ability to provide immediate help.
Dunn, for instance, joins two seniors, Whitney Liehr and Griffin Matthew, and two juniors, Arantxa King and Brittni Dixon-Smith, in a jumpers group Floreal calls the "backbone" of the program. Floreal also cites freshman distance runners Alex Dunne and Justine Fedronic, who add depth to a group already considered one of the team's core strengths, and Hannah Farley, a 200- and 400-meter runner.
