Where is all this going for Notre Dame track and field standout Jadin O'Brien?

SOUTH BEND — Blame it on bowling. 

Blame it on that alley in suburban Milwaukee, and all it entails. The pins being set up, then being knocked down, then being reset. Commotion at the snack bar. The soundtrack of fun from young and old and everyone wearing those silly shoes and smiles. A cacophony of chaos. 

It was the genesis of a competitive drive that fuels Notre Dame track and field standout Jadin O’Brien. Everything she is today, everything she’s done in track and field, and she’s done a lot, can be traced back to that day at that bowling alley with her mother and her father and her six siblings. 

The second oldest, O’Brien was there that day to celebrate older brother Shane’s birthday. Roll some strikes, snare some spares, have some birthday cake and open some presents. Be a kid. Then it all went sideways. Something in O’Brien snapped and it turned the day upside down. 

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Every approach, every shot, every frame meant everything to her. To her brother. It was a competition with nothing at stake, but, really, with everything at stake. 

It got so heated that brother and sister had to be separated, sent to their own individual timeouts. O’Brien had to go over there. Her brother had to stay over here. A fun day wasn’t that fun anymore. 

O’Brien’s brother was seven years old. She was five. 

Five. 

“I was beating him, and he just had a fit,” O’Brien recalled on campus in between another hectic schedule of workouts and class and more workouts and other obligations. “Everything is a competition in my family, but it’s good-natured fun (most of the time). We beat each other up, but we love each other at the same time. It keeps it fun. It keeps it competitive. 

“We feed off each other. They have pushed me to be who I am today.” 

Who is she? A driven, determined, dominant athlete in her discipline. O’Brien was destined to enter the athletics arena. That gene pool runs deep in her family. Her mother, Leslie, ran track (400 hurdles) at Bowling Green State University. Her father, Kevin, was a two-time All-Mid-American first team linebacker at BG. He had cups of NFL coffee with the Buffalo Bills (1993) and the New England Patriots (1995). He was first team All-World Football League in 1995 as a member of the Barcelona Dragons. 

O’Brien gets her competitiveness, her determination to dominate from her parents. But... 

“I’ve definitely taken it overboard,” she said. 

O’Brien centered her athletic emphasis on three sports — soccer, cross country and basketball. She loved soccer. She loved cross country. She especially loved basketball. 

“I,” she said, “was a big baller.” 

Track and field? O’Brien never gave it the time of day. Didn’t know much about it. Didn’t bother to know it. It was soccer, cross country and basketball and that was enough. 

“Track, honestly, for most of my life, was an afterthought,” she said. “I kind of thought of that sport as conditioning for other sports.” 

When her first year of high school at Divine Savior Holy Angels in Milwaukee arrived, O’Brien hit the soccer wall. Tired of all the games and the travel and everything else, she weighed her options. 

“Mom said, ‘You should focus on track; you could be really good at it,’” O’Brien said. “I was like, ‘Ok, mom. Sure.’” 

Mom was right. Oh, was she right. That first year, O’Brien won state in the 30 hurdles. She was all in. 

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It was obvious that she was different

O’Brien’s mother saw something in her oldest daughter. So did Notre Dame track and field assistant coach Rodney Zuyderwyk. Seated in the O’Brien family home on a recruiting visit, the guy that O’Brien calls Coach Z listened as she outlined her goals. She wanted to do this. She wanted to be that. She wanted to take track as far as it could go. To college, then to the Olympics, then, ultimately, professionally. 

“She’s always had big goals,” Zuyderwyk said. “When I started recruiting her, she told me right away her big goals. She can go all the way.” 

Zuyderwyk saw something that day in O’Brien that he still sees today. Physically, she’s bedrock solid. She can run and train from sunrise to sunset, and sometimes tries to do just that. She’s strong. Emotionally and physically. She’s driven, to the point where he sometimes must dial her down. Like, take a day off. No? OK, then take an hour off. 

All that, coupled with that determination to never lose, and you’ve got someone who is a seven-time All-American and a two-time indoor national champion in the pentathlon. 

That she won the event for the first time in 2023 was a surprise. That she did it again last month was surreal. 

A stress reaction in her shin turned into a stress fracture and limited most of the fall outdoor season to biking and swimming and some lifting. Even that was difficult because O’Brien also had a torn ligament in her elbow. A confidence that had been so sturdy was shaken. There was doubt. There was stress. There was, as O’Brien put it “chaos.” 

Still, as the Atlantic Coast Conference indoor competition in Boston neared in late February, O’Brien was locked in. With her faith; with her focus. Three weeks out, she tweaked her hamstring. Check that. O’Brien strained it so severely that there were fears that it was torn. 

“I was like, ‘You have got to be kidding me,’” she said. 

For two and a half weeks inside that 21-day run-up to ACCs, O’Brien could barely jog. Sprinting was out. Hurdles? Yeah, right. The laundry list of don'ts dominated her days. How could she hurdle? How could she get out of the blocks with any burst? How could she leap? How could she compete? 

The five events of pentathlon are (in order) the 60m hurdles, high jump, shot put, long jump and 800m. As ACCs closed quickly, O’Brien could do none of them to her standard. 

“All those negative thoughts,” she said, “were bombarding me.” 

Chaos. 

O’Brien collected them, collected herself and promptly finished first in the pentathlon at the ACC meet. She placed first in three events and top five in all five. That confidence returned and jet-streamed her into nationals in early March where she was the defending champion. Who were the other 15 in the 16-competitor field? O’Brien didn’t care. Didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. 

That’s how she rolls. Shut out outside noise, tune out distraction and focus. She’s easy to spot at meets. Headphones (when allowed) on, Celtic warfare music bouncing through her ears. Away from everyone and lost in her thoughts, she’ll pray to “get her head right.” Mom and Dad know not to go near her. Not to talk to her. Not to even wave to her. 

“The less I know, the less I’ll think about it and the more I can do,” O’Brien said. “I go into competition with the mindset of ignorance is bliss.” 

Driven. Determined. Dominant. 

Moments before the 800, the pentathlon’s final and most demanding event, O’Brien remained in her own world. She didn’t know what score she needed to repeat. She didn’t know how the rest of the field had fared. When the 800 was over, O’Brien had finished second in the race and first in the pentathlon with a facility meet record of 4,497 points. 

Her repeat was complete. 

“Winning it the second time almost meant more because I knew how hard it was to get there and I knew what the odds were,” O’Brien said. “There was a bigger chance that I was not going to win. There were so many reasons why I shouldn’t have won nationals, but I beat those odds.” 

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Gearing up for the next challenge

It’s a dreary early April day on campus. The sky is thick with clouds that drop occasional rain. The wind from the south is relentless. It’s cold. It’s raw. Really, it’s miserable, even by Northern Indiana spring standards. 

It’s 12:15 in the afternoon and O’Brien has had a full day. Her first workout – high jump and long jump practice – started at 8:15 a.m. She did some hurdles, then got on the bike. She went from there to lift weights for 90 minutes. For her, that was a “fast” workout. A shower followed before hustling to the Joyce Center to sit for a 25-minute interview that had a hard “out” (finish time) of 12:30 because, naturally, there was still more for her to do. 

She looks like someone with much on her mind. 

“It’s a lot,” O’Brien admitted. “It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of focus, but I love it. I love the grind, love how intense it is. I love that not everyone can do this.” 

O’Brien can do this. She’s built for this. There are days when the alarm chirps and she’ll pause for a moment. Like, maybe it be best if she crawled back under the covers, took a personal day. Didn’t worry about having to tweak this or perfect that in her training. That moment passes, and she’s headed back out the door, back to the Loftus Center, back to train. Back on the grind. 

Repeating as indoor champion allowed O’Brien to take a five-day break to get away. She usually works out six days a week. It used to be seven. She was encouraged, then convinced, to take Sundays off. Sometimes she did. Now she does. A text message from Coach Z will remind her to listen to her body, to ease off the throttle. She will. Reluctantly. 

“By the time you hit Sunday, I can’t get out of bed,” she said. “You just want to stay there.” 

O’Brien doesn’t stay anywhere for long. There’s always somewhere to be. Another workout. Another lift. Another class. A senior academically, O’Brien has one more year of athletic eligibility if she chooses. On this day, she chooses, insisting that she plans to return for one more year to compete and complete her Master’s in non-profit administration. Then she’ll turn pro. With what’s coming on the calendar, though, that could change. 

Heptathlon (seven events) trials for the 2024 Paris Olympics are June 23-24 in Eugene, Oregon. O’Brien competed in the trials for the 2020 (really, 2021) Tokyo Olympics. She didn’t know what she didn’t know then and finished 12th. She knows now. She’s qualified to compete. She’ll compete. 

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Like at ACCs, like at indoor nationals, O’Brien will put herself in the best position to do her best. To be her best. Maybe it pays off with a top-three finish and a roster spot for the Olympics. Maybe it opens doors that she never thought would open. Maybe she’s good, but maybe not good enough. 

The effort, though, will be there. It's always there. It was there at ACCs. It was there at indoor nationals. It happened because O’Brien made it happen. She also had some help. That came in a daily phone call with one question from daughter to mother. 

“Can you tell me that it’s going to be OK?’” O’Brien said. “Every single day it was, ‘Jadin, you’re going to be OK. You’re going to do great.’” 

For more motivation at nationals, O’Brien received five text messages of affirmation from her five ride-or-die friends. 

You’re doing great 

You’re working so hard 

We love you 

You’re awesome 

It’s going to pay off 

It paid off. Her focus was strong. Her faith was stronger. 

“Despite how I was feeling inside, I saw that people believed in me,” O’Brien said. “Despite the odds, give it your best shot. It was worth it to go through all that pain. It was worth it to go through all that mental strain, all that doubt, because this is what I was able to do. 

“It was worth it.” 

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact: (574) 235-6153.