PASADENA, Calif.--Speeding down a track runway with a javelin in her hand, Kristen Zortman probably doesn't fit many people's mental image of a rocket scientist.
In fact, the 22-year-old California Institute of Technology senior is both a track-and-field star and a future rocket scientist. This week, Kristen is heading to the NCAA Division III track-and-field national championship in Waverly, Iowa, to compete in the javelin throw. She's also waiting to hear whether she will land her dream job as a Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer.
The first Caltech undergrad to compete in the NCAA national meet in nearly a decade, Kristen will fly with her coach, Julie Levesque, this Thursday to prepare for her Saturday morning competition. She became eligible for the nationals early in the season with a 40.84-meter throw, and then received her formal invitation when that throw stood as one of the 19 best efforts nationwide for the year.
"The NCAA sets a minimum standard, which I think is about 38.5 meters," she explains. "If you beat it, you are eligible but not guaranteed a spot, because they take the top people."
At any rate, Kristen's throw set a school record for Caltech women, and is the best effort in the elegant event since Philip Conley set the men's record of 244 feet, one inch in 1956 and then went on to compete in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne.
Kristen says her goals are a bit less lofty, though she has hopes of making a good showing. She has three specific goals for the nationals.
"My first goal is not to get last place," she says, laughing. "Second, I'd like to get into the top nine so I can move on to the final round. And then, I'll also try to get into the top six, because you become an All American if you do."
Such a distinction would be the icing on the cake for a Caltech athlete who already has had a distinguished undergraduate career in athletics. Recently named Caltech's outstanding athlete of the year, Kristen has also lettered for three years on the varsity volleyball team, and was a starter on the men's baseball team her freshman and sophomore years.
Her baseball career was inadvertent, because Caltech doesn't have a women's softball team at present. Kristen began playing softball at age nine, and as a high-school senior in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, was a starter on the state championship team. But after arriving at Caltech, she had to convert to baseball, which she says she frankly never enjoyed quite as much as softball.
Her preference was her baseball coach's loss, because Levesque eventually spotted Kristen running the 100-meter dash at an intramural event, and talked her into joining the track-and-field team. Because the baseball and track seasons overlap, Kristen decided to focus her efforts exclusively on track. In addition to the javelin, she has also tried her mettle at the sprints and sprint relays, as well as the hammer throw.
But the javelin emerged as her best event, one for which Levesque thinks Kristen is well suited physically and temperamentally.
"The javelin is all about technique," says Levesque, a three-time All American at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who finished second in the nationals in the heptathlon, which includes the javelin throw as one of its seven events. "If you try to throw a javelin far or throw it hard, it usually doesn't go far."
Being versed in the intricacies of fluid dynamics, Kristen can get rather technical with the explanation of why a javelin flies as it does. But she says her training in aerospace engineering is not really an advantage, though some people assume it should be.
"My other coach, Kate Schmidt, is a former Olympic javelin thrower who told me she had had only two perfect throws her entire life," Kristen says. "There are just so many little things that have to be absolutely perfect.
"You also have to remember that the javelin throw is not a power event like the shot put or hammer throw," she adds. "The javelin is a lot more technique because it's not a big, heavy thing-it's a light thing that interacts with the air.
"So it has flight dynamics, but I think lots of practice will get you farther than knowing lots about flight," she says.
Kristen says her motivations are primarily confidence-building and nurturing her competitive nature. "The excitement of competing is enough for me, but it's also nice to see myself improving week by week."
As for whether javelin throwing impresses the guys, Kristen says that her fiancé, for one, thinks it's "pretty cool."
"Alex is definitely proud of me, and thinks it's great that I'm getting better at it."
Written by Robert Tindol