Drouin more than just the high jump

Gladstein Fieldhouse is silent. All eyes are on the 6-foot-5-inch figure standing 20 yards from the high jump bar. His body is relaxed and both feet are directly under him. His shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath. A few short, slow steps followed by several powerful strides forward, and he’s at the bar.

On the last step, he drives his foot into the ground and launches his body upward. He arches his back as he flies diagonally over and across the bar. His feet kick up just in time, and his back and neck hit the soft cushion. The momentum flips his body backward. He lands gracefully on his feet.

The crowd explodes, barely believing they just saw someone jump more than seven-and-a-half feet in the air — Cody Zeller with a soda can on his head. The athlete walks off the mat and raises his head in relief.

Derek Drouin has broken a Gladstein Fieldhouse 25-year-old record.

The IU fifth-year senior’s clearance of 2.32 meters (7-7.25 feet) is the result of years of training, sacrifice and competitive drive channeled into a single five-second block of time.

“I always wanted to be an athlete, but I waited until a sport chose me.”

Drouin hails from a small town in Ontario called Corunna. He said his elementary school offered six different sports, and he did all of them. Inspired by his older sister’s success in high jump and hurdles, Drouin figured he might be okay at that as well.

Family influence played a big part in Drouin’s development as an athlete and a person. His oldest sister, Jillian, graduated from Syracuse University as a decorated track athlete and his other sister, Alysha, graduated from Adrian College in Michigan after playing three years on a hockey scholarship.

As someone who has worked closely with Drouin for years, IU Coach Jeff Huntoon said Drouin is a product of his parents.

“He is the best of his mom and dad, without a doubt,” Huntoon said. “I think the competitive spirit that lies within him comes from his mom’s side. If two people are walking up to a door of a Wal-Mart, she’s going to be the first through the door. She’s not going to let anyone ahead of her.

“And that cool composure comes from his dad. You know he’s got all the emotions going on inwardly, but he’s laid back outwardly.”

While Drouin was obviously physically gifted, he credits his competitive drive for his early success in sports.

“I always did okay in any sport that I did,” Drouin said. “When you’re that young, competitiveness and success go hand in hand. It wasn’t really until high school that track and field emerged as something I could excel at.”

And excel he did. As a sophomore, Drouin proved he had the potential to compete at the NCAA level, but he said it wasn’t until his junior year that those kinds of thoughts entered his head.

It didn’t enter NCAA coaches’ heads until later.

Despite being a two-time Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations gold medalist in the high jump, Drouin received little attention from big schools in the NCAA.

Drouin said it wasn’t until March of his senior year that he received his first email from IU. That April, he took a visit to the campus, and in June he committed.

“Everything came on pretty late,” Drouin said. “I think at that point I had already decided I was going to school in Canada. I’d already accepted my letter of admittance and everything, so I sort of had to back out of that.

“I would consider high jumping a hobby.  Sports are a lifestyle.”

Drouin is already one of the most decorated athletes to ever call himself an IU student. He is a three-time NCAA Champion, a six-time Big Ten Champion, a four-time Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year and an Olympic bronze medalist.

Yet he is rarely recognized on campus. He never takes his Olympic medal out in public, unless it’s needed for a special event. He doesn’t walk around campus telling people who he is. He doesn’t wear the IU Athletics clothing he has — he prefers jeans.

When he came home from London last summer, Corunna threw a big parade in his honor. It’s not often that someone from a town of just 15,000 people wins an Olympic medal.

Drouin was asked after the event whether the Olympic finals or the parade were more nerve-wracking.

“Being in a parade, for sure,” Drouin said, laughing.

That kind of humility is reflected even while competing. While other competitors try to get the crowd going by clapping and stomping around before jumping, Drouin silently prepares for his jumps.

While other competitors flex their muscles and shout from excitement when clearing a high bar, Drouin will maybe flash a smile. Maybe.

Part of that modesty may stem from the fact that Drouin said he considers high jump just a hobby.

“I have a hard time calling high jump a lifestyle,” Drouin said. “For me, sports are a lifestyle. Bettering myself as an athlete, because I love to do it, not necessarily for the high jump gains, would be the lifestyle.”

For something that’s just a hobby, high jumping has brought Drouin quite a bit of success throughout his college career.

As a freshman, he finished second in the high jump at the Big Ten Indoor Championships and NCAA Indoor Championships.

His sophomore year found him winning NCAA high jump titles in both indoor and outdoor track. This made him only the second Hoosier in history to win a title indoors and outdoors in the same academic year.

Drouin’s junior year started promisingly when he won his third NCAA title in the high jump during indoor competition. But, it turned disastrous during the first outdoor meet of the season.

“It was my very last jump of the competition,” Drouin said. “I took off and didn’t realize it at the time, but I heard a pop, which is never good.

“It turned out that I had torn three ligaments in my foot. It was a pretty substantial injury, and it was going to be basically a restructuring of my foot and about a nine-month recovery.”

Drouin received a medical redshirt for the 2010-11 outdoor season (his third year at IU) and the following indoor season before rejoining the team for the 2011-12 outdoor season.

Nine months later, Drouin was still hurting. He said he finally felt like he could jump, but not without pain. Doctors had assured him he would be ready for the 2012 Olympics, but if he were to go at this point, he wouldn’t be competing without discomfort.

“That’s when I realized how big the stage was.”

Drouin said he had trained his whole life with the hope of going to the Olympics. His foot was still bothering him, but he had not come this far only to let a few torn ligaments hold him back.

Drouin had already hit the qualification marks to go to the Canadian Trials during the outdoor season leading up to that summer. Since there were only two Canadians who had done that and countries can send three athletes, there was some pressure relieved from Drouin’s shoulders.

“It’s still stressful,” Drouin said. “After I qualified at Big Ten’s, I had to keep telling myself that I’m not on the team yet. After trials it was a pretty emotional time, though.”

When the time came, Drouin traveled with the rest of Canada’s best athletes to Europe. He regretted missing the Opening Ceremonies while he was in a training camp in Germany to give him the best chance for success.

At first, it didn’t look like the camp had worked. Drouin got off to a shaky start in the preliminary round. He missed twice at 2.21 meters (7-3) before clearing that bar on his final try, a bar on which he usually is routinely successful.

He jumped 2.26 meters (7-5) on his second attempt. He then missed twice again at 2.29 meters (7-6) before clearing that to secure sixth place and a spot in the finals.
Coach Huntoon came to the rescue.

Huntoon was there with the U.S. team and had watched Derek limp into the finals. The two met up the next day to discuss what needed to be done.

“I wish I could tell you I had some magic bullet phrase I gave him,” Huntoon said. “We just talked about going back to the basics, and I told him that he’s the one still out there whose name they’re calling. He survived the hard day. Now it was time to just go out and have fun.”

If Drouin thinks Olympic medals are fun, he certainly listened to his coach. Along with jumpers from Great Britain and Qatar, Drouin was clean through 2.29 meters before three misses on 2.33 meters (7-7.75). He locked up a share of the bronze medal and took a victory lap around the stadium, wearing a Canadian flag signed by friends from Corunna.

“I like to go into competition and just be competitive.”

The silver medalist from those games was the U.S.’s own Erik Kynard Jr., Drouin’s longtime rival in the high jump. Kynard attends Kansas State University and, like Drouin, returned for his senior year en lieu of going pro.

In every way that Drouin is quiet and humble, Kynard is loud and a showman. While Drouin is the picture of consistency and mechanics, Kynard is pure athleticism and explosion. The two could not be more different.

“We’re both very competitive people,” Drouin said, finding a similarity. “We have a strong and healthy competitive spirit with each other.

“We’re two very very different competitors so it’s nice that the audience gets to see that. So they get to see two sides of the spectrum, and hopefully we put on a good competition and make it fun to watch.”

The two have competed since before Kynard was in college and have built an individual rivalry very rarely seen in college track and field.

The last time two Olympic medalists in a single event returned to compete against each other in college in that event was in 1984 between a couple 200-meter runners. The last time it happened between high jumpers was 1937.

Kynard and Drouin have split their head-to-head series 5-5 with Drouin winning three of the first five and Kynard taking three of the second five.

Currently, Kynard sits at the top of the NCAA rankings at 2.33m. He cleared that the weekend after Drouin’s 2.32m jump. Unless a dark horse emerges from the field, this looks to be a two-man race for the 2013 NCAA Indoor title.

Drouin said he tries not to pay attention to what his competition is doing and focuses on himself.

“That being said, it’s hard not to find out,” Drouin said. “It doesn’t matter what you jumped in January or February. It matters what you jumped that day. That’s why they have the meet.”

Drouin considers himself an athlete more than a high jumper. He finished third in the Big Ten heptathlon, displaying his variety of skills along the way. At the 2012 Big Ten Outdoor Championships, Drouin decided he wanted to compete in the javelin throw. He finished eighth, scoring a point for the Hoosiers.

“I don’t know how many people have seen a 6’5” beanpole hockey player, but he’s very good,” Huntoon said. “Basketball is probably the only sport he’s not good at, but he’s a lot more of a competitor in many different avenues than people would know.”

Drouin said he is just another guy who loves sports and is particularly good at one of them. While he loves track and field, he doesn’t let it dominate his life. He plays all kinds of sports and hangs out with friends whenever he can get a free moment.

But at 3:30 CST this Saturday in Fayetteville, Ark., Drouin will go for one more NCAA Indoor Championship. He said he’s finally feeling pain-free and back to normal these past few months and is ready to add to his already distinguished trophy case.

“This is a very lofty goal, but if a collegiate record came with the competition, that would be pretty awesome,” Drouin said.

Were Drouin, the Corunna kid with a hobby, to add a collegiate high jump record to his long list of accolades, he would go down as one of the top field athletes in NCAA
history.