With the sun high in the sky on one of the Marist track and field program’s favorite weekends of the year at William & Mary, senior Julia Kropo felt everything come together as she took off for her 400-meter dash.
What felt like a perfect start ended in a record-breaking finish, setting a new standard for herself and a nine-year standing program record with a time of 57.45—which is more than the amount of time Kropo got to sit before her next event.
Despite setting a new personal record, she had no time to celebrate. Her teammate brought her water, which she drank as she walked with track and field director Pete Colaizzo over to her second event. The javelin started at the same time as the 400-meter.
Still a little out of breath, Kropo joined the other throwers, who asked her what event she was coming from. She humbly said the 400-meter, and all of the girls around her replied with an overwhelming ‘oh my god.’
After just running a program best with no rest in between, Kropo tallied a personal season’s best in javelin throwing 117-5.25.
“I feel like I’m a very weird athlete,” said Kropo. “Most times they schedule it at the same time because it’s like, oh, people in the 400 aren’t gonna be throwing things.”
Kropo first threw a javelin after a high school track workout during her junior year. She refers to the moment as “one of the most random things ever.” She had just finished a super hard workout and was tired and ready to go home, as her friend Viola was having fun and throwing the javelin. She asked Kropo to “come and try it.”
Kropo credits her early softball days to her ability to throw the javelin almost naturally. Kropo’s mother, Jennifer, played softball at Fairfield University and always wanted one of her kids to play. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, but Kropo views javelin as the next best thing.
“[Javelin] reminds me of my other athletic experiences and abilities and how it’s helped build me up for this. So if I have the coordination and the understanding of the sport, let’s keep it going,” said Kropo.
During a heavy schedule of endurance and sprint training, Kropo sets aside one day to go over to Vassar and throw.
“With sprinting, I love it, but it’s really painful sometimes,” said Kropo. “There are a lot more workouts and specific things that are attributed to different parts of my race and stuff because I’m the 400. You have to be fast, but you also have to have endurance, whereas javelin is more of an outlet type thing where I really just enjoy the environment.”
As a freshman, Kropo had no real set goals when it came to her sprints; most of her goals stemmed from javelin, where she wanted to break 120 feet, which she accomplished by throwing 121 feet. Even though she was a committed Division I runner, she still lacked confidence in her abilities.
“I didn’t see myself as a very competitive runner. From my freshman times compared to now, I would have never thought I was running what I am running,” said Kropo.
With a loose goal of under 60 seconds, Kropo shaved her times each year, never believing she would be a program record holder. It was not until her junior year at Marist that she realized what she was capable of as a runner. Between feeling good after workouts and seeing her younger sister break times under 60, Kropo began to see that it was something she was capable of.
Kropo’s younger sister, Lauren, a senior in high school, is committed to run at UConn next year.
“She’s [Lauren] a very talented athlete, and it was to a point where she was breaking 60 seconds, and I was like, oh, you know, this is family, like me and you come on, I gotta do it too. So we would give each other that confidence,” said Kropo.
The day Kropo ran under 60 seconds at Boston University remains vivid in her mind. Not just because of the milestone, but the time helped shatter a mental block that had been plaguing her as a runner.
“I think that’s when all of my fears of racing just disappeared,” said Kropo.
Now, as a senior, Kropo has set a handful of school records, continuing to improve her personal best. As her days on a track team start to slow down after all these years, Kropo is making the most of her time in Poughkeepsie. She even got to be a part of the first-ever home meet for the Red Foxes.
On what will be remembered as a perfect day for the Marist program from the accolades on the track, to the alumni and families cheering on the sidelines and the sun providing a gorgeous atmosphere to complement the new facilities. Kropo and her fellow seniors felt as if they were living a dream.
“It was the best possible situation for the home meet,” said Kropo. “There were so many alumni from our freshman year and it’s just like your whole past coming back. It genuinely felt surreal because my freshman year and even last year, we would just load up into vans to practice, drive to Vassar, try and get in what we could get in without interfering with their practice. So the fact that we were able to have our track, our equipment, our home meet, it was so insane.”
Kropo said it was hard to focus on the meet as she did not feel like a real person. The day felt like a haze as she reflected on her years at Marist. This time last year, the location she was racing at did not exist. Now she was a part of the program’s long-awaited first-ever home meet. With friends, family and faculty spending the day at North Field, the day felt more personal than any other meet Kropo has experienced.
“To be so honest, it was probably the most nerve-wracking race I’ve had all year because there were so many familiar faces that weren’t just like track people…which made it special, but it made it even more, ‘oh my gosh, it’s so scary,’” said Kropo.
Nobody else could sense her nerves. At her first and last home meet, Kropo took home first place in both the 200-meter (25.47) and 400-meter (57.83) dashes as well as throwing for second-place in javelin.
As she crossed the finish line in the 400-meter, instead of taking her usual cool-down, Kropo started chatting with friends on the sidelines before it was time for her to race again. Never experiencing something like this allowed the seniors on the team to live in the moment rather than focusing on nostalgia.
The day capped off with a team huddle, spearheaded by the coach’s speeches—and then came the tears.
In any senior’s life, sometimes nostalgia can get the better of them and take them out of the moment. Kropo wants to make sure that she stays focused and appreciates these moments for what they are.
“All the seniors are going through the same experience and feeling the same things,” Kropo said. “So it’s like wow, we get those sappy moments of like, we had our last lift, it was like, ‘oh my gosh, like last time we’ll do that.’ But [we] keep reminding each other to take it for what it is because we all know we’re feeling the same thing and knowing that other people are feeling it is nice.”
Kropo will leave Marist with so many memories to hold onto, with some of her favorites coming from the 4 x 4 relay. Last year at ECAC’s in Boston, she and a group of middle-distance runners competed in the relay together.
“We just popped off a time that we did not think was gonna happen and I just remember it being such a good day and everybody being so happy,” said Kropo. “We all performed in a way that we didn’t think we could.”
The community of track and field is what drew Kropo to the sport in high school and that community continued to grow as a collegiate athlete, a part of the Red Fox Family.
Her mother’s collegiate softball career ended playing against Marist at Gartland Field, and now her daughter will end her track career surrounded by Red Foxes and the MAAC community in Emmitsburg, Maryland, for the MAAC Track & Field Outdoor Championships.
Edited by Max Rosen and Nate Shoemaker
Graphic by Xavier Angel
Photos from Marist Athletics
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