Multi-tasking a Way of Life for Wheaton College's Orewiler

Three-sport athletes in high school are becoming scarce. Two-sport athletes at the college level are even more of a rare breed.

Former Wheaton North star Jaime Orewiler, now at Wheaton College, can now say she’s accomplished both.

The 2008 Wheaton North grad became one of the girls soccer program’s all-time leading scorers with 70 goals and 39 assists. In the fall, she ran cross country and earned all-state honors her junior year after placing 23rd in the Class 3A state final. During the winter, Orewiler played basketball. She was a two-year varsity performer, coming off the bench as a reserve guard.

When Orewiler started playing for the Thunder women’s soccer team as a forward/midfielder in the fall of 2008, she set her sights on running for the track team (both indoors and outdoors) when the calendar turned to 2009. However, she tore the ACL in her left knee late in the season, so any thoughts of joining the track team were put on the shelf.

Orewiler re-joined the soccer team for the 2009 season, but going out for the track team wasn’t on her to-do list (which, as you’ll discover later, is quite long).

Soccer, track standout

Last fall, Orewiler enjoyed a banner soccer campaign in which she led the team in scoring (17 goals, 41 points), helped the Thunder advance to the NCAA Division III Sectional Semifinals with a 20-2 record and was named to every postseason Division III team imaginable (first team All-CCIW, the CCIW Player of the Year, NSCAA first-team All-American, NSCAA First Team All-Central Region, D3Soccer.com Second Team All-American).

Scott Bradley, Wheaton’s women’s track coach, also knocked on Orewiler’s door last fall. He asked her if she would like to join the track team for the 2011 season. Orewiler said yes.

Orewiler hasn’t run competitively since high school, but a quick glance at her track record so far this spring (and this past winter) proves she hasn’t lost a step, In fact, she might have gained one:

-- First place, 3,000-meter steeplechase, Concordia University-Chicago Cougar Invite.

-- First place, 800-meter run, Washington University Mini-Meet in St. Louis.

-- Second place, steeplechase, NCC First Chance Invitational.

-- Second place, 1-mile run, Rhodes College Open in Memphis, Tenn.

-- Second place, 5,000-meter run, CCIW indoor track championships.

-- Part of Wheaton College’s distance medley relay team that took third at the Chicagoland Indoor track championships.

Orewiler’s all-around athleticism particularly shines through in the steeplechase, one of track and field’s most unique, if not most unusual, events. In the steeplechase, runners have to jump over four short barriers (similar to hurdles) and a water pit while covering the 3,000-meter distance.

“According to our track coach, soccer players make the best steeplechasers. I don’t know where he got that information from,” Orewiler laughs. “It’s a good distance for me. I ran the 3,000 meters indoors and probably did the best in that event of all (the events) I’ve tried. It’s definitely a different race. It keeps you more engaged because you’re thinking about jumping over stuff all the time.”

An All-American in the classroom, too

Not that Orewiler doesn’t have enough on her mind outside of track and soccer. This semester, Orewiler, who’s a double major in math and French, is taking three math classes—probability and statistics, modern algebra and geometry—a linguistics course and a course titled “French Senior Seminar,” which she describes as the last class one can take in the French curriculum at Wheaton.

“It’s probably my hardest semester yet,” she says.

Just for fun, Orewiler also has taken a semester of Spanish and three semesters of Greek.

“I just really like learning languages,” she said. “It’s really cool.”

Orewiler has achieved All-American status in the classroom, as well. She sports a 3.57 GPA and was named last November as an ESPN Academic All-American in Women’s Soccer.

Orewiler’s dizzying schedule—a full load of classes, track practice three times per week and meets nearly every Saturday—includes an additional activity: Somehow she manages to squeeze in 20 off-season soccer practices that take place starting just after spring break until the end of the spring semester (which ends next week at Wheaton).

How does she keep it all straight? Orewiler explains:

“It does take some planning to figure out how to get all your classwork done,” she said, “but the coaches and professors are very understanding. They want to make it work so that helps out a lot. The track coach and the soccer coach (Pete Felske) work out a schedule so I don’t have to miss off-season soccer practices or track.”

Her success on the track notwithstanding, soccer remains Orewiler’s No. 1 athletic endeavor. With only one senior graduating from last year’s squad, Wheaton College will likely be among the nation’s top-ranked teams going into the 2011 season.

Orewiler would like nothing more than to be part of a team that makes it to the Division III Final Four and give the program its first national championship since 2007.

“We have a pretty good foundation back for next year,” said Orewiler, who is teammates once again at Wheaton College with defender Erin Strom, a former teammate at Wheaton North. “Obviously it would be great to win the national championship, but that’s our starting point—to work towards that.”