During the 2006 Patriot League Track and Field Championships, Eileen Geoghegan, Holy Cross's No. 1 thrower, bounded down the javelin runway with seven feet of metal resting in her palm. Right arm raised like the Statue of Liberty in a full sprint, the Crusader reared back and hurled her spear to impale the turf as though she had a vendetta against the innocent patch of green 100 feet away.

Then she tripped. The pole wriggled to the ground as a harmless heave.

Frustrated with an atypically short toss, she still had her third and final throw of the championships upcoming. The biology major and annual Patriot League All-Academic team selection tried to do something her strenuous academic routine didn't normally allow for.

"I tried not to think," she said. "I didn't know what to think. I just went out and threw."

With a clear mind, the Merrimac native, who earned herself an academic scholarship to the Jesuit school in Worcester, went out and broke a record. Her throw of 121-10 beat the 12-year-old Crusader record by 11 inches and established her as one of the best throwers to ever come out of Pentucket Regional High School.

That comeback performance served as the exclamation point to Geoghegan's return to track and field after a two-year hiatus.

Originally recruited out of high school to play soccer, the one-time Sachem standout donned Crusader purple for her first two years of college as a goaltender. It was a logical move for a high school goalie who set her school's record for shutouts.

During her freshman fall, after an injury to the team's senior keeper, she was thrust into the starting role and remained there for the rest of the season.

On pace to be the Crusader's last line of defense for her four years there, the strain of the many goal-kicks and punts that come with the job for a Division 1 goalie finally caught up to the underclassman.

A pulled hip-flexor muscle put Geoghegan out of commission for the beginning of her sophomore year and the starting job was handed to a freshman. Just as it had been handed to her the year before.

The bumps in the road continued for the student-athlete as the stress of her soccer commitment, coupled with a pre-med academic schedule, started to wear her down.

"It was a ton of pressure," she said. "It just wasn't fun anymore, so I quit."

Though well-rested and enjoying her time off from early-morning workouts, the former three-sport athlete at Pentucket Regional soon realized something in her life was missing.

"I was just going crazy," she said. "I really need to be able to run around. I always wished I could do track in college but never could because of soccer. Since I wasn't playing a sport anymore, I saw no reason not to try track again."

Despite the time off from the sport, Geoghegan's love of track and field never faded. She spent her summers working for Cheryl Treworgy who runs a sports photography Web site, prettysporty.com. At one time, Treworgy held the women's world record in the marathon when she clocked in at 2:49:40 during the 1971 Culver City Marathon in California.

"The job was really mundane," Geoghegan said. "But we would always talk track at work. It kept my love of track alive."

In the fall of her junior year, the Pentucket Regional record-holder in the heptathlon was anything but rusty completing the switch from hurling soccer balls to hoisting large metal objects into an open field.

Besides breaking the Holy Cross record in the javelin, she beat her high school heptathlon score, racking up 3,471 points during a home meet in the spring of 2006.

"The mental attitude in both sports is very similar," she said. "In soccer, when you get scored on, you have to put it behind you right away and make the next save. In track, if I make a bad throw, I have to just forget about it and concentrate on the next one."

Geoghegan knew that attitude would help her realize a successful comeback to the sport. Still, not everyone was expecting such a smooth transition.

"We were surprised she could come back at that point and have such a big impact," said Crusaders track and field coach Egetta Alfonso. "But she was always a very optimistic young lady and always looking to improve upon what she did."

Now, as a college graduate, she's headed to Baltimore enrolling in a Ph.D program at Johns Hopkins' School of Public Health. She was accepted as a Hopkins Sommer Scholar, which trains an elite group of students to be leaders in the field of public health. Her plan is to focus her studies on infectious diseases, particularly HIV.

Soon, this exemplary student-athlete will be helping others realize significant comeback stories of their own.



Geoghegan at a Glance

Name: Eileen Geoghegan

Hometown: Merrimac, Mass.

High school: Pentucket

College: Holy Cross

Sport: Track

Event: Javelin

Accolade: Broke Holy Cross's javelin record as a junior.

What's new: Graduated last month and will attend a Ph.D program at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the fall.