Most people told Donald Pollitt he was too tall to run hurdles at the collegiate level. Most schools didn’t recruit him for that reason.

Syracuse was the exception.

‘Everybody told me that recruited me that because of my height, I probably won’t be that good of a 42-inch hurdler,’ Pollitt said. ‘With (assistant) coach Dave (Hegland), it was different. With him, it was like, ‘If you work hard, it’ll be just like doing 39 (inches) in a few months.”

And Pollitt has made the Orange coaching staff look good for taking that chance. The freshman took home first place in the men’s 60-meter hurdles at the Cornell Upstate Challenge in his first race after the long Winter Break layoff. Pollitt was a two-time Pennsylvania state champion in the hurdles in high school and is one of a talented group of freshmen making an immediate contribution for Syracuse.

Part of what helped Pollitt be so successful at Cornell was his decision to stay on campus for Winter Break. He took full advantage of the Syracuse indoor training facilities.

‘I stayed up here because I had that advantage to stay up here with the better facilities,’ Pollitt said. ‘In high school I didn’t do indoor track, but here in college you get to train year-round and don’t have to worry about the weather.’

Pollitt hasn’t been the only freshman to have success either. Ashley Keyes has been an immediate contributor as well.

The freshman placed first in the women’s 60-meter dash at Cornell for SU. And she didn’t even stay on campus during Winter Break. The layoff may have set her back a little bit training-wise, but she didn’t show it in her first meet of the spring semester.

‘You don’t have the facilities at home that you do here, but it’s all about the personal motivation,’ Keyes said.

When runners like Pollitt and Keyes come in, it does not take coaches long to realize their potential. While some athletes are still growing when they come into college, others enter the collegiate ranks with the talent to compete at the same level as upperclassmen right away.

‘On the top end, it’s really pretty easy to tell who’s going to be great, but it’s not always easy to tell who has the ability to be great,’ Hegland said. ‘So many things happen between the ages of 18 and 22 that makes it hard to predict.’

For some freshmen, unlike Pollitt and Keyes, the transition to college life gets in the way of the transition from high school to college athletics. Those who struggle to adjust to college life will experience a learning period on the track as well.

As the season grinds on, the stress of the long collegiate season will test the freshmen. With tougher workout regimens and a longer schedule, freshmen are at risk of running into the ‘rookie wall,’ and their performance may dip in the stretch run.

For Hegland, though, he hopes Pollitt and Keyes can continue to stay ahead of the game and avoid that wall.

‘Freshmen are still just getting adjusted to college life,’ Hegland said. ‘Obviously the typical lifestyle is not conducive to being a successful runner, so the sooner they figure that out, the sooner they can start learning. For some people, that takes a year or two, and some never figure that out.’

dbwilson@syr.edu