Brianna Nerud is jittery, small and soft spoken. She’s also an American record holder.

But when it comes to her ability to compete, her experience shatters her jumpy personality.

“Brianna is a little bit crazy, but she is very talented,” senior Lauren Penney said. “I think as soon as she can focus she is going to do some really big things.”

Still, in her first collegiate season, Nerud has struggled to find her niche.

Nerud holds the New York state record in the 5,000-meter run and the second-best 2,000-meter steeplechase time in the country. She has run in numerous different distance races for Syracuse this season, including the mile and 1,000-meter. But this weekend, at the Sam Howell Invitational in Princeton, N.J., Nerud is excited to run in her bread-and-butter ― the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

“I ran the race at Stanford last weekend, but it just wasn’t my day,” Nerud said. “This weekend I want to start out somewhere in the middle of the pack, see where I am and just most importantly have fun.”

In her junior year at North Shore High School in Glen Head, N.Y., Nerud qualified for the 2011 International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Youth Championships in Lille, France.

Her performances, however, didn’t catch Syracuse head coach Chris Fox’s eye at first.

The following season, Fox visited the school to scout one of Nerud’s teammates, Samantha Nadel. But during the trip, Nerud caught his eye and he invited her to visit the Syracuse campus. That October, after Nadel had signed with Georgetown, Nerud signed with the Orange.

In July after her senior season, Nerud got invited back to the IAAF World Junior Championships as a member of Team USA, this time in Barcelona, Spain.

“You feel like you are representing something so much bigger than yourself,” Nerud said. “I just went to it like I had nothing to lose.”

Using her experience from the year before, she set a personal-best time of 10:08.15 in the preliminaries ― breaking the national high school record set back in 2006.

In the finals two days later, Nerud bested her new record with a time of 10:00.72, setting the American junior and national high school record while finishing fourth in the race.

“Her success at the World’s in Spain was incredible,” Fox said. “She was a really good recruit when we signed her and then one of the best recruits after. It was the equivalent to landing Michael Carter-Williams.”

She said she even received a couple of emails after the race from other schools interested in recruiting her. But it was too late.

Nerud cracked the top five just once in the indoor season. But she has plenty of time to make her mark on the team’s outdoor campaign. This weekend, the Orange will compete in just its second meet of the outdoor season. And Nerud will be running her best event.

Her coach believes it’s only a matter of time until she is competing at an elite collegiate level.

“It’s not easy for a freshman to have an impact,” Fox said. “But she’s so good that as a freshman she will have one.”

Published on April 4, 2013 at 1:09 am

Contact Bryan: bwrubin@syr.edu