Jen Barringer: Wired For Anything

by Marc Bloom

Jennifer Barringer, a senior at Oviedo High in Florida, is only 18 but seems to have lived a lifetime. As a child, she survived a life-threatening respiratory illness, and no one thought she'd become an athlete, much less a national-caliber distance runner. Last summer, when she needed to train for her senior year, Barringer endured major surgery on her jaw. For a month, she couldn't run or eat solid foods.

Not to worry. Barringer is not your average 18-year-old.

And not just because she was 3rd and 10th in the last two Foot Locker cross-country nationals, ran a 4:49.01 mile and 10:18.84 3200 meters on the track last season and has collected six state titles, including last fall's Florida 6A cross-country title by 57 seconds in 17:08 for 5k.

Her running is the least of it. Well, maybe not, because running (as Jen will tell you) sort of leads to everything else.

Speaking of running, Jen trains with her 37-year-old Oviedo coach Jay Getty, a former college runner. After college, Getty let himself go, and now he's in great shape again, thanks to Jen, who calls him her "project." Jay coaches Jen. And Jen coaches Jay.

Welcome to Jen World.

Jen earned a berth on the U.S. team for the world cross-country meet in Brussels, Belgium last March. In the junior women's 6,000-meter race, Jen placed 35th in the field of 115. In her diary entry before the meet, Jen wrote, "We check out the city and get ourselves some Belgian waffles. Unless my race is phenomenal, this could contend for the best part of the trip."

In Belgium, Getty, not much of a traveler, would have starved if not for Jen, who takes AP French and could translate in restaurants. "I'm so into French," she says.

Ooops. That could hurt her down the road because she aspires to be a U.S. senator, not exactly a French-friendly organization.

But back to Belgium. Jen and Jay are walking the streets of Brussels, and Jay is freaking out, asking, "Where are the chickens?"

Seems in Oviedo they have these chickens running wild and bumper stickers proclaiming, "I break for Oviedo chickens."

Jen says Jay is funny. Jay says Jen is amazing. "Light years ahead of everybody."

Amazing?

You mean just because when she finally could run again after the surgery she had to stop after 16 minutes in exhaustion, and still went on to win state and contend for the Foot Locker nationals?

Or is it because she's copy-edited a textbook written by her father, a college professor who Jen says is the source of her confidence, maturity and worldliness?

Or is it because she wants to study political science in college and go on to public office and is clearly a better debater than many of last year's political candidates.

Or is it because she's not only into French but literature and reads Virginia Wolff and Tennessee Williams, who Jen praises for being "so out there."

Or is it that she knows signing and signs at church on Sundays for deaf worshippers, who now include more young people who come because of Jen's influence?

Or because she plays classical piano and performs in recitals, like the one she did last Christmas season a few days before winning the Foot Locker South Regional?

"I'm very organized," she says. "That's funny, because my room is extremely cluttered."

When Jen gets going, on the run or in conversation, you can't stop her. "On an easy run, I will talk non-stop," she says.

Really? Jen says things like:

"French has helped me more with my English than you'd believe."

"I developed TMJ and gum disease. My gums are exposed to the air because I smile a lot."

"In the hospital, my jaw was wired shut and I couldn't talk. I started using signing. They brought in a friend of mine who knows signing to communicate. No joke."

"In 4th-grade, I had a respiratory disease, histo-plasmosis. You can die from that. My mom's a nurse. She took care of me."

"I love fish. Salmon, in any form."

"I know stuff that I probably shouldn't know because I'm 18 years old."

Coach Getty would agree with that but still feared how the jaw surgery would impact on his star. "July was the scariest month of my coaching." Jen had the operation on June 28. She lost feeling in her face. Her jaw was wired shut.

She couldn't run.

She couldn't talk.

Which was worse?

"We had to exorcise the demons," said Getty.

Once Jen did, she was flying high, running repeat miles in 5:18, 5:25 and 5:18, winning cross-country races, working on her French, literature, piano, politics, signing, chasing the chickens, and eating salmon.

Jen's got her college choices down to North Carolina State, Duke, Notre Dame and Colorado, in no particular order. The lucky coach will have to be ready for Jen World.

Jen said that she didn't have to have the jaw surgery this year, but, if not, doctors said it would probably have to be done in four years. "Then I'll be trying to make the Olympic Trials," says Jen. "I had to get it over with."

Jan Barringer is going on to Colorado University.

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