By MARK MOSCHETTI

SEATTLE – Why be content with doing just one thing when you can do two? Or why do just two things …
 
… when you can do seven?
 
Linnea Jarvits embraced those opportunities in a positively productive way at Seattle Pacific.
Recruited as a basketball player, she became a star shooting guard for the Falcons, eventually helping them reach the NCAA women's tournament for the first time, and a couple of seasons later, capture their first conference championship.
 
When hoops season was done, Jarvits could be found at the track, usually long jumping, until she turned her attention to the heptathlon and became a national-caliber competitor.
The awards started to stack up: All-American twice in basketball. All-Region twice, too. All-American in the hep. SPU Athlete of the Year.
 
Jarvits soon will be back on campus to bask in the glow of another honor when she is enshrined into the SPU Athletics Hall of Fame.
 
The ceremony for her and six other inductees will take place in the E.E. Bach Theater on Saturday, Feb. 7, at 10:00 a.m. It is free and open to the public.
 
"I'm tickled pink. It was a lovely surprise," Jarvits said upon learning of her selection to the Hall.
SPU women's basketball head coach Karen Byers said someone such as Jarvits can be a touchstone for her own current players nearly 30 years after Jarvits was out there on the Brougham Pavilion court.
 
"I think (her induction) serves as a reference point for those who are looking to accomplish big things," Byers said. "You see an athlete who has been there, and you can accomplish that, too. We're pretty proud to see a female athlete, a dual athlete, receive that award. That's an impressive accomplishment."
 
FROM ONE OF THE BEST IN BASKETBALL …
It doesn't seem like that long ago when most kids grew up playing or doing more than one sport.
 
Then came the age of specialization, and multi-sporters became fewer and farther between. They've mostly faded out at the high school level, and, with rare exceptions, are nowhere to be seen at the college level.
 
Jarvits turned out to be one of those exceptions.
 
At Peninsula High School in Gig Harbor, across Puget Sound from Seattle, basketball was her primary sport. She also played softball for three years. Coming off an ankle injury in basketball, she decided, late in her senior year, to give track a try, "and I did quite well at it."
 
Quite well, indeed. She qualified for the Washington state meet in the high jump, long jump, javelin, and was on a 4-by-400 relay that qualified.
 
"I didn't really do track until the last five weeks of my senior year (at Peninsula)," Jarvits said. "I liked track; I just didn't have much experience with it."
 
Recruited by SPU for basketball, that was initially her sole intention for college athletics. But then …
 
"Coach (Ken) Foreman used to poke his head into basketball practice and ask if I wanted to do track in the spring," she recalled with a bit of a laugh. "He'd come in and say, 'Hey, if you want, you can come in the spring.'
 
"Coach Gordy (Presnell) encouraged me to do it," Jarvits said. "He gave me full leeway and latitude not to go to spring workouts and do track stuff."
 
Of course, hoops was still her big thing, and Jarvits shined. As a sophomore during the 1994-95 season, she helped the Falcons go 21-8 and earn their first trip to the NCAA Tournament. As a senior in 1996-97, they went 26-3 and won the Pacific West Conference title – their first time of finishing atop the standings.
 
During her junior year, she set what still stands as a single-game school record when she broke loose for 41 points in a non-conference contest against Cal Poly Pomona.
 
"My role was just to score baskets at the 2 (shooting guard) spot – that's what they wanted me to do," said Jarvits, now 50 and a paralegal at the Gates Foundation for the past 25 years. "As I got older, I was really good in pressure situations. It's a confidence thing, where maybe as a freshman or sophomore, I would have shied away (from that). … Even as an adult, I enjoy pressure situations."
 
… TO ONE OF THE TOP IN TRACK
Her role on the track was primarily in the long jump as a freshman in 1994 and as a redshirt sophomore in 1996. (She missed the 1995 season with an injury.) Coach Ken Foreman approached her about trying the heptathlon, but as Jarvits recalled, "It was too much with basketball."
 
But by 1997, her basketball career was complete, and her focus was on track. Toward the end of that season, she did her first hep.
 
"It went OK – I didn't have any experience at most of the events," Jarvits said. "I remember coming out of the starting blocks on Tuesday, going over two hurdles. By Friday, I was looking at 10 hurdles (in the opening 100-meter hurdles event), and that was intimidating."
 
A week later, Jarvits tried the hep again and beat the NCAA provisional qualifying score. By her redshirt senior season in 1998, she was not only beating the qualifying score, she was beating most of the competition. Jarvits made the cut for NCAAs and placed an All-American third with 4,900 points.
 
Jarvits said she never had any hesitation to keep pursuing both sports.
"I was equally enamored with both because they were quite different," she said. "Basketball, I really loved because it was a team sport and I was doing something really meaningful with teammates. Track was more of an individual experience, which was nice because I could challenge myself.
 
"(Doing both) was a great fit, and I was really athletic for my age. It was just something I really wanted to do."
 
Former SPU track coach Jack Hoyt said he could see Jarvits' basketball prowess even on the track – her high jump looked like she was going for a lay-up; her sprinting looked like she was running downcourt on the fast break.
 
"Everything she did, she looked like an athlete, but not like a track and field athlete," he said.
 
"And she was still at that national level. In her fifth year, she was track only, and that was a big difference from having her train all year with the hep group. At that point, she really embraced track and wanted to see how far she could take it. She really became a track athlete that year."
 
Jarvits and the other six new Hall of Famers will be honored at both basketball games in
Brougham Pavilion after the induction ceremony. The women play Saint Martin's at 2:00 p.m., followed by the men against Western Washington at 4:15.
 
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