St. Francis` Driscoll Is Athlete Of Year

Multisport Star Tries To Be More Than Just A `Jock`

June 21, 1992|By Bob Sakamoto.

The first stories you hear about Jennie Driscoll always deal with sports, so much so that you imagine the 22 1/2-inch, 10-pound-13-ounce baby girl posting up other newborns in the hospital nursery.

It`s almost as if, before she even had a chance to be a little girl, she was an athlete.

There`s the story of Ray Meyer`s basketball camp at Three Lakes, Wis., where Jennie played one summer thanks to her father`s sports connections.

Seems Jennie scored quickly on two putbacks in the first scrimmage, and Meyer hollered out for somebody to cover her.

``Which one is she?`` shouted one camper.

``The one without the earring,`` Meyer shouted back.

There was the time Jennie and St. Francis boys basketball center Matt Hill met Charles Barkley at a popular downtown sports restaurant. Barkley noticed Hill`s height and asked if he was a player.

``Yeah, and so is she,`` Hill replied. ``She`s got better stats.``

``The girl has better stats than you?`` Barkley exclaimed.

``Hey, this girl has better stats than you,`` Hill shot back.

When it came to athletics, there was none better this school year than St. Francis volleyball and basketball All-Stater Jennie Driscoll. Considered one of the top middle hitters in the country, she helped the Spartans to the Class A state volleyball title and was second-team All-State.

And as a 5-foot-11-inch basketball center, she averaged 16 points and 15 rebounds to earn first-team All-State honors. She led the Spartans to the state quarterfinals for the first time, and her 1,484 career rebound total is the fourth highest in state history.

For all that, Driscoll is the 10th Tribune Athlete of the Year.

Her accomplishments were enough to outshine some tough competition. Naperville North`s Mike Renella was a two-time state champion wrestler and an All-State soccer player. Proviso West`s Kerwin Badie is one of the top sprinters in Illinois track history; he also played football well enough to earn a scholarship to Wisconsin.

Others who merited consideration were Warren`s Craig Shelton, Stevenson`s Chris Piggott, Oak Park`s Dani Tyler, Lyons Township`s Will Lepsi, Loyola`s Peter Patton, Driscoll`s John Mika and Glenbrook North`s Chris Collins.

Driscoll emerged on top after two outstanding seasons, one right after the other. She came close to becoming that rare athlete who wins two state championships in the same school year.

Being that capable in athletics put Driscoll in danger of falling into a trap-the one that would have pigeonholed her as an athlete and nothing more. That`s not something she wanted.

``It`s very easy to get caught up in that image of the super athlete,``

Jennie said. ``It`s a feeling like, `I`m going to be No. 42 for the rest of my life.` People treat you like gold.

``You`ll get breaks from teachers who come to your games. It got to the point where I`d ask for an extra day to turn in an assignment even though I`d had plenty of time. Then, you`d go out and have pizza with your friends.``

Her first two years at St. Francis, about the only time Jennie wasn`t involved in sports was when she was sleeping. There was volleyball, basketball and then an intense off-season volleyball program that consumed 30 hours a week. Olympic volleyball assistant coach Rick Butler, who runs the Sports Performance program, constantly told Jennie if she specialized in volleyball, she`d be the best middle hitter in the country by her senior year.

But sometime during her junior year, a little voice inside Jennie said it was time for a change.

``I guess I was getting tired of just being a jock, of that image,``

Jennie said. ``That`s all everybody knew me as. Part of me wanted the world to know there`s this nice young lady inside here just waiting to come out.``

In trying to resolve this inner conflict, she would sometimes lash out at her parents. Her level of play dipped and she pretended like she didn`t care. She began to realize that for all her friends, hardly anybody knew the real Jennie Driscoll.

So, she said goodbye to Sports Performance in the spring of her junior year and hello to a normal life. Her friends noticed the difference.

``Driscoll, you talk a lot more lately,`` they would say.

``I became more of a person,`` Jennie said. ``Before, nobody wanted to hear about how I did in practice or the scouting report on our next game. I started joining in on conversations about normal teen subjects like boys, movies, music.``

Only this new Jennie Driscoll could have appreciated and befriended classmate Shannon Rolewick, whose interest in sports didn`t come close to matching Driscoll`s.

`` When I`m with her, we worry about how we`ll do our hair and talk about boys,`` Jennie said. ``It`s a nice change. For a while, I was so uptight because I kept thinking I had to be this great athlete and I had to win all the time. Now, I`ve found a way to lighten up and if I lose a game, I realize it`s not the end of my life.``

Jennie`s steering herself back to a happy equilibrium is an accomplishment Bob and Julie Driscoll can observe with pride. Their values, work ethic and perspective on life has rubbed off well on their third child.

When it comes to providing for his family, Bob Driscoll knows no bounds. Out of full-time employment for more than a year, he took up side jobs and part-time work to compensate, at one time working four different jobs at once. You see daddy`s reflection in Jennie, who babysits during the day and works evenings at a hot dog restaurant on Grand Avenue near the lake. There are times she dons a frightfully bright and outrageously noticeable costume in which she`s the wiener inside a bun with everything on it.

``Even though I have a full scholarship to Pittsburgh for volleyball, I`m working to earn my own spending money for next year,`` Jennie said. ``It`s time I grew up and held a job. I don`t think it`s that much for any kid to earn their own spending money. I mean, I have the time, so why not? If I didn`t, I`d feel like such a toad.``

Such a sense of responsibility doesn`t go unnoticed. For her 17th birthday, Jennie walked out of the locker room after a volleyball game against Montini to find 100 friends and family members standing around a car wrapped in yellow ribbon.

A brand-new Mitsubishi 3000 GT?

Nah, that would hardly fit the story or the girl. Bob Driscoll went out and paid $1,000 for a beloved, no-hubcaps, 1983 Ford Fairmont that one of Jennie`s friends immediately nicknamed ``Old Yeller.``

Such a blue-collar attitude, and the work ethic that goes along with it, will serve Jennie well during her rehabilitation of a partially torn rotator cuff in her right shoulder. She had surgery April 13 after doctors realized she`d been playing with the injury for the last two years. She will red-shirt her freshman year at Pitt.

Even if Jennie Driscoll can never regain the all-American form that resulted in recruiting letters stacked 4-feet high, it won`t shatter her world.

This Athlete of the Year has become more than just another jock.