Sarah Pagano is miles from her comfort zone.

She sits in a cramped conference room. Her lips begin to quiver, and she stares at the floor, just like she did as a freshman in high school.

‘She was quiet and shy her freshman year,’ Pagano’s high school coach Matt Joyce said.

Pagano still claims she hates questions about herself. But for the up-and-coming sophomore on the Syracuse cross country team, this is one of the rare instances when she stumbles into that freshman-like shell. Cross country has enabled Pagano to break out. And this season, as just a sophomore, that’s exactly what Pagano has accomplished. A breakout season.

In 2010, Pagano is ranked as the third-best runner on the No. 7 women’s cross country team from her race times. She is a runner SU head coach Chris Fox believes will be perhaps the best on his team by the time she is a senior. Pagano is right where she wants to be. But at the same time, she is still tiptoeing with some of that timid personality in the Big East. Pagano still, at times, slips into that shell because she isn’t convinced she is one of the best in the conference.

‘Running for a college team,’ Pagano said, ‘is scary to think about.’

Standing at 5 feet 5 inches with a twig-like body structure, Pagano’s physical presence doesn’t bring to mind the common perception of an alpha-female. But when she is with the team, she is no longer afraid to be that alpha-female. It started back in high school.

‘If the team needed a pep talk, Sarah would be the one to give it,’ Joyce said. ‘If there was a negative vibe, she would turn it into a positive and get everyone focused.’

After a so-so freshman year at SU, Pagano achieved the success as a sophomore that has enabled her to become the No. 3 runner on the women’s team. She placed 16th overall at the Wisconsin Adidas Invitational, helping the Orange to a first-place finish. At the Colgate Invitational, a meet in which she finished ninth last year, Pagano came in fourth this time around.

And at the Big East Preview, she registered her best finish yet as a collegiate runner, placing second with a time of 18:48.

It was the kind of success the sophomore Pagano had been accustomed to as that outgoing personality for Joyce’s team at Immaculate Heart Academy in New Jersey. At Immaculate, she broke 27 school records and was an eight-time state group champion. She then joined a Syracuse squad she believed was the fastest rising program in the country.

The jump to SU was a long way away for the once shy, awkward teenager who had never even stepped on a running track prior to enlisting with Joyce’s team to stay in shape for basketball. But the avenue she indirectly found, when just trying to stay in basketball shape, blossomed into the medium she had been searching for.

‘Sarah is very carefree,’ said Ari Kasprowicz, Pagano’s best friend and teammate. ‘She’s always up for anything.’

But what Pagano is most up for is retreating to that comfort zone she never intended to discover. When thinking about, not herself, but running, she stops gnawing. Her lips stop quivering. She stops struggling.

She sits up, settles herself and enters that comfort zone.

‘That’s where I feel most comfortable,’ Pagano said. ‘When I can focus all my energy toward outlasting my opponents in a long-distance race.’

jdsaffre@syr.edu

Published on October 6, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jarrad: jdsaffre@syr.edu