Former Huskers Brown and Tomasevicz prepare for Olympic bobsledding

The Cornhusker athletic department has an unlikely new niche: developing Olympic bobsledders.

Curt Tomasevicz and Shelley-Ann Brown, two former student athletes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will be chasing medals from the back of their bobsleds in the 2010 Winter Olympics, which start tomorrow in Vancouver.

Tomasevicz, a former Nebraska football player, will make his second Olympic appearance; he was on a U.S. team that finished sixth at the 2006 games in Torino, Italy. Brown, a former All-American sprinter and hurdler at UNL, will make her Olympic debut as the brakeman on the Canadian women's two-man bobsled.

There are actually some logical reasons why a former football player and track star from a university in the Great Plains would excel in a sport where teams fly down a mountain of ice going around 80 mph. Bobsledding has evolved as a sport since it appeared in the first winter Olympics in 1924. The days of sleek, nimble athletes who have spent their lives on bobsleds, or bobsleigh, are over. Today, bobsled coaches want power, explosiveness and nerves of steel - skills sprinters and linebackers like Brown and Tomasevicz have spent their lives honing.

Of course, being an Olympian requires more than just the skill set. It also requires a level of perseverance and commitment few people have. Brown and Tomasevicz spent their athletic careers at Nebraska overcoming obstacles and achieving their goals. And even though they weren't always dreaming about Olympic rings when they were clad in scarlet and cream, both athletes stuck to their goals of being Olympians, goals they declared to their families as second-graders.

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Tomasevicz's father, Dennis, said Curt would go over to his friend's house when he was an eight-year-old boy in Shelby, Neb., sit in a sled, and let his friend's father pull him through a snowy pasture on a four-wheeler. Then Curt would trot back home and talk about being a bobsledder.

"I didn't think nothing about it," Dennis Tomasevicz said.

His bobsleigh dreams were put on hold when Tomasevicz started playing football and basketball. After graduating high school, he was supposed to go to Colorado Springs and play football for the Air Force Academy, but a broken collarbone forced him to cancel those plans and go to UNL.

In January of his freshman year, Tomasevicz tried out and made the Nebraska football team. He redshirted the next year, spent the following year on the practice squad, and played special teams and a handful of snaps at linebacker and fullback during his last two seasons.

The defining moment of Tomasevicz's football career came during his last regular season game in 2003 against Colorado. He sprinted down the field on the opening kickoff and crushed the Colorado returner at the five-yard line — a collision five years in the making.

"For the most part, it takes a lot of patience," Tomasevicz said of playing football at Nebraska and bobsledding for the U.S.

He first considered competing in bobsleigh while getting a master's degree in electrical engineering at UNL. Another former Husker track athlete, Amanda Moreley, was competing at the international level in the bobsled and told Tomasevicz he had what it took to be successful in the sport.

"It's a sport that takes plain explosion and power," Tomasevicz said. "You either have it or you don't."

Tomasevicz had trained for less than two years when he competed in the 2006 Olympics. Since then, he has trained almost nonstop for four years, waiting for another chance.

On Feb. 26, when the four-man bobsled events are finally held and Tomasevicz is standing at the top of the mountain looking down, he's going to be thinking of one thing: crashing.

It's actually his favorite thing about the sport.

"The fact that a crash can happen at any time. You're at the top of the track looking down and you know it could be a disaster," he said.

Tomasevicz said he's crashed more than two dozen times in the six-and-a-half years he's been bobsledding. He described a bobsled crash very simply as "hell on ice."

However, the U.S Olympic four-man team is not projected to crash. They are considered a likely contender to medal. They finished first in the 2009 World Cup and second at an international meet on the same course they will race in the Olympics.

"A medal would be everything," Tomasevicz said.

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Brown was an eight-year-old in Ontario when she watched the 1988 Olympics and saw Canadian Ben Johnson set a world record – that was later rescinded - in the 100-meter dash. After Johnson's race, Brown told her family that she, too, was going to be an Olympic sprinter.

She still had that dream when she went to Nebraska to run track in 1999. Although she was a natural when it came to sprints and hurdles, Brown had setbacks during her career. Her first season of track and field ended on a sour note when she suffered six stress fractures and went to the Big 12 Championships as a spectator.

"I remember sitting on the sidelines and thinking ‘I'll never miss a Big 12 championship meet again'," Brown said. "And I never did."

Her position coach left before her senior season and she started fresh with assistant track coach Matt Martin. She adjusted to the switch by the end of the year, Martin said, by winning the Big 12 championship in the 100-meter hurdles and becoming an All-American.

After her track career was over, she stayed in Lincoln and earned a master's degree in educational psychology.

While working toward her degree, the brakeman on the Canadian women's bobsled team got injured and the pilot of the team called Brown to ask if she would try out for the 2006 Olympics. Brown said no.

She had plenty going on without having to take up a new sport. Brown was actively involved in a campus ministry group, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and started a program at the People's City Mission for children that promoted spiritual and physical health.