Trot-ting on to Your Wheaties Box

Some morning sometime soon, you might just see Julia Trotman's smiling face on your box of Wheaties.

An exceptional athlete who lettered all four years in two different varsity sports (sailing and hockey), Trotman has her sights set on the 1992 Olympics.

Trotman's athletic finesse, perhaps an innate quality, began to surface at the age of 10 when she was one of only two girls to join her hometown junior ice hockey league. At the same time, she began racing in single-handed boats at her local yacht club in Cold Spring Harbor in Syosset, N.Y., where her mother had won the Junior Championships.

Trotman, a Long Island native, took an instant liking to hockey and sailing. But when she entered Phillips Academy (in Andover, Mass.), she was able to play only hockey because the school had no sailing team. And `only hockey' she played for three years, captaining the team her senior year.

In the meantime, she spent her summers avidly sailing, racing and winning on Long Island Sound, never having the chance to see how good she could really be.

Until...

Trotman and her dual-sport diversity entered Harvard. But she broke her foot and then her leg playing hockey in her freshman year and was forced to sit out the season.

"She had more injuries in freshman year than most people have in a lifetime," hockey Coach John Dooley says, "and she came back and was terrific--an exceptional leader and the nicest part is that she's extremely coachable. She has a good work ethic and great leadership ability."

She is currently tri-captain of the women's ice hockey team which has won two Ivy titles during Trotman's career.

And to complement this athletic prowess on the ice, Trotman has demonstrated such skill and mental agility on the water that she was voted the 1987-1988 Outstanding Woman Collegiate Sailor. Other accomplishments include winning the New England Single-Handed Championships in 1987 and 1988, winning the Women's Nationals and competing in the World Championships in 1985 and 1986.

Captain of the Harvard sailing team last year and an A-division sailor since her sophomore year, Trotman won the A-division Atlantic Coast Championships and tied for low points in the New England Women's Championships last fall.

"She's exceptional because of her coolness under pressure," sailing Coach Ben Cesare says. "She's calm and collected, and in sailing that's crucial. She has a goodly portion of innate ability and she's started with the things that are harder to teach."

Trotman hopes to sail into the 1992 Olympics behind a fine sailing record and a will to win that made sailing Captain Paul O'Connor describe her as "such a tough competitor."

She says she's been "mulling it over for about a year" but now that she's graduating, she plans to launch a full-fledged campaign and to do "some serious fundraising." Her family and coaches are enthusiastic about this ambition, Cesare saying that "her willingness to work at and develop skills will really work for her. It did this fall."

Experimenting with every tack in life, Trotman has seemed to succeed in most of her endeavors. Although she admits that she is "a spaz in basketball," she displays the inherent athletic ability and mental endurance so intrinsic in Olympians. She says she loves all sports and that they'll always be an important part of her life, but hockey and sailing are her favorites.

Although "hockey was definitely an instant love," Trotman says, "in the long haul I think I'll prefer sailing because it's something I can do later."

Indeed, Julia Trotman seems to be smoothly sailing into a horizon of success, having already rounded the mark of sportsmanship that defines a true athlete.