Two for the big show

Just four minutes separated Diana and Julie Pickler at birth, a circumstance for which their mother has a ready explanation. “One was hanging on to the other’s ankles,” Chris Root joked. “And they weren’t a C-section either.”

This is not to illustrate the closeness of twins, a redundant exercise, but to suggest that it was established early on that one Pickler would inevitably serve to push – or pull – the other. To what, ultimately, is something that still must play out, but this week the notion is that it might be a national championship – the Washington State seniors making their final tag-team appearance in the heptathlon at the NCAA track and field meet in Sacramento, Calif.

Of course, there are two Picklers and only one gold medal to be had, some unfortunate long division that has forever complicated their competitive lives.

Or not.

“We don’t have a rivalry with each other,” insisted Diana. “We’re more like a package. If we’re 1-2, whatever way it is, we’re happy.”

That’s certainly a possibility in Sacramento. Diana is a decided favorite – her school-record score of 6,205 in winning the Texas Relays in April being more than 300 points better than any other collegiate mark this spring. Julie is fourth on that list with a 5,790 best from the Pacific-10 championships four weeks ago, but just 100 behind Syracuse’s Jillian Drouin in second. And in the heptathlon – seven events spread over two days, with performances assigned points from a scoring table – 100 points is a foot in the long jump or seven-tenths of a second in the hurdles, or an unlucky miss at a low bar.

Plus there’s always the chance one of their competitors will confuse which Pickler has to be beaten by how much in the final event, the 800 meters.

Though either would regard that as certainly the most annoying way to win.

And, yes, we might as well get right to that familiar old theme – the identical twins who love every aspect of their synonymy, except the one in which they’re assumed to be the same person.

“It’s hard for me to understand how other people see us,” said Julie. “What drives me crazy is somebody will speak to us and walk away not knowing which one they were talking to. I’ll hear them whisper, ‘Which one was that?’ Why don’t you know that? We’re twins, but we’re two different people.”

Perhaps there should be a field guide, as with bird-watching. It could note that Diana is taller (about an inch), or that Julie wears her hair slightly shorter. That Julie is the neatnik, Diana not so much. That Diana is forever trailing Julie in the repeat 200s they run in practice. That Julie is the planner (“mom-like,” said Diana) who has their warm-up routine at meets down to the minute, to the point that when Diana was once at a meet without her “I fell apart – I had no clue.”

“The best way to explain it,” said Julie, “is if we were crossing the street, with a car coming pretty fast, and I’d say, ‘Diana, get away’ – and the next thing, she’s darted across to the other side. I’m more lay-back-and-play-it-safe and she’s more I-don’t-care-I’m-doing-it.

“Maybe that’s why we work so well together.”

Some of these differences were nudged along by their parents, who didn’t often dress them alike, opted against what Root called “twinsy” names and placed them in separate classrooms in pre-school – though there was a mitigating circumstance there.

“They were a little delayed in their speech because they kind of developed their own language,” she said. “They could understand each other, but it was garble to you. They were kind of happy in their own little world. And they did a lot of those little quirky twins things that make you think, ‘Whoa, how did that happen?’ Like one of them going into a room and sitting in the same seat, not knowing the other one had been in there sitting in the exact same seat. Eerie little things.”

That they would wind up at the same university was not so eerie, though the Picklers maintain that outcome was never wired – and that Cougars coach Rick Sloan delicately recruited them separately because, he said, “We would have been thrilled to get either one.” But it was barely hours into their recruiting trip to Wazzu that they both agreed they’d found the right place, which because of the distance from their home in the Dallas suburb of Sachse didn’t immediately thrill their parents.

There are certainly no complaints now. The Picklers have been All-American eight times between them and each has a Pac-10 heptathlon title. Each has had her moment in the spotlight, sometimes when the other has been slowed by injury – Julie having the most frustrating times with lingering plantar fasciatis that finally required surgery last year.

Her comeback has been steady, but measured in contrast to Diana’s big breakthrough in Texas – which has served as motivation for both of them.

“It’s exciting because I’ve always told people I’d train after college and they’d say, ‘Oh, for the Olympics,’ ” Diana said. “And I’d get embarrassed to say I am without having reached the level to say that it’s realistic.”

Which makes it realistic for Julie, too.

“And I want to be there right now,” she said. “It’s not jealousy. But I don’t want to be the twin that’s not as good, because I know I’m just as capable.

“Diana has beat me more often than I’ve beaten her and when I’m on the track, I don’t want to take a back seat to her. I’m just as good as she is. But we don’t talk to each other like that – it’s just something we both feel. And if I do beat her, she’s the first one to say, ‘Good job.’ “

And the package part of their relationship means there’s always one of the nation’s best heptathletes to serve as a prod every day in practice.

Not that they’re inseparable. They actually lived apart with different roommates last year – “a whole quarter-mile apart,” laughed Diana.

“We weren’t driving each other crazy,” Julie said, “but I was excited to have my own things and create some independence. It sounds small, but having my own clothes, my own makeup – we’d always share. Well, she’d come over and take my stuff is pretty much how it was.

“But now we’re basically sharing again.”

And, after five years, there’s at least some proof that they’ve carved out their own identities.

“We have these team get-togethers where we do fun games,” recalled triple jumper Kaylee Gardner, who’s also their roommate. “Justin and Brian Woods on the men’s team are brothers, too, and look similar and we brought people up to tell which one was which. Everyone got Julie and Diana right, but some messed up on the Woods brothers – so people have mostly figured it out.

“I know it kind of annoys them away from the track if people look at them as one person. But in the track world, it’s actually more recognition as “the Picklers” – it’s something different that sets them apart. I think they kind of like that.”

Besides, there’s no getting around it. They’ve always been close, remember. Four minutes apart.

No telling how much that’s worth on those scoring tables.