Shelby native Curt Tomasevicz fulfilled his dream of playing football for the Nebraska Cornhuskers, where he was a scrappy special teamer. But since then, his life and career have taken a circuitous route — a twisting, turning path kind of like a bobsled course.

Tomasevicz, who grew up in a 700-person town hundreds of miles from the nearest mountain, is now on the USA Bobsledding leadership team as director of sport performance. And he’s currently at the Winter Olympics in Italy.

The 45-year-old has the credentials of an Olympics legend. Tomasevicz is a two-time Olympic medalist in bobsledding, including a gold medal he won in 2010 — the first gold for the USA in the sport since 1948 — and a nine-time medalist on the USA bobsledding team in world championship competition. Last year, he was inducted into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame.

When he’s home in Lincoln, Tomasevicz is a performance research analyst for the Husker athletic department and an assistant engineering professor. There, through his second job with USA Bobsledding, he’s constantly on the lookout for the next athlete who may be suited to adapt to bobsledding.

Tomasevicz said he gets the question all the time: How did a former Husker football player become a three-time Olympian in bobsledding? 

“It’s kind of funny. People say, ‘I remember when you played at Nebraska.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t think you do,’” Tomasevicz says, laughing. 

Tomasevicz played his first two seasons as a running back, then moved to linebacker. Most of his time was spent on special teams play. 

During his career, he carried the ball once for two yards and registered five tackles.

“The NFL wasn’t exactly knocking on my door,” Tomasevicz said.

He didn’t know it then, but those years building his body and staying in football shape actually functioned as bobsledding training, too. 

“I was able to apply my athleticism better to being a bobsled athlete than I guess I was as a football athlete,” he said.

Power To The People

“If you get a 6-5, 280 (pound) guy, he doesn’t fit in the sled,” he said. “Most of the time, we’re all about 6-foot, 6-1, 220 pounds. A stereotypical bobsledder in that way.” 

Most important, though, is the power factor. Beyond an athlete’s size, Tomasevicz looks for someone with enough power to push a bobsled for the all-important start. 

“They’re all fast and strong, but we want to try to classify them. ‘Are you more of a power athlete? Or are you a speed athlete?’” 

Take Herschel Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner and a legendary NFL running back who became the most high-profile football player to make the switch to bobsledding when he competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics. 

“It’s the 220 or 230 pounds,” Tomasevicz said of Walker’s frame. “Power, speed. That’s exactly what we’re looking for.” 

Tomasevicz made the smooth transition from football to bobsledding when he started competing for the national team just one year removed from his Husker football career.

The reason, according to  Boyd Epley, the former director of athletic performance at Nebraska, was the power Tomasevicz displayed — even in college.

“Curt had natural power, explosive power that not everyone has,” Epley said. “In fact, he set the record for fullbacks in the vertical jump.”

Tomasevicz actually was briefly a two-sport athlete after graduation, because he dabbled in another sport that relies on power: NASCAR racing, as a pit crew member.

But the overlapping schedules proved to be too much. Tomasevicz ultimately committed to bobsledding, making the Olympics in 2006, 2010 and 2014.

Gridiron On Ice

Now, as director of performance for Team USA, Tomesevicz is the one who must tell a player, as he did last month in Germany, that he or she didn’t make the team.

“When it’s good news, I love seeing their reaction. Even when they more or less expected it, it’s still pretty fun,” he said. “On the opposite side, I’m very cognizant of how tough that news can be to an athlete when they don’t hear their name called.”

Tomasevicz returned to Lincoln from Germany after the selection process, only to have some who didn’t make the USA team on his same flight. “That’s a long plane ride,” he said. 

After the Olympics conclude Feb. 22, there’s no offseason for Tomasevicz. Like football, it’s time to go recruiting, and Tomasevicz knows the criteria he’s looking for. 

“If I look at a football roster, and I see a vertical jump and a 40-yard dash time, can I get that data and say ‘Yes, they have the potential to be a bobsledder’?”

Why a vertical jump?

“That’s actually related to my Ph.D. dissertation. … In a vertical jump … we can measure your power, and that’s the kind of metric we can follow,” Tomasevicz said.

Tomasevicz exceeded the Husker standard in his day for running backs and linebackers with his 39.5-inch vertical jump. 

“In 2001, that (vertical jump) was the Nebraska school record that during my career stood the test of time,” said Epley, who retired from a 50-year strength and conditioning career in 2019.

But there’s something else that successful bobsledders rely on that’s similar to football: Blending together like an offensive line, where you want five guys, healthy and consistent, who work well together. 

On a four-man bobsled team, you often want a powerful guy in the back and speedier guys on the side, Tomasevicz said. But it also matters “how we fit in the sled.”

“My big goal is to see if we can try to use that to make the best team possible and then help us recruit a little more efficiently.”

Sports In The Classroom

Since he’s absent for a sizable chunk of the winter and spring, Tomasevicz relies more on online teaching for around 180 students who take his courses during the spring semester.

In the fall, he loads up his in-classroom academic schedule since he doesn’t travel as much. 

Last fall, he taught an honors seminar class for freshmen. But it wasn’t about engineering. The topic: sports and the ethics surrounding them. “That was pretty fun. It’s basically getting a discussion in, ‘Is it ethical to frame a pitch in baseball?’” because you’re lying to the umpire.” 

Gamesmanship is a much-discussed term. So is the subject of performance-enhancing drugs.  

The professor  knows something about this: In the 2014 Olympics in Russia, he was awarded a bronze medal. Five years later, it got upgraded to a silver because the International Olympic Committee stripped the Russians of the gold due to a doping scheme.

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee held a ceremony a couple months after he received his silver medal. 

Between understanding his role on the Husker football team and lending the football team engineering knowledge as a result of his studies, Tomasevicz got a firsthand taste of the importance of team chemistry. 

It was also evident last year, when not just the Husker-turned-bosledder but the entire 2010 four-man bobsled team was honored for its 2010 gold medal accomplishment at the Winter Olympics. 

“That was an incredible honor (being) inducted into the … Olympic Hall of Fame,”  Tomasevicz said. “As a team, too, that was pretty special.”

Now, as part of the USA Bobsledding leadership, he would like nothing more than to see another group of USA athletes enjoy the same experience.

“I loved the equipment and engineering side of athletics and pulled them together to be competitive,” he said. “That’s ultimately what led me to having this role now.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/plains-to-mountains-ex-husker-2-time-olympic-medalist-pushing-for-usa-bobsledding-glory-in-italy/