Bureau Valley senior Melanie Thompson is the 2010 NewsTribune Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year. She placed second in the shot put and fifth in the discus at this year’s Illinois High School Association State Track and Field Meet in Charleston.
NewsTribune photo/Amanda Whitlock
MANLIUS — BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.
The alarm clock is telling Melanie Thompson to wake up.
The sun is still sleeping beneath the eastern horizon, but Thompson is out of bed.
She starts the drive from Wyanet to Manlius as the sun starts to rise. The shine in her rearview mirror makes the whole car glow.
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Thompson arrives at Bureau Valley High School, and you can count the number of cars in the high school parking lot on one hand when she pulls into one of the hundreds of parking spots that will be filled later that morning.
The day’s meet is still nine or 10 hours away, but Thompson is walking across the dew-covered grass toward the shot put ring.
Thompson met Bureau Valley throws coach Jeff Ohlson for a one-on-one practice every weekday morning before a meet from mid-April through the IHSA Girls State Track and Field Meet.
“It was light out, but it was always wet. That kind of sucked,” Thompson says remembering those morning practices. “It’s hard to get up in the morning. You’re tired, but you think about how good that medal is going to feel at the end of the season.”
The first morning practice was scheduled because Thompson had to miss a practice after school for a job interview. Ohlson had her make up the missed practice the following morning.
That night in the meet after her and Ohlson met at 7 a.m., Thompson went out and threw the best she had ever thrown to that point in the discus. She threw the discus 124 feet, 4 inches in a meet at Kewanee Wethersfield.
“Then I threw 124 and so we made it a tradition that every morning before a meet we practiced — except for Saturday meets,” Thompson says.
They met the Monday morning of the Three Rivers Conference Meet, and that day Thompson won the shot put and discus at the conference meet. She threw the shot put 41-7 that afternoon, which broke the school record, the conference record and the Bureau County record.
They met the Friday morning of the Class 1A Bureau Valley Sectional. That meet Thompson won sectional titles in both the shot put and discus. Her best shot put throw was 42-1 1/2, which improved on the school and county records she set earlier that week.
They met in Charleston the Thursday morning of the IHSA Girls State Track and Field Meet prelims. Thompson that day qualified for finals in both the shot put and discus.
Finals for the state meet were on Saturday so there was no early morning workout. Thompson still went out and performed the Saturday of the state finals, and she placed second in the Class 1A shot put and fifth in the Class 1A discus.
“It was a great finish to the year for her,” says Bureau Valley head girls track coach Dale Donner. “She worked hard to get there. Her and coach Ohlson made a great pair. It was great to see her go out on top.”
Thompson may not have finished at the top of the state, but she was the top girls track athlete in the area. That is why the NewsTribune named Thompson the 2010 NewsTribune Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year.
She is the first girls thrower to be honored by the NewsTribune since Madison Lebahn in 2006.
“She had an outstanding season,” Ohlson says. “She came in and competed well in every meet she was in. At the end, she reaped the benefits of it. A lot of hard work and dedication on her part made things happen for her.”
Skipping the spring The two state medals Thompson earned this year may not have happened without some convincing from current Bureau Valley head boys track coach Nick Hartz.
Hartz was the junior high track coach at Bureau Valley South when Thompson was in seventh grade. Thompson played volleyball and basketball, and she thought that was enough.
“I wasn’t even going to do track. Mr. Hartz made me do track my seventh grade year,” Thompson says. “That (success in seventh grade track) is when I really knew I could do things. That I have the potential to accomplish a lot of things.”
Thompson had done track as a sixth grader while her family lived in Lockport, Ill.
She had not seen the type of success there that she would have in her Bureau Valley career.
Thompson won the seventh grade Class A discus by throwing 88-5 in 2005. She then placed third in the discus as an eighth grader throwing 95-6.
Thompson qualified for state twice in the shot put in junior high, but she never medaled in the event that would become her specialty in high school.
“I liked discus better,” Thompson says. “I was better at it. I wasn’t very good at shot put.”
Thompson learned after her junior high track success that her family had a tie to one of the greatest track and field athletes ever.
The 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon gold medalist Jim Thorpe was a classmate of Thompson’s great-grandparents at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
“I like to read about him,” Thompson says of Thorpe. “After I won the discus in seventh grade, I remember looking him up on the internet and seeing he got (an Olympic) medal in discus.”
The discus was part of both the decathlon and pentathlon competitions that Thorpe won in 1912.
Thompson’s farther, Al, is a full-blooded Native American from the Iroquois Cayuga tribe.
Thompson’s mother, Angie, though is who Melanie has lived with since her parents divorced when she was 9 years old.
“My mom is my hero,” Melanie says. “My dad was kind of out of the picture for a while. She took the role of mom and dad and supported me by herself. She has never missed a game or a track meet. She never missed anything.”
Hall of fame coaching Don Wallace is a member of the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He was the long-time coach at Tampico and Prophetstown.
He came out of retirement in 2007 and 2008 to serve as the throws coach at Bureau Valley, and he had a young prodigy to work with named Melanie Thompson.
“When she came into high school, she was known more as a discus thrower than a shot put thrower,” Wallace says. “That first year I had her, we were inside all the time and we were not able to get outside. She just picked up that shot and got better and better and better. I said, ‘Wow.’ She threw 37-something as a freshman. I knew there was a lot of potential there.”
Extremely cold weather conditions in the spring of 2007 prevented Wallace and Thompson from working on the discus much that year, but Wallace taught Thompson the glide technique in the shot put, which helped her improve significantly in the shot put.
“I got a lot better,” Thompson says of throwing shot put as a freshman. “I added almost 7 feet, and I started actually competing at the high school level. I liked that. I liked that as a freshman I was beating some seniors and juniors.”
Thompson qualified for state as both a freshman and sophomore while working with Wallace.
“She wanted to be a good shot putter,” Wallace says. “You could see the desire. I think she got more intense as she went along. I think once she got Jeff this year that was just the icing on the cake. Jeff’s a very, very good weight coach.”
The two coaches also provided Thompson with the progression that she needed as she learned the event.
“Coach Wallace taught basic fundamentals,” Thompson says. “Coach Ohlson tweaked things like my arm strike and the height of the shot put and being quicker through the ring.”
No more easy road Discus success came to Thompson easier in junior high so that was the event she enjoyed.
Shot put was the event at the start of high school where Thompson was more successful. She qualified for state all four years in the shot put.
This year Ohlson returned to being the Bureau Valley throws coach after a three-year hiatus, and he was not going to let Thompson settle for being a one-event wonder.
“This year we talked about it, if you want to throw for me you have to be willing to do both,” Ohlson says. “If you want to throw in college, you have to be willing to throw both. She took hold of that. … That was something she did a lot of work with and made herself better.”
The entire season Thompson had to convince herself that she could have discus success even though she had not had much success in the event before this year.
“In those events they become mental sometimes,” Donner says. “All field events, the jumps or the throws, it becomes that you start thinking and you over think. You got to tell them to stop thinking and just do it. … When she relaxed, she threw the heck out of the discus. When she tensed up and tried to muscle it out, those were her bad days. She just started thinking too much sometimes. You got to get out there, put it out of your mind and do what you’ve been practicing.”
Thompson says she enjoys the challenge it takes mentally to have track success.
“It’s quietly competitive,” Thompson says of track and field. “In basketball you’re knocking people around. Track is just mental. It’s so mental, and I like it.”
Thompson says she found the biggest mental challenge to be performing her best even when there was no one competing against her that had much chance to beat her.
“It takes a lot of mental strength,” Thompson says. “A lot of the season, I didn’t have a lot of people to compete with me. It was just competing against myself. I think that made me a lot better. I could have won some meets throwing 36 (feet), but I didn’t want to do that.”
Thompson wanted to throw 40 feet.
Her first 40-foot shot put throw did not come until the final weeks of the season, but that is what made her willing to work harder.
“For three-quarters of the season, I wasn’t hitting 40 so I was starting to get angry. That is what got me out of bed,” Thompson says.
She got out of bed early in the morning to meet Ohlson at the shot put ring. She would throw and get ready for that afternoon’s meet.
Eventually, it would have her ready to throw at state.
And those early morning workouts have her now ready to sign to continue her track and field career at Eastern Illinois University. Thompson is scheduled to sign a National Letter of Intent this afternoon with EIU’s women’s track and field team.
“It’s sad that it’s over, but it’s time to move on and make some more memories at Eastern,” Thompson says.
Erik Hall can be reached at 223-3200, ext. 195, or at sports@newstrib.com.
