University of Tennessee at Chattanooga track and field coach Bill Gautier almost didn’t take a chance on Maddison Melchionna.
Likewise, a previous college decision made by Melchionna almost prevented her current opportunity.
Fate brought the pair together, though, and it’s been a good athletic union.
Gautier had recruited the Greeneville, Tenn., native during her high school years, though he was initially confused to see that while Melchionna ran cross country for nearby Chuckey-Doak High School in Afton, she participated on the track team at Greeneville High. The reason was that Chuckey-Doak didn’t have enough members to field a track team, so its athletes competed with Greeneville.
And while Gautier thought highly of Melchionna’s abilities, he had slid her into a seldom-used “hope to” file – as in, “We hope to never need this file.”
But in 2013 he did need to use it, and Melchionna was the first name listed.
Now a junior at UTC, she holds program records in the indoor and outdoor 800-meter runs, and she hopes to improve her time in the latter over the next couple of days as the Mocs compete in the Southern Conference championships, hosted by Western Carolina in Cullowhee, N.C.
“Maddison has a lot of God-given talent,” Gautier said. “That’s how it starts. Then you have to take that talent and develop it. She’s got progressively better, and with the maturity of the body and the ability to race, that’s what you want in an athlete.”
Melchionna – who originally signed with Nashville’s Trevecca Nazarene University, an NAIA program, but ending up joining the Mocs instead – has a 4.0 grade point average in each of her eight semesters at UTC.
“I would say this is what every coach would hope represents your team,” Gautier said.
Melchionna’s transition from a small high school to college life wasn’t easy academically or athletically. She had to learn how to race smartly – something she’s still working on – and find the right pace while running cross country in the fall and track in the spring.
“When I got here, I’d never run with a group of girls before. Ever,” Melchionna said. “I had run by myself every single day of high school, and coming here was very challenging. I wasn’t the best anymore.
“I would get my butt kicked every single day with these girls and it was a different change, but we’ve figured each other out now that we’re about to be seniors, and we work well together.”
Her first event today is the 800 preliminaries at 4:45 p.m. She has some work to do to qualify for the NCAA championships because her best time of 2:08.88 places her in a logjam of worthy candidates for bids. Gautier has tried to schedule the Mocs for meets in which Melchionna would likely be pushed and possibly improve her time, but that hasn’t always been the case.
She believes she’ll need a time around 2:07 or 2:08 flat to have a chance to qualify for regionals, but for now she wants to focus on today.
“I can smell it,” Melchionna said of her hunt for a spot in regionals. “That’s my ultimate goal.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.