A former Ball State track and field athlete will compete in the hammer throw at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials starting this weekend in Sacremento, Calif.
Zach Riley will be among 24 athletes who will compete for three positions on the team that will go to Athens, Greece, in August.
Riley currently competes with the Indiana Invaders, a professional track and field team, and is pursuing a master's degree in clinical biomechanics at Ball State University. While competing with the team at the Big Red National Invitational on June 27, Riley threw an Olympic trials automatic standard of 232 feet, 6 inches.
Six years ago, when Riley was a freshman, competing in the Olympics was no where in his goals, he said. He had competed in the shot put most of the season, but after little improvement, he switched to the hammer throw.
Riley finished last at the Mid-American Conference Championships in the hammer throw during his first outdoor season. His college roommate and friend Brian Troxell said Riley had even thought about calling it quits his freshman year.
However, Riley continued to work hard, and it payed off. During his sophomore year, he gained about 60 feet in distance.
While he wasn't seeded to do anything at the MAC Championships that year, he went out and threw a distance of 192 feet, 8 inches, a personal record, on the first throw of the meet. Riley said the throw shell-shocked everyone, and he went on to win the first of three straight MAC Championships.
"I think that set the tone," Riley said. "Without that, I wouldn't have had near the career I did or the success I had.
"That was just a springboard that made me work harder and do everything a little bit harder."
Former-Ball State track and field head coach Jim Sprecher, who coached Riley for three years, said it was probably the biggest transition he's ever seen in an athlete.
At that point during his sophomore season, he was about 15 feet shy of the Olympic trials qualifying mark and said if he was in postion in 2004 to make the team, he would give it a shot.
Once he graduated, he got a research assitantship in the biomechanics labratory where his advisor, Eric Dugan, was flexible with Riley's schedule, allwoing him time to train for the trials.
While Riley has excelled at the hammer throw he has also found time to excell in academics. He not only earned All-American honors twice, but Academic All-American honors twice.
"I'm very impressed at how well he does at both," Dugan, director of Biomechanics labratory said. "To be able to compete at that high of a level atheltically and then that hasn't affected what he's done academically in terms of his studies."
Riley will not rely on whether he makes the Olympic team because of his academic success.
"In the big picture, he's always had academics first and foremost," Sprecher said. "He knows that throwing is only going to take him so far."
For Dugan, Riley's committment to both academics and athletics has always impressed him and set him apart from other athletes, he said.
"The guys he's throwing against, that's what they do, that's their life," Dugan said. "It never ceases to amaze me how he can have such strong time committments to other things and still compete at that level."
Throwing has got him this far and if it gets him farther, Riley will be happy, but if it doesn't he'll just continue on with his life, he said. He will be moving to Colorado the week after the trials, where he will complete his doctorate.
"I won't go into that meet thinking 'this is it, it only comes around every four years,"' Riley said. "To me, it's just another meet, and it just so happens it will probably be my last meet. I'm not going to compete anymore after this year.
"I don't go in with the mindset that I don't stand a chance, but then again, I don't go in with the mindset that I'm a favorite."
One way Riley could get a favorable outcome at the trials is by getting what he calls a perfect throw, something he said he has only acheived one time before during his junior season.
"You wait for that one time when it's effortless and just from start to finish until you let it go," Riley said. "You stand in the ring the minute you let it go and say that's it, that's my meal ticket."
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