Green light: Melice returns to racing

Xavier Melice didn't want to believe what deep down he knew to be true. He couldn't believe it. If he did, if he let his mind accept the fact that his Achilles tendon had indeed just snapped, then he knew what it would mean.

It would be the end of his running career. He would be done with this thing that he loved, that he had devoted his life to, forever. He wouldn't - he couldn't - let himself believe that. So, he got up off the blue and gold surface of the running track at Worthington Arena and tried to walk it off.

It wasn't long before Melice received the news that he feared. His left Achilles tendon was torn, and would need surgery to fix. The worst had come.

Melice injured his leg in the first race of the first meet of the 2021 indoor season, a December tune-up in Bozeman. After losing the 2020 season to COVID, luck had certainly turned against one of the more promising athletes in the Grizzly track and field program.

A Helena Capital graduate, Melice came to Montana in the fall of 2018. He had been a good runner in high school, winning the 200m and 400m at several meets while qualifying for state in five different events in both his junior and senior seasons.

It was at Montana that he truly came into his own. As a freshman for the Griz track team in 2019, Melice elevated himself to another level. He ran the 400m at the Bobcat Preview, his first-ever collegiate event, in 49.61 seconds for a second-place finish. It was nearly two full seconds faster than his career-best time from high school.

It gave him a great jump start to his career. He would go on to finish just outside of scoring range at the Big Sky Indoor Championships in 2019, again running a sub-50 second time. The progressions continued as he worked his way into the outdoor season.

Primarily running the 200-meter race, Melice won three of his first four events. Montana hosted the Big Sky Championships that season, giving him the opportunity to run at home in the biggest event of his career. He didn't waste the opportunity.

His career day started in the 200-meter, where Melice would finish in second place with a time of 21.59. His big day continued in the 400-meter. He shattered his career best, completing the lap in 47.45 seconds to take fourth place. The time was over two seconds better than his previous PR, and over four seconds better than his time at the high school state meet a year prior.

His strong individual performance paled in comparison to what he and his teammates would do in the 4x400-meter relay. Melice, running alongside fellow freshmen Cade and Paul Johnstone and fifth-year senior Sterling Reneau, would set a new school record in the event.

Melice ran the anchor leg, entering the final straightaway two strides behind the leader. His final kick, in front of a packed stadium at Dornblaser Field, was enough to pass Northern Colorado for a conference championship. Three days later, he was named the Big Sky Conference Freshman of the Year.

It seemed to be the perfect opening chapter to a historic career, but who could have guessed what would come next. Melice ran well the following indoor season, but couldn't muster the magic from that day in Missoula.

"I think I got a big head," Melice said of the time following the championship. "It was a great moment, it was the best thing I had ever done. Especially that day of outdoor my freshman year, it was at home, we won the 4x4, it was the best day of my life. And then, I don't know, I got unfocused a little bit I think."

He didn't reach the finals of the 200m or the 400m at the 2020 Big Sky Indoor Championships. Then his chance for redemption was taken from him during outdoor, as COVID-19 caused the entire season to be lost. It wasn't until 2021 that Melice had another chance on the track, and even then, he wasn't running at 100 percent because of some nagging injuries.

He competed in just two events, failing to run under 22 seconds in the 200m or 49 seconds in the 400m. It was a difficult thing to take for someone who had been at the top just two years before.

Then came the 2022 indoor season. What would have normally been his senior season began in Bozeman at the Bobcat Preview, a smaller meet held over a month before the bulk of the indoor schedule. Melice had been training well, and said his body felt great. He lined up for the 400m race, began with the usual burst of speed that he is known for. Then it all stopped.

The Achilles tendon, when torn, typically rolls up in the calf. This wasn't the case for Melice. He went to the ground, and knew something bad had happened, but was able to walk after the injury. He sought consultation, confirmed the devastating news, and underwent surgery all in a three-week span.

He spent Christmas in a boot, just days removed from a surgery that he knew would alter his life forever. He almost failed a final, barely passing the class because he just couldn't focus on something like school after what he had gone through. The month-long break, usually a welcome respite for students, instead served as a mental prison. He couldn't put weight on his left leg, couldn't shower, couldn't live his life.

"I'm not an emotional person, but track is what I love. It makes me super emotional," Melice said. "I cried for three days, because I didn't think I could come back. Then I stopped acting like a victim and started meeting the situation because that's all you can do."

He started the comeback process, still not sure if he would ever compete again. He spent months in the boot before beginning physical therapy. He worked with Jake Mischke at the University of Montana, and also with the training staff for Montana track and field, crediting athletic trainer Carmen Hewlett for being great in helping the process.

Still, after months of strenuous work with little payoff, Melice felt restless. Eventually it got to a point where he couldn't sleep. So, one morning a few months after surgery, he got up in the early hours and went to the gym. He wasn't supposed to be running yet, but he thought that he could just walk on the treadmill.

He felt good, felt healthy, so he started a light jog. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't resist. Before he knew it, the treadmill speed was up and Melice was sprinting again for the first time in nearly six months. He couldn't take being in the same place, so he took it to the track.

"There is a little lap that goes around the whole workout area upstairs and I'm just smiling and sprinting. I'm not even supposed to be running, but I'm there and just sprinting, smiling, and almost crying," Melice said. "That was the turning point for me when I was like, OK, I can run again. It's just going to take a lot of work."

Melice had plenty going on inside his own world to focus on. He also had to deal with the uncertainty of a coaching change in the Montana program. Doug Fraley became the new Montana head coach in August of 2022. He arrived at a time when Melice had just started the transition between physical therapy and real track and field training.

Instead of complaining about a change at a critical time in his career, Melice reached out to Fraley to set up a meeting. He introduced himself to his new coach, and let him know that he was going to rally the group and make sure they did things the right way to have a successful year.

To Fraley, that stood out. It helped make his transition into the coaching job easier. It was important not only on an individual level between the two, but also helped to have a veteran on the team willing to lead the younger student-athletes.

"Especially a fifth-year guy who has had success, to step up and be open to change and new leadership and everything, that means a lot," Fraley said. "People that have been in a situation for a long time could easily look at things the opposite way and say, I don't want change in my final year. He stepped forward and has embraced it and has really helped lead that group from an athlete leadership aspect."

The timing of Fraley's arrival meant the new coach would have the chance to lead Melice through the initial stages of becoming a track athlete again. The relationship has been a lot of give-and-take, and required a lot of conversations about where Melice is at in regards to his body.

Melice didn't compete in the first meet of the season. When the second meet rolled around, he was ready to race again for the first time in over a full year. As he entered the starting blocks to run the 200-meter inside the Kibbie Dome in Moscow, Idaho, there was something in the back of his mind.

"I'm not afraid to say that, especially at the start of the season, when I got out there and was about to race, I was afraid," Melice said. "I had to get through that thought of, I could get hurt. I needed to focus on what is important, and that's execution."

He ran the 200 meters in 22.75 seconds. The time he finished in matters much less than the fact that he made it through the race, that he crossed the finish line on two feet. This was just one step of the process, getting back out on the track in a live situation.

He was discouraged with the performance initially. He ran again the next week at the WSU Open, again finishing a 200-meter race. To some, just finishing would have been enough. But the competitor inside Melice knew that he could do more.

In track, you often build upon times, fine-tuning your body into a racing machine. Melice did it his freshman year, taking the base that he entered college with and gradually improving it to cut seconds from his time. Your body continues to get better, and your times continue to improve as you maintain conditioning and improve upon weaknesses. It sets your expectations. For Melice, his body had hit a hard reset. There was no base to build upon, and his expectations rose above what his body was capable of at the time.

"It's demoralizing, because I'm still running fast in the grand scheme of things but for me, I put a different level into it I think than most people so I expect a different level of output," Melice said. "It's hard, but Doug is really good and has been telling me that it's not going to come back right away because racing is different than training. I have to be patient, and that's the hard part. To say it's OK to not run the fastest, but I need to keep going."

He continued to push. And Fraley had an idea that he thought might help Melice out. When the team went to the Bobcat Performance Meet in Bozeman on Feb. 10, Fraley didn't sign him up for the 200 or the 400. Instead, he entered Melice in the 60m race.

The shorter race took out any turns in the shortened Bozeman track. It also allowed Melice to focus on one single thing; speed.

"I knew if he got through that 60-meter healthy, all of a sudden he was going to believe he could run fast again," Fraley said. "That's exactly what took place. He went into that race and had a little bit of a tentative start, but he came up and ran a very good time for him not running 60's and at that point he started thinking man, if I can get my start right I can run fast in the 100 outdoors and things like that.

"It's little moments like that," Fraley continued. "I think that was a key moment with him getting through that 60 and feeling like he finally ran at top speed again for the first time in a long time, and he came out of the race healthy."

It prepared him for the 2023 Big Sky Indoor Meet, his first time on the conference stage in three full years. Melice competed in the 400-meter on the individual side. He flew off the starting lines and raced to the front of his heat in a quick burst, but lost his legs a bit down the stretch to finish with a time just over 50 seconds.

He didn't make the finals, but he had taken another positive step. More importantly, his start showed him that he was ready to lay it all on the line. Fraley said that any athlete following a catastrophic injury will guard it in the future. As you worry about hurting yourself again, you add stresses to different areas of your body.

Melice admitted that the level of atrophy in his calf after the injury means that every day there is a little something that he could worry about.

The biggest step in the entire process was letting that go. Melice said he realized that he needed to focus on the present and what he can control. Worrying about the past would do him no good. That prelim race freed him up for the big event at the end: the 4x400-meter relay.

"I thought, even if he goes out and the race doesn't finish well, if he can get himself to go out really hard and be aggressive that's going to create confidence that we can move forward," Fraley said. "Not worry about every time I'm aggressive or really go out fast in a race something bad is going to happen."

There was no denying his speed in the relay. The Grizzlies were in fifth-place when the baton was handed to Melice on the back corner for the third leg. He burst forward, overtaking several competitors within his opening strides to put Montana into second. They would finish there, returning Melice to the podium for the first time in three years.

He ran a sub-48 second split in the relay, a key indicator that the speed is still there. As he continues to work on his fitness, there is no telling what levels Melice can reach.

Fraley said his goal for Melice's indoor season was to see if he could return to a respectable D-I level. He did that and more. Now, as they prepare for the outdoor season starting this Saturday, he is ready to let it all go.

"You go from having a red light that means I can't do it to a yellow light, should I go or should I stop. Finally, when that light turns green, that is when veteran athletes like Xavier can start to excel again and I think that's what we saw at the conference meet," Fraley said. "That light is starting to turn green in his mind and so he is going to be able to go out and race freely, confidently, and aggressively."

Melice is excited for the prospects of the outdoor season, both on the individual level and as a 4x400-meter relay team. Montana has had plenty of success in the event throughout the years, often with Melice at the heart of the performance. At the indoor meet, it was true freshman Taylor Johnson who had the honor of the anchor leg, guiding the relay home to the second-place finish.

Johnson has plenty of senior leadership with Melice and the Johnstone brothers on the team. They were pushed into leadership roles early in their careers thanks to their success and the youth of the sprint group.

It makes Johnson's breakout a full-circle moment for Melice, who won his first relay as a freshman with a senior leader in Sterling Reneau. This year the Grizzlies will try to repeat history. Reneau's team broke the school record from 1977 during his freshman season. He was the lone freshman on that 2015 team, led by a team full of seniors.

Many athletes wouldn't make it through a year like Melice has just experienced. He's not only gone through the darkness and come out on the other side, but he's used it to inspire others. It isn't limited to just time on the track, either.

"He's just an impressive young man," Fraley said. "The guy is a grad student. He's going to be really successful in life. He's very determined, he's very dedicated to the things that he's involved in and I'm just really proud of the way that he has stepped in as a leader in our sprint group and then all the other great things he's doing in his master's program."

He's got another chance at his career, restarting with a completely different mentality. Melice is still just a junior in the athletics world, despite being 23 years old, something he admits is unheard of. But he knows that he has to capitalize on the extra time he's been given in a Montana uniform.

"It sounds weird, but I think tearing my Achilles was a blessing. The mental piece of getting through that and knowing I can get through it is big for me," Melice said. "I see it as a little bit of a blessing just because life can't always be great. I can't always be the Big Sky Freshman of the Year and a Big Sky champion. I went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, and I think it was a valuable teaching point for me as a human being. I feel matured through that process as an athlete and a person."

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Taylor Johnson

Paul Johnstone

Xavier Melice

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