10 events. Two days. 12 red gatorades.
Senior Alex Blickham was competing in the decathlon qualifier in Bentonville, Ark. — the biggest one of his life. After all, qualifying for the Junior Olympics was at stake. But he wasn’t trying to win. He didn’t care where he placed.
Blickham would be competing in ten different field events ranging from the javelin to pole vault. It would take technique, speed and stamina to finish the decathlon including a 100-yard dash and the mile. After recently suffering two stress fractures due to overuse, he wasn’t a favorite and was more worried about finishing the decathlon at all.
He placed fourth. He was going to the Junior Olympics.
Only five months after being in a back brace.
“I had no intention of winning because coming off of an injury like that, with only three months [of preparation], there’s no shot I’m gonna play super well,” Blickham said. “I’m not there to play well, I’m there for myself just to show that I can come back, that I can do it.”
Growing up, he was always good, but not great. He had tried every event — from the 400-yard dash to shot put. For each, he was skilled enough to start on JV, but never varsity. His ability to compete in so many events led him and his coach J.T. Collor to realize he should do them all — the decathlon was perfect.
His training for the decathlon began freshman year. However, he suffered two stress fractures in his back due to overworking himself, just nine months before he was meant to attend the qualifiers. He would be confined to a back brace for the next four months, unable to do any sort of physical activity.
“He was so thoroughly sidelined,” Alex’s mother Tammy Blickham said. “He was not just unable to [run], but in actual pain and a back brace. It was kind of otherworldly, honestly.”
Blickham was forced to lay around at home, learning to play chess and mastering board games. He’d gaze out his bedroom window as runners ran their routes down his street, longing to join them.
The effects of his injuries weren’t just surface level. He loved training for the decathlon, and the sport became his passion — but also therapy. When school work began to build up, Blickham would take to the track and release his stress through running.
A freedom that had been stripped from him.
“Mentally, it was pretty tough,” Blickham said. “Track was my escape, it’s what I do to work off stress. Not having that option just made [life] a lot harder. So my mental health definitely took a hit there. It just hurts to not be able to do what you love for half a year.”
In addition to losing all physical outlets to work off stress, Blickham suffered his injury in April, just as the COVID-19 lockdown began. Not only could he not run, but he couldn’t see friends anymore either.
“I just couldn’t really do anything,” Blickham said. “There was no school, seeing people was a lot harder. I honestly just didn’t know what to do with myself, I didn’t know what to do. It was a struggle.”
Throughout the hardship, Blickham remained hopeful. Finally, after four months in a brace and two months of strenuous physical therapy, he was cleared to return to the track.
“I wouldn’t have blamed him if he decided to quit after that,” Collor said. “But he really showed tremendous heart to come out of the injury and get right back into it.”
Blickham remembers his shoes setting foot on the reddish rubber for the first time in six months and the sweat pouring down his face on his first day back in March. But more than anything, he remembers feeling frightened.
“I was scared because I’m thinking, ‘What if [my back] is not healed,'” Blickham said. “‘What if I take a wrong step and tweak it wrong? One bad discus throw and my back is going to break.’ It’s a lot to carry on your shoulders.”
But Blickham didn’t get hurt. If anything, he got better. By putting a focus on technique rather than the quantity of practice, he knew exactly what he had to do to succeed.
Three months following his injury, he competed in another decathlon, but this time as a Junior Olympian in Houston under 105-degree heat. When Blickham thinks about those two days of competition, he thinks of two words: overheated and drained.
It was a sight to see for Blickham’s parents. Leaning forward across the finish line to save a few milliseconds, Blickham jogged a few meters then flung his back on the track and laid on the ground for a few minutes.
He did it. He had competed in the Junior Olympics.
“We were bawling and cheering and screaming when he finished,” Tammy said. “That was just a mountaintop moment for us as parents. It’s really amazing to see your kid do well at the thing they love. The heart and the motivation he had to get to that point was incredible.”
Blickham placed 25th out of 48 athletes in the Junior Olympics, something unfathomable had become his reality.
“I was really just happy to have the chance to compete, and will never take that for granted,” Blickham said. “Five months before I couldn’t have imagined having the chance to be [at the junior olympics] much less place within the top 25.”
