Here’s a comment from a Robbinsville High student in discussing her 7th-grade track & field season at Pond Road Middle School. “My friends did it and I just wanted to just try it. I was supposedly a distance runner but I didn’t like running, so I would try to be a sprinter and use practice doing the long jump to get out of running.”
Here’s another comment from a Robbinsville High sophomore.
“Running helps me, it just makes me really happy. I just do it because of that. And also I look forward to races because I know if I run hard at practice then I’ll run good in races.”
You guessed it. Those quotes both came from Ravens 10th-grader Melina Johnston, who has gone through quite a metamorphosis over the past four years. Apparently her ideas began to change when COVID thwarted most athletic activities and there was really nothing to do but run.
“I just started running each day and liked it more and more,” Johnston said. “And then I just loved running farther and farther each day.”
That love transcended into an outstanding spring track season for Johnston, who had struggled with health and confidence issues the first part of her high school career.
But after winning a few races at the beginning of the spring, she began feeling right and made it all the way to the NJSIAA Meet of Champions in the 3200.
“We’re really proud of her,” Ravens distance coach Anthony Dentino said. “She’s worked very hard. She’s somebody that always puts in a lot of consistently great efforts. She’s somebody that’s really grown up a lot this year.”
Johnston went out for cross country as a freshman and ran some respectable times for a girl that never raced a lot in middle school due to the COVID shutdown.
“She definitely had a lot of talent,” Dentino said. “It’s interesting, her freshman year we watched her get better and better every meet and start to get confidence. She kind of didn’t know what she was doing. Once she figured it out she got really good toward the end of the year.”
For the first part of the year, Johnston was as much an observer as a participant, even when she ran.
“I mostly followed my teammates and learned from them,” she said. “The last few meets I figured out how to get past them and see what I could do.”
With COVID concerns still lingering, the 2021 winter season was extremely limited and Johnston ended up training a lot. Too much, in fact, as she ended up with a stress fracture. After just one race last spring, Melina had to shut it down and did not start running again until July.
“I was upset for a little bit,” she said. “But then I just kept thinking about cross country and got motivated and excited to be able to run then.”
Upon returning, Johnston had an up and down season last fall but ended strong.
“I just wasn’t as confident in how I ran because I felt like I missed out on a lot while others still raced,” she said.
“She finished really well,” Dentino said. “She ran in the low 20s at Holmdel, that was more of a race that I thought indicated how talented she really was. I think that gave her a nice stepping stone into the winter this year.”
Perhaps. But the coach felt her confidence still needed a bit of a boost.
“Her and I talked a lot about even if she wasn’t at her best, she’s so good, that she still helps our team and she can still be really successful even when she doesn’t have her A game,” Dentino said. “We saw a lot of that in the winter.”
Johnston finished 11th in the 1600 at the Mercer County indoor meet in a time of 5:35, but did not run in the sectional meet.
Then came the outdoor season, and suddenly it started to come together.
“She had a couple races in the early spring that really catapulted her and got her really feeling confident,” Dentino said prior to the Meet of Champions. “She got third overall and ran 11:20 in a 3200 and was part of the four-by-1600 school-record team. She ran some really great races right around early to mid April and those gave her the confidence she needed going forward. These past few weeks she’s really been on a tear.”
Johnston earned her first county championship medal by taking fifth in the 1600 in 5:19, which marked the first time she broke 5:20. Not feeling her best, Melina skipped the 3200 the following day.
“We kind of made the decision together for her to sit out because there wasn’t a lot in it for us,” Dentino said. “We didn’t have a shot at the team title. We felt she wasn’t feeling great and we had bigger fish to fly at sectionals and groups. Sure enough she made us look good on that decision.”
Skipping the 1600 at the Central Jersey Group III sectionals, Johnston blazed through the 3200 in 11:14 to take second place at Middletown North High School. Melina broke that PR by five seconds at the Group III state meet, running an 11:09 to take third place at Pennsauken High. It was the fourth best 3200 time in school history and advanced her to the Meet of Champions along with teammate Riley Solovay (6th in long jump) and the Ravens 4×800 team.
Johnston was happy with how her race played out in the state meet.
“The strategy was more to run my own race,” she said. “I pretty much did that because at the start I went out really hard and split 5:29 for the first mile and took the lead. As people started passing me, I just tried to stay in the race. The last 200 I found another gear and passed the girl in front of me to get third.”
When she crossed the finish line, there was no hiding her joy at reaching the MOC.
“I really wanted to go because I was kind of close to making it in the fall,” Johnston said. “It made me want it really bad this season. I was really excited to do it. It didn’t feel like it actually happened. Going into it I was seeded sixth and what happened was really surprising to me.”
Heading into her first MOC, which was held June 18 at Franklin High school, Johnston kept her goals simple.
“Depending on how heats break down I want to place in the top three in the slower heat or just stay in the race in the faster heat,” she said.
As it turned out, she ran an 11th-place time of 11:20, which was nine seconds off her PR.
“Her time at this point is irrelevant,” Dentino said. “Getting to this stage and overcoming some of the stuff she had gone through in cross country and this past winter speaks a lot more to what we’ve already accomplished this year. She’s had a really special spring season and she’s deserving of all this and it’s really awesome for her. She really earned her ticket to the Meet of Champs”
The fact it came in the 3200 is not surprising, since that seems to be Melanie’s better event.
“I like it much better than the 1600,” said Johnston, who will attend the NIKE summer camp in July. “It’s much more calm and the main part of the race is only the last 800 meters. It gives you a lot of time to just feel like you’re going on a run and just really pushing at the end, which is what I do in a lot of my normal running. So it feels more comfortable for me.”
“She trends up for sure,” Dentino said. “She’s really strong. In the training we do, she thrives on long, fast runs. She’ll tell you her favorite workout is a long run with hills in it, which I would never expect from anybody. That’s kind of her strength and her MO.”
She certainly has come a long way from doing the long jump to get out of running.
RHS runners Melina Johnston, team captain Hailey Cohen and Ella Daly pictured at the Central Jersey Group III sectionals on June 4, 2022.,
