THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 8, 1994 TAG: 9407080753
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ED MILLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
For area track fans, watching Joe King was a pleasure. At 6-foot-3 and 195 pounds, the former Norview star was the kind of middle distance runner who comes along once a decade: fast, strong, seemingly tireless.
For most college coaches, however, watching King was torture. As good as King was, they knew that because of his poor grades they could never recruit him.
``Nobody ever questioned his talent,'' said George Williams, who is now King's coach at St. Augustine's College. ``We questioned whether he could succeed in college.''
After three years at St. Augustine's, King has answered that question. He's on schedule to graduate next year with a degree in physical education.
As for track, the tests keep coming. King will get a major one Sunday, when he competes in the 800 meters at the U.S. Olympic Festival in St. Louis.
King, 22, heads to the festival with a brand-new national reputation, based on his sixth-place finish in the 800 at the U.S. Track and Field Championships in Knoxville, Tenn., last month.
King entered the Knoxville meet ranked 54th in the nation. He left it with his name on the short list of Olympic hopefuls for 1996.
``The competition carried me,'' King said. ``I PR'd (set a personal record) every race.''
As impressive as it was, the feat King pulled off in Knoxville was nothing compared to what he's done in the classroom.
At Norview, King's academic record was so bad that it took a big late kick - summer school and night school - for him to even graduate. By the time he did, in 1991, he was nearly 20 years old. Still, he'd come a long way.
``I met Joe in the ninth grade, and he was academically ineligible for track,'' recalls Leo Marshall, a former assistant coach at Norview. ``He asked me to start taking him to road races.''
Marshall began looking after King, who lived with his grandfather because his neighborhood was safer than the project in which his mother lived. Marshall took King to invitational meets, and rode herd on him academically.
Marshall introduced King to people, hoping it would rub off. He took King to Hampton University, and to William and Mary, to show him what a college environment was like. He took King to train with Terrance Harrington, a 1992 Olympian who's coached by Western Branch coach Wade Williams.
King took it all in, and began applying himself in school.
``I just wanted to get away,'' King said. ``It was hard. But I had great people who cared, and I just never gave up.''
King was too old to run for Norview during his senior year, but ran for the Atlantic Coast Track Club in invitationals. After graduation, he enrolled at St. Augustine's, a Division II track power in Raleigh.
King sat out his freshman year as a Proposition 48 casualty, making it a two-year layoff. Only now, in his second year back on the track, is he starting to regain his form, he says.
King easily won CIAA titles in the 800 and 1,500, but it's been since then that he's stepped it up. In Knoxville, he ran a personal-best 1:47.90.
``He does have the potential to be an Olympic-type runner,'' says Williams. ``He has tremendous stamina, and is the crossover type who can do either sprint or distance.''
The top four finishers at the U.S. Olympic Trials make the team. After his sixth in Knoxville, King looks at his task as being pretty simple.
``I've got to knock off two more guys to get in,'' he says. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Joe King's record is one of work and improvement, from struggling to
make college to a sixth at the '94 U.S. meet.
by CNB