By MARK MOSCHETTI
Seattle Pacific Sports Information
 
CHENEY, Wash. – Some clothes. Some personal grooming items. Maybe a few snacks to munch on for the drive.
 
In many ways, packing the car for a family trip was no different for Marcia Mecklenburg than it was for teenagers everywhere.
 
But how many of those other teens also packed along …
 
… a shot put and a discus?
 
 

"I was very driven. I lived, ate, drank, and slept the throwing events," the former Seattle Pacific star said. "My mom and dad were so patient. Everywhere we went on vacation, a shot and disc went in the trunk with us.
 
"It was just what I was going to do."
 
Mecklenburg went on to do it better than just about every other female thrower in Falcons history. She still owns the school record for the shot put, 41 years after setting it with toss of 52 feet, 1 inch. She's No. 4 on the all-time discus list at 153-5.
 
The shot and the disc are still very much a part of Mecklenburg's life.
 
No, she doesn't throw them competitively anymore. She now coaches others how to throw them competitively.
 
And, Seattle Pacific is where that coaching career began. A career that eventually took her to Montana State, then to Washington State, and finally to Eastern Washington University where she has been the women's head coach and for the past quarter of a century..
 
"It's like 25 years is here and gone – like whoa!," said Mecklenburg, also the throwing coach for women and men. "I can't believe it has gone by so fast."
 
That's usually the case when a job isn't just a job. It's a calling. It's a passion.
 
Or, in Mecklenburg's case …
 
… it's just what she was going to do.
 
A RUNNER ONE YEAR – AND A THROWER EVER SINCE
As a 7^th-grader in Estacada, Oregon, Marcia (pronounced mar-SEE-uh) Mecklenburg did not start her track career as a thrower. Older sister Dorothea was a runner, specializing in the 800 meters. Marcia took up the 400.
 
"I didn't have a lot of success in the 400," she said with a bit of a laugh.
 
That same 7^th grade year, Dorothea made it to the high school state meet. Marcia and her dad went to watch.
 
"While I was sitting in the stands I saw all these girls throwing the javelin and shot and discus," she recalled. "All the people around me were talking about these throwers."
 
The following spring, Mecklenburg switched to the throws – and has never looked back.
 
Competing for Estacada High School as a freshman in the spring of 1972, she posted a best of 29 feet in the shot and 99 in the discus.
 
Mecklenburg had no doubt that she was on her way.
 
"For some reason, I just knew I was going to be a great thrower," said Mecklenburg, who also played volleyball, and helped Estacada win the Oregon state championship in that sport during her 1973 junior season. "I kept going with it."
 
Kept going farther, too. Her sophomore year, she reached 33 feet in the shot and 114 in the discus, making it to the Oregon state meet for disc.
 
By the time Mecklenburg became a junior, she was an every-morning regular in the matted wrestling room, using an indoor shot to help improve her technique. That spring, she had personal-bests of 45 in the shot and 128 in the discus, going all the way to a second-place finish in the former and third in the latter at state.
 
A job transfer for her father brought the family to the Puget Sound area, and they settled in Edmonds, about 10 miles north of Seattle. In the spring of 1975 at Edmonds High School, Mecklenburg claimed the large-school state championships in the shot with a mark of 48-2¼, and the discus at 135-1.
 
She had thrown even farther in other competitions, hitting 49-11½ in the shot and 144 in the discus. As one might expect, she acknowledged being disappointed by the shot mark because it was half an inch short of 50 feet – but it was that event in which she made the U.S. junior national team.
 
"It was a magical senior year," she said
 
REACHING THE NATIONALS – AND BEYOND
During her 1975 senior year at Edmonds, what eventually became the explosive growth of women's athletics was just getting started. At the encouragement of her club coach, Mecklenburg reached out to three schools: Seattle Pacific, UCLA, and Montana's Flathead Valley Community College.
 
Only the Falcons, then under the direction of Ken Foreman and in their first year as a full-fledged varsity sport, reached back.
 
"I went to visit in the spring at one of their freshman orientation type of things, and they offered me a scholarship," Mecklenburg said. "I totally lucked out. It was an awesome program and had some legendary coaches.
 
"I hate to be cliché," she added, "but God directed me to where I was supposed to go."

 

Mecklenburg said she and Foreman "clicked right away" and developed a solid coach-athlete relationship.
 
"To me – and I know he hated it – he was always Doctor Foreman," she said. (Indeed, Foreman was known for asking his athletes and others to " just call me Coach.")  "It was like a huge sign of respect that he had earned that degree and he was this great coach and professor. He was Doctor Foreman."
 
Mecklenburg didn't waste any time making an impression. A then-school record shot put performance of 51 feet, 5 inches at the end of her freshman year gave her second place at the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) nationals in Manhattan, Kansas.
 
That was the first of four straight trips to nationals. As a sophomore in 1977, she placed sixth in the discus at 153-3, then was eighth in that shot at 49-1 as a senior in 1979.
 
But it wasn't just the Falcons whom Mecklenburg was representing. Along with that spot on the U.S. junior national team near the end of her high school career, she was part of the American team that competed in the 1977 Pacific Conference games in Canberra, Australia. She was on the U.S. senior team for the 1979 USA vs. USSR indoor dual meet in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
 
And of course, there were the three appearances in the U.S. Olympic Trials: 1976, 1980, and 1984. She qualified in the shot put all three years, making the finals every time, and placing fourth in 1976, 12^th in '80 and 10^th in '84. She was in the 1980 discus trials, but did not advance to the finals.
 
Not lost on Mecklenburg was that her fourth-place finish in 1976 came on a throw of 47 feet, 11¼ inches. Her mark of 51-1½ in 1984 netted just 10^th (but would have been second in '76).
 
"That's how the U.S. has progressed," she said.
 
STARTING THE NEXT CHAPTER
While continuing to train and to compete a high levels, Mecklenburg dove head-on into coaching.
 
Appropriately, her first opportunity came with Seattle Pacific in 1981.
 
"I worked in the dining hall as a cook after I graduated. I cooked part-time, and I could continue to use the facilities and train," she recalled. "Doris (Heritage) asked me if I would consider helping to coach the throwers that year. So I helped coach the throwers.
 
"It all just kind of snowballed from there."
 
That certainly was no surprise to Heritage.
 
"We learned a lot of stuff from Ken Foreman, and Marcia was one of those people who was able to take what she learned and make it her own," Heritage said. "She is very pleasant and easy-going, and yet very thorough. She has a great background to be a coach.
 
"A lot of people know a lot, but to be able to work with young people, that's a really special talent," Heritage added.

"She's like Ken was – she can work with all levels of athletes. She has a passion for people."
 
To this day, Mecklenburg says one of her best early coaching experiences was working at Falcon track camps with throwers – nearly all of whom were just getting started.
 
"I felt I was really good at the basics. At the camps, I was pretty much in charge of the new kids getting them to learn the throws," she said. "That really helped me to learn (how to coach) from ground zero. My first year (coaching the throws) at Seattle Pacific, I kind of took that to heart, and we really worked the throws."
 
BOZEMAN TO PULLMAN TO CHENEY
Mecklenburg headed to Montana State as an assistant from 1982-86. She then began a nine-year run as a Washington State assistant in 1987. Among the athletes she worked with in Pullman was two-time NCAA discus champion Laura Levine.
 
Her time at Eastern began in fall 1995. Under Mecklenburg's guidance, three Eagles (including two throwers) have become All-Americans, and 49 have won Big Sky Conference titles (18 in the throws).
 
Of the six throwing events (shot put, discus, hammer, and javelin outdoors; shot and weight throw indoors), Eastern women have set school records in all six. The men have set records in three of the six. (The other three – indoor and outdoor shot put, outdoor discus – have stood since the1980s.)
 
"I've been able to work with some amazing athletes and just been really blessed," Mecklenburg said, "and I have a great working relationship with the coaches that I get to work with."
 
While athletes have evolved, so has Mecklenburg and her approach to coaching. Just as distance runners don't spend every waking moment logging lots of miles, throwers do more than just letting it fly dozens of reps every day.
 
"I feel we throw less than when I first started," she said. "You're not just a thrower and a lifter – you have to be well-rounded. We do medicine balls, running, and agility drills."
 
A SPRING LIKE NO OTHER
Although this was her milestone 25th season at Eastern, it didn't go the way Mecklenburg had planned. Sports at all levels everywhere were shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.
 
"It was very strange," she said. "It was pretty heartbreaking just knowing the seniors wouldn't get their final season, so that was hard. It was harder for them than it was for me, but it was still pretty emotional for me."
 
 

Even so, some sunshine poked through the clouds of the canceled season. Mecklenburg, now 63, got to spend more time during the spring with daughter Echo, whom she adopted 17 years ago. Echo was 10 months old at the time and living in an orphanage in Kazakhstan.
 
"I had always wanted kids," Mecklenburg said, adding that it was former Falcon teammate Julia Hansen, at that same time working on adopting a child as well, who inspired Mecklenburg to think about the possibility. "I started doing some research. … It all worked out."
 
And, as much as she enjoys being a coach, nothing quite compares to being a mom.
 
"It has been amazing. She's a definite teenager," Mecklenburg said with a laugh, "but it has been a blast. This is her final spring at home, and I never got to spend spring with my daughter. (Instead of track, Echo became a swimmer, competing at state last November in the 100 butterfly and 100 backstroke for Cheney High School.)
 
Like coaches everywhere, Mecklenburg is looking forward to the day when she and her team can get fully back into things.
 
"It's the athletes – I really enjoy working with them," she said of what keeps her going. "I get inspired watching them improve and watching their excitement for their events. It brings me back every day."
 
No surprise there. After all, it's track and field. It's throwing.
 
It's just what Marcia Mecklenburg was going to do.