Coronado alum Grant Levesque vaults into postseason for Rice

By its nature, track and field's decathlon is going to involve a journey.

For Coronado alum and current Rice track athlete Grant Levesque the path to the end of his "freshman year" has been particularly long.

There is still an act to write, as he will compete in the pole vault Wednesday at the NCAA West Preliminaries, and the big picture of his trip to Fayetteville, Arkansas, is involved.

Back in 2019 Levesque, the son of UTEP's senior women's administrator Julie Levesque, won the state championship in the pole vault and committed to Rice. The reason he picked to Rice over UTEP, where his mother is the track administrator, and other Power 5 offers was because of the school's elite academic reputation and that end of things has gone well.

As for the track, a broken hand caused him to redshirt the 2020 indoor season. COVID wiped out Rice's 2020 outdoor season and 2021 indoor season. Then Levesque injured his meniscus and redshirted the 2021 outdoor season.

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Levesque was halfway through his junior year academically before he put on a Rice uniform for the first time.

"It's funny, I was talking with my coach (Drew Fucci) about that," Levesque said. "He said, 'Thank you for staying healthy.' I said, 'Coach thank you for believing in me the last couple of years. You put a lot of time in me and hadn't seen results.'

"I love training now and being healthy. I love going out to practice with my teammates. It's so fun, I'm excited for next year already."

Levesque put all that time to good use in track and field's most involved discipline, the 10-event decathlon. There was a certain inevitability to ending up in the multi-events, as his mother was a national runner up in the Division II heptathlon in 1991.

He started moving toward the multis as a junior at Coronado, where the hurdles and pole vault were his main events.

"My mom was always like, 'You're going to be a dec because I was a hep,"' Levesque said. "I said, 'We'll see. I didn't know if I wanted to run a (1,500 meters) for a living.' It's been six years now since I had that conversation with my mom about being a decathlete and it's going the way I want it to.

"I love the dec. It's hard training cycles but I love it, it keeps me on my toes. I don't like training for one event every single time. That's something my mom and I can relate to.

"You can have a bad day doing some events, you can come back the next day and have a completely new fresh, clean sheet to practice some other event and have an amazing day at those."

In indoors he won a dominating Conference USA championship in the heptathlon, but then had several illnesses outdoors. Nonetheless, he finished second at the C-USA championships in the decathlon, second in the pole vault and eighth in the 100 hurdles. His best outdoor vault of 17-feet, 0.75-inches has him at the West Preliminaries.

"I really enjoyed indoors," Levesque said. "I love indoor track in general and indoor exceeded my expectations. I did my best and improved more than I thought I would.

"Outdoors I took some hits, I got sick three or four times. I'm recovering from a sickness. Dealing with that all throughout outdoors taught me a lot on how to maintain and stay healthy. It was good overall. I didn't score like I wanted to score, but I put up a score that makes me confident going into my next year."

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Part of what makes Levesque confident is he's seen his steady improvement since coming to Rice, particularly in events that aren't his obvious strengths.

"It's fun, it's also pretty nerve-racking, pretty scary when it comes to events I'm not as good at — discus, javelin, the 1,500," Levesque said. "It's taken a long time but I've gotten better. It's different putting an emphasis on it, which in high school I never did.

"I wasn't trying to improve those three as much as I was the 100, the hurdles, the pole vault. Now that I'm working on it two, three times per week it's coming along. There is a long ways to go to get to where I want to get but I'm seeing increases since I've been at Rice."

His academics are humming along as well. He's majoring in sports management with an eye on moving into sports law. He would like to serve an internship with the Houston Texans to see if that's the direction he wants to take professionally.

"One of the main reasons I chose Rice, simply academics," Levesque said. "It's one of the highest rated schools in the country. I love it here, I plan on staying through my master's. It's been tough, but I'm looking forward to next year. This degree is going to propel me to what I want to do in the future."

The immediate future is Wednesday's pole vault, which will be his first experience on the national stage.

"Pole vault is my best event, it's my highest point getter in the dec, I love doing it," Levesque said. "I've got some big poles with me and I've got a lot of confidence. At conference I was attempting the bar I have to make (17-4 1/4) to make it to nationals.

"If I make 5.29 (meters) tomorrow on my first attempt I might make it to nationals. That's really exciting."

Finally getting back on the track has been exciting for Levesque, who cherishes every day he's competing.

Bret Bloomquist can be reached at 915-546-6359; bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on Twitter.

NCAA Outdoor Championships Preliminary Rounds

When, where: May 25-28, Fayetteville, Ark.

Format: 48 athletes qualify for each event; two rounds trim field to 12 in the East and West Regionals. Those 24 qualify for the national championships in Eugene, Ore. June 8-11