Boyd starred as runner, basketball player at Ringgold
Submitted photo
Mel Boyd (23) played on Ringgold’s 1973 basketball team that reached the PIAA semifinals.
Submitted photo
Mel Boyd is shown in 1975. Boyd excelled in basketball, cross country and track & field at Ringgold, and is considered one of the greatest distance runners to ever come out of western Pennsylvania.
It’s a given that with each new generation athletes get stronger and faster. That’s not precisely true when it comes to Monongahela’s Mel Boyd. Four decades ago he set a cross country record at the University of Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park 10K Course that has never been broken.
Boyd’s first love, though, was basketball, and he was a member of the Ringgold basketball team which made it to the state semifinals in 1973.
“I lived in a neighborhood with kids a few years older than me. That helped me because I played basketball morning, noon and night from second grade on, and it developed my skills because I had to shoot over people who were taller than I was,” said Boyd.
He added it is unusual for long distance runners to do well in basketball. “They’re not really very good athletes, but I was.”
A natural left-hander, when he played Wiffle ball his brothers made him bat righty, so he gained some degree of ambidexterity. To this day, he plays golf right-handed.
When Boyd was in junior high school he honed his skills in basketball and track. He credits two great mentors in Russell Leach and Jim Fernandez for teaching him how to be successful in both sports.
“On my first day of cross country practice in high school Ed Poad, who had been a track and cross country coach for many years at Ringgold, had us run a three-mile time trial. I was way ahead of everyone, but when I finished, Coach Poad started yelling at me, saying I did not run the whole way. ‘No one ever ran this fast.’ From Day 1, I realized I had talent.”
In fact, during all three years in cross country, on each and every course Boyd ran, he set a record. As a sophomore, he finished ninth in the state. As a junior, he won the PIAA championship, and as a senior he finished second.
In track, as a sophomore, Boyd finished second in the state. As a junior, he finished second again in the state championship despite limited training due to the extension of the Rams basketball season. As a senior, he won the PIAA championship and set the two-mile state record with a time of 9:11.9. This record will endure forever as it was retired due to the state’s decision to convert to meters the next year.
In basketball, Boyd enjoyed a fine junior year, playing on that great Rams hoop team which finished third in state.
“The problem was basketball went so far into track season, I did not have much time to train for track,” Boyd said. “When I finished second in state in the two-mile run I realized I had to make a decision to ensure I got a full scholarship to college.”
Boyd opted not to go out for basketball his senior year.
Boyd received a full scholarship in track and cross country to attend the University of Pittsburgh for four years. At Pitt, Boyd ran the 5,000 and 10,000 meters as well as the one, two, and three mile events. Boyd went on to compete in nine NCAA Championships between cross country, indoor and outdoor track. In the two-mile run, Boyd’s personal best was 8:36.8, not too far off the world record of 8:12.1.
Boyd went on to say he was one notch below Olympic caliber.
“If you related it to baseball, I would be playing Triple A ball,” Boyd said. “What I’m most proud of is I’m the greatest long distance runner to ever come out of Western Pennsylvania.”
Boyd was inducted to the Western Pennsylvania Hall of Fame in 2004.
After college graduation, Boyd was a Pitt assistant track coach and head cross country coach for four years. During these four years he got his Master’s Degree and then took a job with the Kroger Company where he was a store manager for 32 years in Houston, Phoenix, and Columbus, Ohio.
He continued to run on his own until about the age of 40 when knee issues cropped up. After retiring from Kroger in 2014, he took a job with Leslie Pools as a store manager. He and his wife, Laurie, a nurse who was originally from West Newton, have now lived in Phoenix for seven years, and he plans to retire in Arizona in a year or two.
The distances Boyd ran were simply amazing. There were times when he’d run 22 miles, all the way from Monongahela to California (Pennsylvania, of course) to visit his brother Doug who was attending college there. An old movie was aptly entitled The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, and while the sport is certainly a solo one, it has also been a very rewarding one for Mel Boyd.