Daily Pilot Athlete of the Week, Tony Melum: Up to speed

Barry Faulkner

Despite his smooth three-point jumpers, crowd-pleasing power dunks

and physically imposing presence in the middle of Newport Harbor High’s

lineup, 6-foot-6 junior Tony Melum is, it turns out, a most unlikely prep

basketball star.

Forget, for a moment, that the first-year varsity starter is

generating recruiting interest from, among others, U Mass, Oregon,

Washington and Loyola Marymount. Set aside, if you please, his 22.3

scoring average, double-figure rebounding capability, surprising

perimeter skills and increasingly chiseled 208-pound frame.

Now, let us begin at the beginning.

“I physically couldn’t stand to watch basketball when I was a kid,”

Melum said. “I was a soccer player who hated basketball. I thought it was

redundant to see guys putting the ball in the basket -- layup, dunk,

layup. It just wasn’t very exciting at all.”

Instead, Melum found his thrills on the soccer field, where his

superior speed as a forward created countless breakaway goals; or the

wide open desert, over which he straddled his motorcycle during frequent

weekend riding trips with his Dad.

His parents, however, eventually persuaded him to give basketball a

try in his seventh-grade year. And the rest may turn out to be Newport

basketball history.

With the Daily Pilot Athlete of the Week leading the way, the Sailors

are 8-1, heading into tonight’s second-round tournament game with

Magnolia at the Anaheim Convention Center.

He scored 85 points in four games last week, helping Coach Larry

Hirst’s Tars advance to the title game of the Bill Reynolds Classic,

where the fell to highly regarded El Toro Saturday night, 53-41.

And, just as it was not love at first sight, Melum’s initial

experiences with basketball, provided little gratification.

“I was a horrible player,” he recalled. “I think I may have set some

record for the most offensive rebounds known to man, because I couldn’t

make a layup. I had to practice a lot of stupid stuff, like dribbling the

ball. And the only way I could hit the rim from beyond the three-point

line was to shoot granny style.”

But, ironically, it was this failure that drew Melum closer and closer

to the game.

“What changed my mind about basketball was that I wasn’t good at it,”

Melum explained. “I’d always been pretty athletic and fairly smart, so

there were not a lot of things I was bad at. But I was bad at basketball

and I started having a lot of fun trying to get better.”

Taking advantage of his mother’s one-week stay in the hospital during

his eighth-grade year, Melum and his father cemented a basketball goal,

against her wishes, into the back yard.

Aided by a daily practice venue, Melum averaged closed to 30 points

per game for the Harbor freshman team.

He was starting for the varsity the summer before his sophomore year,

but a broken left (shooting) arm, courtesy of an ill-fated motorcycle

trip just before the season opener, all but sabotaged his season.

He did average 9.6 points in 18 games, but he was never 100%

physically. And, forced to come off the bench, he admittedly pressed.

“I played like a chicken with its head cut off,” he recalled.

Melum, however, did score 24 points in the season-ending CIF playoff

loss to Brea Olinda, which helped set his offseason mind at ease.

“I finally got to show I could play,” said Melum, who devoted himself

to doing the same this season. “I worked hard in the weight room to get

stronger and all I did was play basketball. I thought I still had a lot

to prove, because I was nothing last year.”

Clearly, he has been quite something this season, and, according to

his coach, could turn out to be something special.

“He’s not as good as he’s going to be,” said Hirst, who is challenging

Melum to be more consistent with his effort and his leadership.

“When he plays hard, which is the thing we’re working on the most, he

shows great inside power and a nice outside touch,” Hirst said. “Once he

takes on the responsibility of being a leader 100% of the time, he’s

going to be really good.”

Melum is scoring most of his points inside, but Hirst is not afraid to

move him to the perimeter, where most foresee him playing in college.

“As the season has progressed, he’s shot more and more threes,” Hirst

said. “And when teams put big guys on him, we like to switch him outside.

He wouldn’t be getting recruited by those kinds of schools, if he didn’t

show he had the skills to play on the perimeter.”