mark.berman@roanoke.com 981-3125

BLACKSBURG - Melinda Sallins is training for her third Olympic Trials. It has been seven years since her college career ended, but she keeps going because she always thinks she can do better.

"It can get tiring mentally sometimes. Physically, a lot of times," said Sallins, who has been a volunteer assistant coach at Virginia Tech for three years. "You ask yourself, 'Why am I doing this again?' But you get over that and you still go on. It's not easy to stop, but it's not easy to keep going."

Sallins, 31, will compete in the 400-meter hurdles at the trials. This summer won't mark the end of her athletic career, but she isn't sure if she will last until the 2008 trials.

"You start thinking of other things in life," she said. "Even now, everyone's like, 'When are you getting married? When are you going to have a kid?' Everyone has all these expectations and that's not in your plans, at least not now. Down the road, I know all of that is going to be in my plans."

Sallins first competed in the trials in 1996, when she had just finished her senior season at Southwest Missouri State and was happy just to be at the trials. She was disappointed in how she fared at the 2000 trials, when she advanced only to the semifinals.

"Not making it to the finals was crushing," she said.

Sallins didn't run track until her senior year of high school in Miami but became a two-time All-American at Southwest Missouri State. She remained in Springfield, Mo., after graduation and trained under Terry Winston, then an assistant at her alma mater. She supported herself with a number of jobs, including stints at Sears and MCI.

"With postcollegiate athletes, you have to worry about, 'How am I going to pay this bill? Is my job going to allow me to have this time off for this competition?'" Sallins said.

When Winston joined the Tech staff as sprints coach three years ago, Sallins also came aboard.

"One of the things that I admire about her most is her longevity and her fortitude and her dedication," Winston said. "There's a lot of people that would've quit by now. Success doesn't always come overnight."

Sallins used to have a job in Tech's communications network services department. She gave that up in December to become an administrative assistant in the Tech track office, a job with more flexible hours.

Smith majored in computer information systems in college, but she has yet to pursue a career in that field.

"In my field, everything I've been interested in has been a full-time position. A full-time position doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be just 40 hours a week, especially if you're in the programming end and you have a deadline," she said. "With track and field, the travel during certain times of the year can be extensive. Trying to get the time off as well as keep your job is not easy."

Sallins can make the Olympic team with a top-three finish at the trials, provided she attains the Olympic qualifying time. She took fifth place at the USA outdoor championships last year (56.24 seconds) and in 2002. That time of 56.24 ranks her 11th in the trials field.

If Sallins fares well in her latest trials attempt, putting off a career will have been worth it.

"I look at myself as an athlete. That is my job right now," she said. "A normal person's everyday career, that's always going to be there." MELINDA SALLINS

5-foot-10, 145 pounds