Coach’s faith transforms troubled Belleville teen into an Olympic hopeful
Three years ago, Troy McLean was exhibiting the kind of behavior that suggested he was giving up on himself.
His father had recently walked away from the family, leaving McLean a confused, sad, and, at times, angry freshman at Belleville West – a much different person from the outgoing, confident kid he’d been after graduating from eighth grade.
McLean estimates he received more than 200 tardy notices as a freshman, and when he did go to class, his grades were poor. He was hanging out with the wrong crowd away from school, and seriously thinking of just dropping out.
One man at the school, a math teacher and track coach, Alonzo Nelson Jr., and his wife, former track and field Olympic gold medalist Dawn Harper-Nelson, saw something in McLean.
“I saw a kid who just needed someone to wrap his arms around him,” Nelson says. “When me and my wife would say to him, ‘you got so much potential, we see it in you, ’ he thought we said that to all our athletes. And I was like, ‘No Troy, I actually see that in you.’ It wasn’t until maybe the middle of last season that he started to believe it himself.”
The Troy McLean of today is the defending state champion in the 400-meter run, confident he’ll shatter last year’s winning time of 47.94 at the upcoming Class 3A state meet. Nelson and his wife both believe he has a shot at being an Olympian in 2028.
He goes to his classes every day as a senior at Belleville West, gets good grades, and is headed to college this fall on a track scholarship.
Well-spoken, polite and introspective, McLean can hardly believe how much his life has transformed from the freshman and sophomore years he calls “a lost time.”
“I wasn’t going to class. I wasn’t paying attention. I think my highest grade in anything was a low C,” McLean said. “It was bad. My dad leaving just kind of threw me over. I was all up in my head, messed up. I didn’t know what to do.”
Every time Nelson saw McLean in the halls, he’d say something like “I see it in you, Troy. I see it.” Even though McLean still wasn’t running track through his sophomore year, Nelson invited McLean on the team bus to see the state track meet.
“It was to show me what I was missing out on. He was like, ‘this could be you if you choose right path,’” said McLean, who also anchors Belleville West’s defending state champion 1600-meter relay team. “Even though I was doubting myself in my own head, he always believed in me. Always.
“Finally, it sparked something in me. I came back to school and I started getting A’s and B’s and I started running well. Then I won state and it’s like ‘Wow, I can be a successful person’, the person I used to always believe I’d become but lost hope for a while.”
Nelson truly believes McLean can run the 400 meters for the United States at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, especially if he gets his times down to the low 47- or below-47 mark.
“Me and my wife, we see that potential in him to get there. It’s really just about nurturing him and making sure he’s planted in the right places,” said Nelson, a former track runner himself who trained under legendary coach Bob Kersee. “Troy is a special kid. He always leans into those kids now that are overlooked. The kids that are in special needs classes, Troy is friends with those guys. There is a guy who was dealt a difficult hand in life, and Troy took him under his wing, befriended him and pushed him to be more social. Now, this kid is going to (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville).”
McLean is trying to decide where to go for college. He signed a national letter of intent to attend Allen Community College in Kansas, but when his final grades come out in June, a possibility exists that he’ll get a full ride to run track at Division 1 Mississippi State.
Allen has a strong history of sending track athletes on to big Division 1 schools, especially Ohio State, and perhaps it might be a better path to, as McLean puts it, “practice for a year” at Allen, to run more, achieve better times and therefore have a wider choice of Division 1 schools.
Meantime, McLean is gearing up mentally and physically to go out at Belleville West in style. He’ll go through qualifying this week, then on to state May 29-31 in Charleston.
What goes through his head when the gun sounds and the feet start moving? After touching the turf and praying to God, McLean said it’s always two things, one about halfway through the race and one toward the end.
“The first thing I listen for is Miss Nelson. Her voice, you can hear it in the crowd. About halfway through my race, I’ll hear her and that’s how I know if I’m on cue, off cue, if I need to start pushing a little harder or ease up a bit if I’m going too hard,” McLean said. “After I make the turn on the 200, I know I’ll hear from a different coach (Alonzo Nelson) and whether I’m ahead or behind, it’s ‘You better bring it home Troy, you gotta bring it home. If you want something, you gotta do it.’
“That’s when I’m like, ‘OK, this is my race. This is who I’m meant to be and this is what I do.’ I do the 400, so I’ve got to prove it to myself and to everybody else. And I run. I just run.”
This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
