Atwater High School alum Alvarado set for Olympic track trials

Sometimes a good humbling is exactly what a person needs.

Abraham Alvarado certainly believes that. The Atwater High School graduate and Stanislaus State track and field star said he’d never have gone to Friday’s U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials without one such occurrence.

While a good athlete during his days at Atwater, Alvarado admits that he coasted on his talent in both cross country and track and field, doing the bare minimum during his training. He assumed he could continue the same formula when he signed to continue his career at Stanislaus State, but was dealt a swift dose of reality.

“I wasn’t the most dedicated athlete in high school,” Alvarado said. “I didn’t really care. I liked running, but I didn’t really do everything my coaches told me to do to get better. I was still good, so I thought the same thing would happen at Stanislaus.

“My whole perspective changed my freshman year in cross country. I just got my butt whooped on a regular basis. I talked it over with my coach and she told me I needed to run every day in the offseason and start doing training on my own. That’s what I did.”

Alvarado has certainly displayed what he can do when he applies himself. The junior has finished as the runner-up in the 800-meter race at the last two NCAA Division II national championships.

His career-best time of 1 minute, 46.90 seconds, set in June, proved one of the 24 fastest in the nation for the year and earned him a spot in Eugene, Ore., for this weekend’s Olympic Trials. The first round for the 800 will be at 4:15 p.m. Friday. Should Alvarado advance, the semifinals will be on Saturday and the final will take place on the Fourth of July with a couple of spots at the 2016 Rio Olympics up for grabs.

“It still hasn’t really hit me that it’s happening,” Alvarado said. “It probably won’t until we get there Thursday. A lot of people still don’t even know I’m running. Coach and I have known there was a chance for a while, but I didn’t want to say anything and then not make it.

“Reaching the Olympic Trials was definitely one of my main goals. I feel pretty loose going into it. I tend to run my best when I feel like I’ve got nothing to lose and I usually rise to the level of my competition. The competition doesn’t get any better than this.”

Alvarado is one of two Stanislaus State stars who will be making the trek to Oregon. He’ll be joined by javelin thrower Channing Wilson (Turlock High).

His fans may have the opportunity to cheer him on from home with NBC Sports televising some of the Trials over the course of the weekend.

“This is absolutely huge for these two outstanding Warriors and for our program,” Stanislaus State director of track & field Diljeet Taylor said in a news release. “It is a very rare and very special opportunity for them to compete at the U.S. Trials.”

Alvarado is just grateful for the course that Taylor helped set him on.

“The whole thing is still kind of a shock to me,” Alvardo said. “If you’d have asked me four years ago, I would never have even believed I’d be running in college, much less at the Olympic Trials.

“If I didn’t qualify for the Trials I wasn’t going to be too upset. I’ve been battling an Achilles’ injury all season and was kind of looking forward to resting it. All that is out the window now. This is an opportunity that I may never get again, and I’m going to make sure I go all out.”

Swimming Trials

Alvarado isn’t the only local who is trying to realize his dreams of representing the red, white and blue this summer.

Golden Valley alum Connor Hoppe reached the semifinals of the 100-meter breaststroke at the 2016 U.S Olympic Trials in Omaha, Neb. last Sunday. The Pacific-12 Conference champion in the 100 breast finished 10th in the race with a time of 1:00.89, missing out on the final by just 0.59 seconds.

This story was originally published June 30, 2016 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Atwater High School alum Alvarado set for Olympic track trials."