The boy first caught Rachel Etherington's eye last year in her physical education class.

When the class played basketball, Warsaw sophomore Justin Bellamy jumped so high he grabbed rebounds above the rim. He stood a modest 6 feet, but he could dunk the basketball.

You need to try out for basketball or the track team, Etherington told Bellamy. But Bellamy, who had not played organized athletics since elementary school and found trying to pass the 10th grade hard enough, ignored Etherington, who doubled as the school's assistant athletic director.

Unfazed, Etherington continued to badger Bellamy.

"It was something I put off," he now says. "She pushed me."

After much pushing, he relented. He chose high jumping. He went to Lakeview Middle School, Warsaw's track and field home, last March or April. He doesn't remember exactly. His first time out, he cleared the bar at 6-6. The height to qualify for the state finals was 6-5. This boy who never had one second of formal high jump training in his life was clearing heights that would land him in the Indianapolis state finals in June.

Troy Akers had seen enough. "We gotta do whatever we can to get you on this team," the Warsaw track and field coach told Bellamy.

The season was half over, and before Bellamy could compete in a meet, he had to get 10 practices in. He did in time to compete in three regular season meets, the sectional and the regional.

One year later, Bellamy is headed to the state finals. The 17-year-old, 6-foot-2, 156-pound junior will compete in the high jump in Indianapolis this Friday. He won the sectional and regional with 6-8 jumps. He is seeded third at the state finals. The two boys seeded ahead of him jumped 6-9 at the regional. One is North Central's Lamar Johnson, who won the state championship last year with a jump of 7 feet.

Bellamy's abbreviated 1998 season ended at the regional when he failed to jump higher than 6-2.

"For me being so young and that close to going to the state meet, I just choked," he says. "I was nervous."

In 1999, just being at the state finals will not be enough.

"When I won sectional, my goal was just to go to state," Bellamy says. "I didn't care what happened at state. Now that I won regional with such a gap between me and second place, my goal is to win at state."

Akers has coached the sport for 14 years. He had never seen a track athlete walk onto the team midway through one season and reach the state finals the next.

Until Bellamy. "Boy Wonder," Akers calls him.

"He's a freak of nature," Akers says. "It comes easy to him. It's like the kid who can get straight A's in school and never crack open a textbook."

Bellamy is nonchalant about his overnight success.

"I don't think much of it," he says. "People are more excited for me than I am for myself. I just take things if it happens, it happens. That way I'm not disappointed in myself."

No one has come close to Bellamy in the sectional or regional. Two weeks ago he finished 6 inches ahead of second place in the Goshen Sectional. Last week he finished three inches ahead of second place in the Fort Wayne Regional. By comparison, three inches separated the second- through eighth-place athletes at the regional.

He came oh so close to jumping 6-10 at the regional, but his heel grazed the bar enough to knock it down.

When Akers watched Bellamy in April 1998, he saw a raw but gifted athlete.

"I've seen a lot of kids who can leap but can't high jump," Akers says. "He combines a lot of things a high jumper has to have. Just because you have a great vertical does not mean you will be a great high jumper. Justin is very, very flexible. He does a lot of things you don't teach or coach.

"He's a potential 7-foot jumper. He's really that blessed."

Says Bellamy: "It's just natural. I don't have big legs or anything, but I just have some spring, I guess."

Bellamy cannot claim he is the best high jumper Akers has ever coached. That honor still goes to Sue Setlak, who went to the state finals four years under Akers when he coached Wawasee's girls team. Setlak, whose best finish at the state finals was fourth, now high jumps for Ball State. She owns the Cardinals' indoor high jump record.

On Memorial Day, you would have found Setlak watching Bellamy practice at Lakeview.

Setlak said all that was left for Bellamy to do was "clean up his jumps." She meant technical flaws, like positioning the body and kicking the heels on over.

While Setlak watched, Bellamy cleared 6-9 for the first time in his life.

"It was kind of weird, getting information from and getting told how to do stuff by a girl, just 'cause, I don't know, it wouldn't seem like she could instruct much," Bellamy says. "We worked on my approach. She helped me pretty good."

The impression Bellamy left on Setlak? "Do you realize you could high jump for almost any Divison I school of your choice?" she asked him.

He does, but he doesn't. As a track and field athlete he is the straight A student who never has to crack open a book. Off the track, he still would prefer not to crack open a book, and his grades sometimes show it. When Bellamy joined the team last year, Akers balked at doing an interview about Bellamy because he did not want to paint him as a great success story when he struggled in school.

Bellamy is what people politely call a free spirit.

He has short hair bleached blond at the tips and an earring in his left ear. He wears baggy blue jeans with the big pockets and a bright orange shirt.

He shows up to Tuesday's practice with a friend who is smoking a cigarette. Akers tells him to get rid of the cigarette because he's on school property. He obliges, throwing it on the ground and stepping on it.

Bellamy played any sport he could in elementary school but quit after that.

"From elementary to junior high, I wanted to be popular more than I wanted to do things," he says.

Bellamy hesitated joining the team a year ago because of grades. Asked if his grades have improved this year, he says, "Somewhat, but I wouldn't say tremendously. I don't try very hard, but I should."

Ask him what he thought of Setlak's comment about college, he says, "School? I don't know. I don't think about it. I guess I should start thinking about it." At the same time, he realizes his high jumping talent could take him places. "I could go to school on that," he concedes.

The thing Akers wishes he could see from Bellamy? "Interest in school," he says. "Becoming disciplined in the classroom and disciplined on the track. It's an everyday thing to try to develop that and help that become more of his lifestyle. We'd like to see him get more direction in the sense that he'd like to further his education. "

You realize how important track and field has been to Bellamy when he says, "It's a big confidence booster," not once but twice at two different times during the interview.

And Akers says he's noticed positive changes in Bellamy in 1999 over 1998.

"I think he's improved a lot," he says. "Looking at the big picture, he's more focused. It's worked out well for him."

Rachel Etherington may have seemed like she badgered him, but looking back, Bellamy is glad she did.

"I did this because I finally realized I was good at something and could be recognized for something good," he says. [[In-content Ad]]