Toledo’s Forrest Wallace high jumps in the State 2B Track & Field Championships last year in Cheney. Wallace won the event with a leap of 6 feet, 4 inches.

CHENEY — Forrest Wallace’s collegiate athletic career came down to a chance proposition at Toledo High School’s high jump pit behind a goal post. 

Wallace, who had turned out for track as a freshman and sophomore, bucked the trend and played soccer his junior year for a new United team that ended up hosting the district title game. His track coaches and friends pleaded with him to return to track his senior year. Just before spring sports began in March 2015, Wallace told one of his soccer teammates that if he cleared 6 feet in the high jump, a height he had never reached, he would go back to track. If he didn’t make 6 feet, he’d return to soccer.

The track coach, James Echtle, heard about it and came over to measure the height. The high jump pit at the time was grass leading to thick-rubber horse stall mats as a takeoff place. Wallace ended up leaping 6 feet, 3 inches, which was the highest Class 2B jump in the state at the time. The rest is, as they say, history.

Wallace, a 2015 Toledo grad, would go on to win the state high jump that year with a height of 6 feet, 4 inches. Still, he only had interest from one college coming out of high school: George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. He couldn’t afford to attend school there, so he enrolled at Eastern Washington University, a campus he fell in love with during a tour, to focus on academics.

“It was small enough that I had those vibes from home,” Wallace said. 

Wallace gave up on track and field that fall of 2015 and joined Eastern’s marching band at the beginning of his freshman year. Coincidentally, Eastern’s jumping coach had his practice right in the middle of Wallace’s band practice. Starting in mid-October, Wallace began going over to talk to him each day, bugging him about joining as a walk-on. 

The coach called Wallace one night at 7 p.m. and told him he was accepting him as a walk on.

Wallace wasn’t eating that well at the time, like most college students, and he had only eaten three Nutri-Grain bars over the span of two days before his first team practice.

Not only was he malnourished, he also wasn’t ready for the level of training demanded of a Division-I college athlete.

“In my head I was thinking, ‘Oh, this will be easy. I can do this,’” Wallace said. 

Wallace had spent his high school career as a long distance runner and jumper. Distance runners don’t typically lift weights because it adds body mass and weight when they want to be fit and slim. So he carried that logic into high jumping.

The jumping team went straight into the weight room after practice. They began pushing 240-pound sleds for 20 minutes. Soon, the 5-foot-7, 113-pound Wallace was doubled over a trash can throwing up — something that had never happened to him before during a practice.

“I had never been more beaten up by sports in my life,” Wallace said. “Those weight coaches, they ran me into the ground.”

The lifting coaches jokingly asked Wallace if he had never lifted weights before. Wallace looked them straight in the eyes with a deadpan stare and said, “No. I haven’t.” 

His teammates came over to make sure he was OK and Wallace learned that it was the toughest weight-training practice the team had had so far this season — they had been practicing for two months at that point.

“I had to make some very drastic changes really quick or I wasn’t going to make it,” Wallace said.

The success on the track and field was also eluding him, as well. Wallace was barely clearing 5-foot-10 in practice heading into the first meet. He had won 2B state at Toledo earlier that spring with a leap of 6 feet, 4 inches. His coach was beginning to get skeptical.

So Wallace began pushing himself further than he ever had before. He changed his diet, finally realizing he was malnourished. He hit the weight room, he stayed late after practice and he ended up putting on 40 pounds, building up to 155 pounds, during that three-month fall quarter.

His breakthrough came at one of the most unlikely times. Wallace had bought some store-made Chinese food on his way back from a meet at UW. He got a gastrointestinal infection and was throwing up the entire way home. He lost 10 pounds the week leading up to his next meet. He ended up jumping a personal record 6 feet, 5 inches. Wallace finished the season with five top-five performances.

“Weight has always been a weird thing for me,” Wallace said. “You just can’t tell what’s going to be best until you hit it.”

Eastern has an indoor season during fall and an outdoor season in spring. From Wallace’s freshman year to the end of his indoor sophomore year, fall 2015 to spring 2017, he had only competed in the high jump. 

It wasn’t until fall 2017, the beginning of his junior year, that the team began experimenting with having Wallace compete in other events. It was a way to get the athlete’s minds off their main event. They threw him in the 600, 400 and 200-meter indoor runs. During a two-week transition period between indoor and outdoor seasons, the new jumping coach, Dave Nielsen, asked Wallace to join the decathletes and heptathletes at practice. Nielsen was holding a javelin pole.

“I remember it to this day because it was so bizarre,” Wallace said.

He realized Nielsen was going to throw him in a multi-event, a combined event where an athlete competes in 10 track and field events. Problem was, Wallace had never competed in six of the 10 events. He had only done the mile, the 400, high jump and long jump.

“That was a steep learning curve,” Wallace said. 

It actually worked out in Wallace’s favor. He’s an extremely energetic guy with limitless energy. The coach was growing tired of him finishing his high jumps at meets and then running around yelling at teammates to cheer them on. Now he had an outlet to release his energy.

Wallace stayed in the decathlon ever since that spring of 2018. He recorded a personal-best of 5,657 points in the event at the 2018 Big Sky Outdoor Track and Field Championships, placing 10th.

His senior year, the 2018-19 season started off with Wallace being named a team captain. That fall he would go on to place 12th in the heptathlon, a seven-event competition, at the Big Sky championships. He also placed fifth in the high jump at the 2019 UW Invitational with a personal-best leap of 6 feet, 8 inches. But Wallace was forced to redshirt his outdoor and indoor seasons in 2019 after finding out he had os trigonum, an extra accessory bone that had grown behind his left ankle bone in his jumping leg. 

He didn’t know it at the time, but his college career competing for Eastern was over. He competed unattached in fall 2019, meaning he could still practice with the school because he still had eligibility and was enrolled full time. But the NCAA and Big Sky stipulate that an athlete can’t travel with the team to any event if they are competing unattached and can’t wear the school’s uniform. 

He was planning to finish out his final season competing for Eastern this spring as a fifth-year senior but coronavirus had other plans. The team was one week off from its first meet when the coronavirus pandemic struck.

Now, Wallace, a computer science major, is spending most of his time working and finishing out his final quarter at Eastern. He hopes to teach computer classes for a high school and become a track and field coach. He had his first assistant coaching job setup with Cheney High School this spring, but his first day on the job was, unfortunately, the day that schools statewide closed down because of coronavirus.

With no longer being able to compete himself, it’s only a matter of time before Wallace finds his calling in coaching. He’s put his mind to it.

“So I’m not officially a coach, but it’s something I’ve found out I really enjoy doing,” Wallace said.

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