Discouragement takes many forms, but it can also serve many functions.

Sometimes what seems like a lost hope can turn out to be a blessing in disguise, and natural talent doesn’t always beat old-fashioned hard work. UNC Wilmington senior track and field runner Bob Vanderham knows this all too well. Seahawk assistant coach Layne Schwier has seen it first hand.

“The story of him is that he’s basically an unrecruited walk-on who became an accomplished champion-one of those Cinderella stories I guess you could say,” Schwier, the coach in charge of distance events, said.

When Vanderham completed his state high school meet at the end of his senior year, he considered it the end of his track and field career. “I wasn’t going to run in college,” he said. “After that meet, I was like, ‘Alright, that’s it, I’m done.'”

His high school coach, on the other hand, had other plans for him. “Bob’s coach called me up a week before his freshman year,” Schwier said. “We didn’t really know who he was, but his coach said, ‘He’s got ability; he could be good if he gets serious and sticks with it.'”

Schwier emailed Vanderham suggesting he try out for the upcoming season. He was placed on the team, but Schwier soon began to doubt his leap of faith. “He was weak and very inflexible and had a lot of things he needed to work on,” he said. “I told him if he didn’t make some improvements, he wasn’t going to make the team next year.”

After a weaker first season than any he’d run in high school, Vanderham realized that something needed to change. Difficulty with his new training regime, combined with the common struggles facing many college freshmen, made his efforts to improve no easy feat. Yet, at no point did he consider it impossible; negativity obviously isn’t in this athlete’s vocabulary, and over the next summer, Vanderham went to work.

“I knew I was on the chopping block, and if I didn’t do something fast, I wasn’t going to make the team,” he said.

During that summer, he attacked his weaknesses from every angle. Schwier sent him home with a yoga tape to improve his flexibility, which-according to Vanderham-increased his strength as well. He knew that training diligently was the only way he would prepare himself for the next season’s tripled mileage and frequent weight lifting.

When he returned for his sophomore year, he didn’t disappoint. His high school coach had been right; he had made a vast improvement and Schwier noticed. “The big surprise came when he had a three-second improvement in the first round of conference championships and made finals unexpectedly,” Schwier said. “We thought maybe he’d sneak in, but he blasted his way in.”

In the conference finals, The Netherlands native ended up placing fifth with a time of 1:50-down from a personal record of 1:57 the previous year. By the time he entered his junior year, he was running 1:48 and challenging the previous school record holder, Wil Zahorodny.

In three years, he had gone from a nearly cut, un-recruited walk on to a conference champion.

“You can go either route,” Schwier said. “Just because you weren’t a stud in high school doesn’t mean you can’t work your butt off and become somebody that’s really good-an accomplished champion.”