One of the area’s most renowned track stars of the past century is Le Roy’s class of 2002 Tasha Harvey who holds the discus record at her alma mater.
Following her successful high school track and field career, which included going to state four years in a row, Harvey went on to start a track team at Fort Scott Community College as well as earn a scholarship at Kansas State University.
As a high-schooler, Harvey focused on the discus and javelin. Harvey holds Le Roy’s discus school record of 132’5’’ which certainly put a national spotlight on the athlete at the time.
“The thing about track that was different from the other sports I played was that you’re out there to beat your best mark, last time or last season. So it is a very different sort of mental preparation and focus than just contributing a smaller portion to a wider team,” Harvey said.
Throughout her track and field career she competed in a variety of events including 4×100 and 4×200 relays, 100-meter dash, 60-meter hurdles, shot put, discus, long jump and high jump, 100-meter hurdles, 200 sprint, the 800 run and the javelin.
In a telephone interview from her home in Southern California, Harvey discussed how the track team at Le Roy would sometimes run thin and only have five girls on the team at once. This allowed Harvey more chances to practice her favorite sport as well as bond with her teammates.
“My high school coach (Mr. Ed Jones) had been very influential because he obviously saw my potential to do both the running and throwing side despite it being hard to manage. That was really key,” said Harvey. “My parents drove me to the summer track meets which were often in Missouri or Arkansas.”
Along with Harvey’s record discus throw of a whopping 132 feet her senior year of high school, she also earned a silver medal in discus her junior year at the Class 1A State Championships. Harvey said her discus and javelin throwing were the strengths of her track career.
Harvey went to Fort Scott Community College for the beginning parts of her collegiate career and had to form her own team as well as play under a newly hired track and field coach. Harvey remembered there were only about five track athletes at Fort Scott. However, the team did compete at nationals in Texas.
“While I was at Fort Scott they didn’t have a track team and it was something I was still very interested in keeping up so I started it up,” said Harvey. “There were only five of us that first year who were interested and it wasn’t on a scholarship basis. We were a collection of athletes who were interested in going to a handful of track meets and probably went to less than eight.”
Harvey recalls not wanting to give up track when it was time to head off to a four-year university. She walked on to the team at Kansas State. Of course the Division I ranks are the most elite of the college athletes in the country in every sport and Harvey had quite the competition in practice.
“I didn’t know anything about coach (Cliff) Rovelto before I called him the first time,” Harvey explained. “As I was moving into my dorm at K-State I turned on my TV and the Olympics were happening in Sydney. I realized the camera panned past coach Travelto and I was like ‘well that’s interesting.’ What I realized over time is that he coaches those Olympians there at K-State.”
Harvey now lives and works as an electrical engineer at ARUP in Los Angeles. She recalls her track and field days with much joy and memories as some of the best days of her life.
