Way Back

The crescendo seemed to come last Saturday night as he hydroplaned down the rain-slick artificial turf in Corvallis, Ore., with the game-winning 61-yard touchdown reception.

Except that it didn’t.

Brad Melsby had fought through two seasons simply to return to being an everyday player, not to get to the spotlight that came from running under Cade McNown’s pass to score with 21 seconds left. The accomplishment had come long before that sprint down the right sideline at Parker Stadium that helped his team hold off another near upset.

“I’m playing week in and week out for UCLA,” Melsby said. “That’s what I’ve been waiting for. The moment’s already happened--to be 8-0 and be part of the team.”

That is how a player who was replaced as the starting split end after two games, who became the backup flanker, who had only seven catches before his heroics against Oregon State can come to cherish a limited role so much.

Because he nearly lost it.

Melsby was a success after arriving from Los Alamitos High. He emerged at the end of the 1995 season and caught two touchdown passes and a two-point conversion as a true freshman in the Aloha Bowl, the first Bruin first-year player to get two scoring receptions in the same game. But in spring drills a few months later, he landed wrong after a catch and tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

There went 1996. The return, as a redshirt sophomore the next season, lasted until double days, when he left the team for reasons that he still chooses to keep private. The media guide describes the departure as “illness related to [the] recovery,” but the difficulties were emotional, not physical. They probably also went far beyond the challenges of dealing with rehabilitation for a player who felt pressure even because of a dropped pass in practice.

Melsby rejoined the team before the ninth game but didn’t play until the next week, against Washington. He sat out the USC game, then played sparingly in the Cotton Bowl against Texas A&M.; He didn’t catch a pass in either game.

“Real tough,” Coach Bob Toledo said of that time for Melsby. “Real tough. It was a hard thing that he went through. I think it was a great learning experience on his part. He has not put as much pressure on himself to be perfect, yet he does a lot of good things. I think he’s grown as a person and as a football player as well.”

He grew in other ways, having added muscle to the current 195 pounds on his 6-foot-1 frame. But he is the same hard worker who is soft-spoken to the point of shy. He never complains, about the lost job or how Danny Farmer, the No. 1 target, and Brian Poli-Dixon get most of the throws. Chances on deep routes? Don’t even think about that.

“Maybe one or two,” Melsby said.

Pause.

“By accident.”

But he’s back, not even wearing a knee brace.

By determination.

“It’s been real hard, going all the way back to the knee injury in the spring after his freshman year,” said Ron Caragher, the Bruin receiver coach. “It really devastated him.

“He has been through a lot. To see him make a catch, a great, game-winning catch, there’s a message in there. Persistence pays.”

Monday, two days after the 61-yard play that was the key in UCLA’s remaining undefeated and on track for a national-championship bid, Melsby and Toledo spoke.

Brad, the coach said, wasn’t it all worthwhile, to be able to step back a bit and then come back and contribute in such a way?

It was a rhetorical question. Toledo got an answer anyway.

“Obviously, he agreed,” Toledo said. “It’s really satisfying to me to see a great kid who’s had to go through some troubled times and then to put it behind him and then to come up and do what he’s done.”

And not just what he has done most recently.

So says a contributor week in and week out.

“Sure, there’s been a lot of frustration,” Melsby said. “But I put that behind me. I just enjoy playing football now.”