By Jerry Hill
Baylor Insider
           
That image of a skinny, geeky teenager who wore glasses and got cut from his eighth-grade basketball team is now fading, if not gone altogether. Charlie Melton was like a target, screaming for every bully in town to kick sand in his face.

"We grew up without TV, so my social barometer was terrible," he said. "I was 165 pounds, very awkward. I started lifting weights my senior year, and I lifted enough just so I wouldn't be embarrassed to go to the high school weight room. I lifted on a Joe Weider set in the living room."
           
Now 44, Melton is described as a "scientist with muscles" by Baylor associate head men's basketball coach Jerome Tang.
           
As Baylor's Director of Athletic Performance for men's basketball, Melton has overseen the complete physical transformation in guys like Mamadou Diene, Taurean Prince, Cory Jefferson and Johnathan Motley. But, just as important if not more so, is the radical change in the players' confidence.
           
"That's what I found when I started training," Melton said. "I put on some muscle, put on some strength, started making good grades. And it all came from lifting weights and my nutrition. That's why I've got 'Iron Sharpens Iron' up here. If we're going to be leaders out there, I'm into being a man's man."
           
Growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., Melton was more into BMX bicycle riding than organized team sports. He rode the bench for his seventh-grade soccer team, then got cut from basketball the next year.
           
"We moved to Memphis going into the ninth grade," he said. "I ended up being kind of awkward in the transfer, because the Florida lifestyle is way different than the Tennessee lifestyle. I came in in the ninth grade when all the cliques were established. And I wasn't really outgoing, I was a lot more introverted. I did find a few BMX riders, not a lot, and we kind of had our own little bike crew."
           
Taking what he could learn from magazines, Charlie got hooked on weight-lifting and nutrition the summer before his senior year at Kirby High School. Among the many books and memorabilia in his office at the Ferrell Center is a journal from that year detailing "every meal, every calorie, every rep, every set, all the work. . . . I fell in love with it."
           
Going into his freshman year at the University of Memphis, his hometown college, Charlie admits that he didn't have a clue on what he wanted to do.
           
"I just knew that I didn't want to go into the military like my dad had done," he said. "And I didn't want to start working on the railroad with my dad. He was a railroad guy back then. I started out as a physical therapy major and pre-med/chemistry. I got a 33 on the first test and dropped that class immediately."
           
A year later, he still had no direction and was mad at himself for "wasting my dad's money." After taking the spring semester off, he was introduced to the exercise science program in Memphis through a friend.
           
"The first class in that program, they started talking about leg length and how that affects leg-press strength. And I was thinking, 'You can get grades in this stuff?''' Charlie said. "Because that's all I did. That's all I really liked to do. I just dove into that department and ended up with a 3.9 in my major, absorbed everything.
           
"I was terrible in science, but exercise science made sense because I could see it."
           
Working on a master's degree in the same program, Charlie had a dual graduate assistant position as a strength coach and research assistant at Memphis, studying the creatine supplement.
           
"At the end of the football workouts, I had a blender station and was kind of the Smoothie guy," he said. "So, I had my control group coming for protein and my experimental group coming for creatine. It was really unique, because I got my foot in both camps. And by the end of that, I thought I'd rather pursue being in the weight room versus being in the lab. But, that's where a lot of this nerdiness kind of sprouted."
           
As a grad assistant and then full-time strength coach at Florida State (2000-05), Charlie worked with football, women's soccer and track and field and got the chance to see quarterback Chris Weinke win the 2000 Heisman Trophy.
           
"He would show up in the mornings and ride the bike and look at the stock page in the paper," Melton said of the former pro baseball player that came back to college as a 25-year-old freshman. "Just this grown man, he was 27 years old, reading the stock reports."
           
And then in 2005, he got a call from Dr. Richard Kreider, his former exercise physiology professor at Memphis. Kreider had moved to Baylor, serving as Chair of the Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation and Director of the Center for Exercise, Nutrition & Preventive Health.
           
It was in the latter area where Dr. Kreider was working with a young basketball coach named Scott Drew on body fat scans and nutrition counseling. Drew was looking for a strength coach, and Charlie's former professor recommended him for the job.
           
"Normally, you don't get a recommendation from a professor for a strength coach job," Charlie said. "So, I interviewed thinking I didn't have a chance because I didn't have basketball experience."
           
Interviewed in his office at Florida State, Charlie impressed Coach Drew with a power point presentation that had images of the Drew family and a message of "Excellence Breeds Championships." Maybe not on the spot, but he got the job.
           
"I was really impressed with his intellect, but more impressed with his character and work ethic," Drew said. "His dad was an old Marine, and he loved hard work. You think of physical development with the strength coach, but the mental side is just as important if not more. And he does a great job in helping the players mature from young men to adults."
           
Buying every book on basketball strength coaching he could find, and calling anyone he could think of, Charlie felt like he was taking a crash course when he took the job in July 2005.
           
"But back then, I was cocky enough to think that I could do it. And I did it. I did it a little different back then. I've definitely changed the things I've done. But, a lot of this is read and react. Come in with a game plan, but you've got to shift every day."
           
Getting a little push-back initially, one of the quotes he still remembers is, "Look, Charlie, dogs don't stretch on the porch before they run off to chase cars." Eventually, he was given the time he needed to adequately warm up the players before practices and games.
           
One of Charlie's biggest transformation projects was seeing the 7-foot Diene add 50 pounds after spending just over a year in the program.

"I still remember those early mornings in the weight room with him pushing us extremely hard," said Diene, a crowd favorite as a player with the Bears (2005-09) who became known as "The Mayor." "He is extremely passionate and loves his players. That's what I think makes him so special. He will be a friend, but he will also push you to give your very best. A big part of strength and conditioning is to develop mental toughness. And that mental toughness doesn't just help on the court, but in life as well."
           
Outside of the weight room and beyond the walls of the Ferrell Center, Charlie has been able to mentor former players as they go through divorce and child support issues. He went through his own divorce nine years ago, "and I was barely hanging on some days."
           
"I ended up living in an apartment by myself, barely seeing my kids," he said. "I blew out a quad, blew out a shoulder. I've got toddlers and I can't take care of them with one limb. So, a couple summers of not seeing them and trying to rehab, but coming to work every day and you've got to be the tough guy, the strength guy. Sometimes, I was faking it the whole time because I was crying inside.
           
"I had a lot of people look after me when I couldn't look after myself."
           
God was looking out for him when Charlie was introduced to the former Julie Robinson through some mutual friends at church. They were married on July 4, 2014, so "there's always going to be fireworks on our anniversary," he said.
           
They have five children between them – 15-year-old daughter, Norah; 13-year-old boys, Robbie and Aidan; and 10-year-old boys, Sammie and Tristan.
           
"She saved me from a lot of darkness," Charlie said of his wife. "One of the things we found out when we were dating is that our boys are the same age, and they immediately gravitated towards each other. So, the big boys are the Twin Towers and then the little guys are the Minions. That's our nicknames for them."
           
Julie is a pediatric physical therapist, "so we really complement each other well. I've learned so much from that spectrum of development that we apply with our team."
           


Now in his 14^th season with the men's basketball program, Charlie calls this "my dream job." From the humblest of beginnings, he has worked alongside Drew as the Bears have made 10 postseason appearances in the last 11 seasons with NCAA Tournament Elite Eight appearances in 2010 and '12, two other trips to the Sweet 16 and the 2013 NIT championship.
           
"You hear all the corny statements about if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life," he said. "But honestly, I get to come into a weight room full of equipment that I've picked out. I just love it. People ask me where do you want to go next. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to go to the NBA, I don't want to go to football teams. I am in the dream job."