Meet Northern Valley track & field competitor Matthew Malora
OLD TAPPAN, N.J. — The road to success has always been challenging for Matthew Malora. Which is why he has come to believe in himself with each new achievement.
The Northern Valley Old Tappan High School senior will complete his final season of track and field this spring. Besides playing a leadership role with a relatively young group of runners, Matt’s goals as an improving middle-distance miler/half-miler will also be a priority. It is a far cry from more youthful recollections when he was, as he puts it, “a blind kid who couldn’t walk.”
Those stunning words were included in a college essay Matt wrote that described, in often painful detail, his evolution from someone who was born with strabismus, a disorder that limited his vision because “my eyes turned out to the side.”
“I also had abnormally low muscle tone and did not have the ability to crawl, sit up or stand. Doctors said the chances of incremental improvement were miniscule. Luckily, I had very stubborn and determined parents who were not going to accept this. They created their own treatment and motivation plans, such as elevating everything in our house so I’d have to stand up and stretch to get what I wanted.”
And Matt worked hard to achieve his goals. After finding a passion and comfort zone with running in the seventh grade at the Harrington Park School, he shifted his focus from lacrosse and soccer. “I realized that I was faster than kids my age,” he now recalls, even teaming with his father to finish among the fastest families in town at the Harrington Park 5K one year and then with his father and sister the following year.
That commitment continued at NVOT, including a successful cross-country season as a junior when he ran a 5-kilometer personal best of 17 minutes 7 seconds and a senior season when 20 of his teammates showed up on their own to cheer for him at the Bergen County Meet of Champions.
“That’s testament to his character,” Thomas Walsh, his cross-country coach at NVOT, observed of Matt’s team leadership role, which also produced an improved career-best 5K of 17:01.
This spring, outdoors, Matt’s focus will be on the 800, mile and the 4×400 relay. He already has committed to Stonehill College, a Division 1 liberal arts school in Easton, Massachusetts on an academic and athletic scholarship.
“I remember reading how rivers follow the path of least resistance. Throughout my life, that concept has never occurred to me. I never enrolled in a class, took on a project or tried a sport because I thought it would be easy or that I would be good at it. I was willing to take on the challenge because I was interested, wanted to learn more, or knew it was something that was necessary in order for me to achieve my goals.”
Matt’s parents, Glenn and Bonnie Malora, are proud of their son’s accomplishments, in the aftermath of countless major eye surgeries in his youth (as early as six months old) that might have discouraged a less committed youngster or parents.
“He’s definitely a well-driven kid,” his mother says. “It’s part of our life,” adds his father, who has taken thousands of photos of Matt in action. “If you’d have told me he’d be running track, I would say, ‘you were joking.’”
“You can’t cheat the system,” Matt stresses. “Whoever puts the most work in is going to get the result. If I work the hardest in the off-season, I’ll get the results.”
Matt’s essay, which he submitted as part of his college applications, underscores strong beliefs. It left an especially profound impression on his NVOT English instructor, Brook Zelcer, who cites the words of 19th century English poet John Keats, “everyone has troubles. It’s how we deal with them that counts.”
“The thing that most impressed me about Matt’s story,” Zelcer wrote in an email to me, “is that it is a quiet, personal story, a story of determined persistence. I can’t imagine the patience and care, the daily effort and attention to detail that went into ensuring that Matt would physically develop to his full potential. His story is incredibly powerful and a real testament to the power of determination and, ultimately of love.”
Every day at practice and meets, I push myself to my absolute limit because I know that little boy who was told he couldn’t walk would be proud to see me run instead. I do not need easy. I just need possible (and I am not being dramatic).
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