ODU WR Thomas granted a medical redshirt season

NORFOLK

The pain is gone. The year of eligibility isn't.

Marquel Thomas' first season with the Old Dominion football team was cut short by injury, but as it turns out, it didn't hurt as much as it could have. Thomas, who caught the program's first touchdown pass back in September, will have four more years to catch passes for ODU, thanks to the NCAA.

Because he only played two games for the Monarchs - "Really, we only had him for three halves," coach Bobby Wilder said - the speedy 6-foot-3 wide receiver has been granted a medical redshirt season by the NCAA.

That's good news for the Monarchs, who know that Thomas is a deep threat who stretches defenses. He'll be continuing to work himself back into form today when the Monarchs hold an open scrimmage at ForemanField at 2 p.m. Admission is free.

Thomas missed most of the 2009 campaign with a microfracture in his right knee. What started out as a dull pain increased through preseason drills and after he caught that 50-yard touchdown pass from Thomas DeMarco to ring in the return of football at ODU.

"It was really sore after that first game," said Thomas, who has had no setbacks during spring drills. "It really ached and was hard to bend, hard to walk on. I went in for an MRI, and they found a small crack in the bone."

What the coaching staff believed would be a three-week setback turned into three months.

But Thomas didn't waste the time on the sidelines. He showed for every practice and caught more than 15,000 passes. The team's support staff took Thomas to the side every day and fired passes at him with an automated football throwing machine. The coaches made Thomas turn his head away from the machine, then look back for the ball after he heard the machine shoot the pass at him.

With the ball coming in at 60 miles per hour from 10 yards away, the drills were mentally taxing. And while Thomas stood stationary to lessen the stress on his knee, the coaches had him turn at all types of angles.

"It really helped me a lot focusing in on the art of catching a football," said Thomas, who was a first-team All-Tidewater receiver at Bayside High in Virginia Beach. "All I worked on was technique."

See it, catch it, tuck it in. That became his theme for the fall.

When the Monarchs made their first public appearance of the spring in last Saturday's scrimmage, DeMarco wasted no time testing Thomas: He threw him a pass on the first play. Thomas caught it in traffic for a 15-yard gain. And all was right again in the world of No. 3.

Later in the scrimmage, during red-zone drills, DeMarco hooked up with Thomas for a 16-yard touchdown pass on a sideline route where Thomas went over the top of defensive back Markell Wilkins to make the catch.

"When I got hurt in the fall, I was really upset," Thomas said. "Catching that first touchdown pass in front of 20,000 screaming people was the best feeling ever. But it didn't last very long."

Wilder has kept a close eye on Thomas this spring, knowing that he has a special type of receiver in his midst.

"He hadn't had any contact since our second game of the season against Virginia Union," Wilder said. "I keep watching him to see how he responds to getting hit, and so far so good. He's a little rusty. His routes aren't as sharp as they could be and he's dropped some passes in traffic during practice. But it's good to have him back."

The up side of a down year?

ODU begins play in the Colonial Athletic Association in 2011, and the NCAA ruling will give him three years in the league.

"And that's one more than I thought I'd get," he said. 

Notes ODU will host a free youth football clinic for fifth- to eighth-graders before today's scrimmage, beginning at 11:30 a.m.... The Monarchs will conclude spring drills on April 24 with a Blue-White Game at Foreman Field at 1 p.m.

Rich Radford, 446-2463, rich.radford@pilotonline.com