During his brief time with the Oakland University track and field program, John Butler has built quite a resume. A junior in standing, Butler joined the track team as a walk-on last season. He received all-conference honors after placing third in the javelin throw at the 2009 Summit League Championships where he set a school-record mark of 175 feet, 3 inches.

And now he’s healthy.

Butler enrolled at Oakland in 2007, but did not join the track team until the outdoor season of 2009 due to a series of injuries still lingering from his high school athletic career at Troy High. Once he finally recovered from a strained rotator cuff and reconstructive hand surgery, he had another setback when he broke his wrist last season while playing a pick-up game of basketball.

Leading up to the Summit League Tournament, where he set the school record, he hadn’t thrown the javelin for weeks. But he did manage 10 minutes of practice time the day before the tournament started.

Having injuries of some sort since he was a freshman in high school, the memories of each individual injury run together in his mind.

“I haven’t had anything serious this year though, just banged up a little bit,” Butler said. “This year has been my most injury free year and I’m feeling really good.”

Butler originally ran sprints for OU, where he competed in the 100 and 200-meter dash as well as the 60-yard dash, but a hamstring problem at the beginning of this season has limited him strictly to throwing – an area in which he has excelled.

“There’s two main ways that John contributes for us,” said Rod Yeacker, who coaches field events at OU.

“One is on a raw performance basis. He scores points. He’s among the leaders in the conference and he just has that pure talent. The other is he pushes his teammates and makes them better. He’s got a good attitude and his teammates really feed off that in-practice competition which brings a better performance out of the other guys on the team.”

Like his teammates, Butler feeds off the in-practice competition the sport generates and doesn’t like taking second to anybody.

“If you see someone do better than you it brings more focus; at least that’s how I am about it. I don’t want anyone to beat me, even if they are one of my teammates,” Butler said. “I think that atmosphere makes for good, healthy competition.”

Healthy being the operative word.

For Butler, his focus is no longer on injuries or getting acclimated to competing in athletics at the college level. His focus is on the number 200. Butler wants to tack on roughly 15 feet to his current school-record javelin toss, and if he does so, it will put him in position to qualify for regional competition.

“Obviously I want to be all-conference again, but if I could throw over 200 feet, that’s the ultimate goal because I think that will give me a chance at the automatic qualifier for regionals after the conference meet is over.”

As for the team’s chances for success this season and in the conference tournament, Butler thinks the Golden Grizzlies have the talent to compete with the top teams in the Summit League.

“We can improve upon what we did last year and I think we could really make some noise in the conference tournament.”

The Grizzlies will resume competition Thursday, April 15 with a dual meet at Detroit-Mercy and back-to-back meets at Eastern Michigan Friday and Saturday.