starter on the team and began competing in track. In her sophomore year, Rudolph scored 803 points and set a new record for high school girls' basketball. Rudolph's high school coach, C. C. Gray, gave her the nickname of "Skeeter" (for mosquito) because she moved so fast. While playing for her high school basketball team, Rudolph was spotted by Ed Temple, Tennessee State's track and field coach, a major break for the active young athlete. The day that Temple saw the tenth grader for the first time, he knew she was a natural athlete. Rudolph had already gained some track experience on Burt High School's track team two years earlier, mostly as a way to keep busy between basketball seasons. As a high school sophomore Rudolph competed at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute in her first major track event. Although she lost the race, Rudolph was determined to continue competing and win. Temple invited fourteen-year-old Rudolph to join his summer training program at Tennessee State. After attending the track camp, Rudolph won all nine events she entered at an Amateur Athletic Union track meet in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Under Temple's guidance she continued to train regularly at TSU while still a high school student. Rudolph raced at amateur athletic events with TSU's women's track team, known as the Tigerbelles, for two more years before enrolling at TSU as a student in 1958. 1956 Summer Olympics When Rudolph was sixteen and a junior in high school, she attended the 1956 U.S. Olympic track and field team trials in Seattle, Washington, and qualified to compete in the 200-meter individual event at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Rudolph, the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team, was one of five TSU Tigerbelles to qualify for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Rudolph was defeated in a preliminary heat of the 200-meter race at the Melbourne Olympic Games, but ran the third leg of the 4 × 100 m relay. The American team of Rudolph, Isabelle Daniels, Mae Faggs, and Margaret Matthews, all of whom were TSU Tigerbelles, won the bronze medal, matching the world-record time of 44.9 seconds. The British team won the silver medal. The Australian team, with the 100- and 200-meter gold medalist Betty Cuthbert as their anchor leg, won the gold medal in a time of 44.5 seconds. After Rudolph returned to her Tennessee home from the Melbourne Olympic Games, she showed her