When you first meet Axel Tirado-Sanchez, you can’t help but be impressed with this powerful-looking young athlete whose physique just says, “strength.”

But when you find out he’s been winning Big Sky Conference championships with two partially torn pectoral muscles, you can’t help but wonder just how high the ceiling could be on his throwing career if he were fully healthy.

Instead, Tirado-Sanchez, fresh off winning his third outdoor Big Sky discus championship at last week’s conference meet in Gresham, Ore., will continue to see how much he can defy pain with performance when he heads to the NCAA Regionals in Arkansas on Friday.

It will be the fourth time the Emmett native has tried to crack the NCAA national field, which would be validation for his record-setting throwing career that got off to an unconventional start — and has been interrupted by the kind of serious injury you’d think might bring it to a premature end.

Football was his first love growing up in Emmett, and he was good enough as a defensive end to draw recruiting attention from Division II schools like Central Washington, College of Idaho and Minot State. Track and field, meanwhile, was just a diversion.

Until he unleashed a discus throw that broke his previous career high by “90 or 100 feet” in his last high school meet, catching the attention of Hillary Merkley, director of Idaho State’s track and field program.

Merkley made Tirado-Sanchez a better scholarship offer than he was getting to play football, so it was off to Pocatello for a throwing career — and a pretty dramatic change in mindset.

“It was tough at first because I was always in the weight room to be stronger to enforce my will on another person,” said Tirado-Sanchez of the mental shift from being a football player to a track athlete. “And I thought that was really fun. Then I went to getting stronger in the weight room to enforce my will on a four-and-a-half-pound plate of metal — a frisbee-looking thing. So it was tough, but I slowly got the hang of it.”

After arriving at ISU as an admittedly raw talent, Tirado-Sanchez has benefited from the different perspectives of three different throws coaches as he’s steadily refined his technique and improved his performance. Drew Jones, Marcia Mecklenburg and Payden Campbell each mentored him at different stages of his development, and each helped him take his performance to new levels.

As a freshman, he finished second in the discus in the Big Sky outdoor championships. As a sophomore, he set the ISU record for the weight throw and finished fourth in the shot put in the conference indoor championships.

Moving outdoors, he won the first of his three conference discus titles, throwing 198 feet, 2 inches (60.41 meters), which established an ISU school record — the fifth best in conference history.

The following season, he again won the Big Sky discus title at the outdoor championships, despite feeling the impacts of the torn pec muscles. He decided to sit out the following season, get treatment and physical therapy and make one more big push during his last season.

“I can do pretty much everything, except for true upper body lifts,” said Tirado-Sanchez. “I’m thankful for that, because in discus and shot put, your legs are probably the bigger part of it — I’d say 85 percent. But I bet I could have thrown farther if I was completely healthy. But I’m not complaining too much. I’ve had a lot of problems here and there, throughout the season, like I can’t throw shot put this week, or my pecs are really hurting today for practice, so I’m not going to throw discus, that type of thing. Every once in a while it tightens up.”

Still, he won the discus title for the third time this season, throwing 60.14 meters, almost six meters farther than the second-place finisher.

“Axel is definitely a very talented athlete,” said Campbell. “He is very explosive with a lot of natural talent. Being a senior, he has developed the mental toughness to be able to compete through adversity ... He’s shown time and again that he is a competitor. He doesn’t like to lose, which is a skill not every athlete has. He works hard and does what it takes to be successful. It’s been a lot of fun to coach him.”

Tirado-Sanchez says he may eventually get surgery on his pecs once he’s done competing, but he and Campbell are not ready yet to declare that phase of his career over.

“I had a goal in mind to hit,” said Tirado-Sanchez. “I told her if I hit this goal, I would continue to throw. I haven’t hit the goal, I’ve gotten close, but I’ve thrown big enough throws in practice and in meets now, where I truly think I can throw that far. I still have a lot to learn. My technique is not the greatest ... I could be much stronger than I am now. So, I think me and my coach are really looking at me throwing after, but we’ll see.”

In the meantime, Tirado-Sanchez is focusing on trying to make the NCAA national field. Unlike most competitions where athletes get six throws, at the regionals each athlete has only three attempts. The top 12 from that day’s meet qualify for the NCAA championships in Eugene, Ore., June 10-16. Right now, Tirado-Sanchez has the eighth-best throw in the region and the 14th-best in the nation, but he has a tendency to make his best throws late in competitions.

He’s working on hitting that sweet spot in his first throws this week.

“Me and Coach Zach [Kughn], the head cross-country coach, we’ve been talking about raising the floor,” said Tirado-Sanchez. “I have a high ceiling, but maybe the floor can be low. If my floor is low then I won’t make it. That has been happening, I’ve had some really good throws in those first three slots, so that makes me feel a little bit more confident I can make it.

“In theory, if I throw like I normally do, I should make it,” he added. “I’ve been there. This is my fourth time there, I’ve never made it past, so I really hope I can pass this time.”

Whenever his throwing career ends, Tirado-Sanchez is ready to launch a new vocation using his hands. Although he’s earned a bachelor’s degree in sport management and has done graduate work in athletic administration, he wants to take up a trade like electrician or construction. He’s also getting married this summer to Ellie Stockham, an ISU pole vaulter.

“I’m really excited for that, and I’m excited to spend more time with my family back home in Emmett,” he said. But he’s not quite ready to close the book on that throwing career just yet.

“Right now, I’d love to make a push to those Olympics,” he said.