Life is steadily getting better for Ian Waltz these days.

The former Post Falls High standout — one of the top discus throwers in the U.S. over the past decade — is almost back to 100 percent after suffering a painful injury in 2008.

He’s been happily married to another track star with Idaho ties — Stacy Dragila, the former world-class pole vaulter from Idaho State — since December 2009.

They welcomed a daughter, Allyx Josephine, last June, which keeps Ian beaming — and busy.

“Stacy’s training a bunch of high school pole vaulters right now,” Waltz said. “So I go train from 8 in the morning until 11, then I come home and watch the baby, and she takes off and trains. Then she comes back and I do my second session around 3 o’clock.

“We just kinda give each other a high-five” and it’s the other person’s turn to watch the baby, said Waltz, who has lived in southern California and trained at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., for the past seven years.

Waltz will likely exchange a few high-fives this weekend, when he is inducted into the Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame. Waltz and the other hall of fame inductees — Jake Plummer, Irene Matlock, Jeff Robinson, Ray Faraca and Ed Cheff — will be honored Friday night, then again Saturday night at the North Idaho Sports Banquet at the Best Western Coeur d’Alene Inn.

Even though he hasn’t lived in Post Falls in seven years, and has only been back sparingly to visit — and to go elk hunting — he still considers this area home. He even still has Idaho plates on his truck.

“That’s where my roots are, and it’s pretty cool to be inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame, that’s for sure,” said Waltz, who turns 34 one week from Friday.

WALTZ MOVED to the Olympic Training Center in January 2004 after six years of rather stagnant results, and started improving again.

He PR’d for the first time in six years. He has made every U.S. Olympic team (two) and every U.S. world championship team (three) since moving down there.

But during the middle of 2008 — his most successful season — he suffered what was eventually diagnosed as a sports hernia at the Olympic Trials, an injury he is still recovering from.

“I had already won (the event with a throw of 216 feet, 1 inch), but I was stubborn, and my adductor (muscle; on his left side) was tight, and I wanted a bigger throw, and it kinda popped on me,” Waltz recalled.

Hoping to medal at the Olympics, after finishing 22nd at the Games in 2004, Waltz finished 12th in his qualifying group at the 2008 Games in Beijing with a best of 196-11, and didn’t make the finals.

“I didn’t even think I’d be able to throw,” he said. “I didn’t throw for about three weeks, and then I tried to piece something together. It was the best season of my life, and probably my best chance to medal, and sometimes when you push your body to the absolute limit, something breaks.”

He said his average throw that year was 66 meters (roughly 216 feet, 6 inches), a distance which would have placed him in the top five at the Olympics.

“I still kick myself,” Waltz said of his decision to make one more throw.

Waltz , whose PR in the discus is 226-1, set in 2006, thought he could rehab his injury but it wasn’t getting better, and he finally had it surgically repaired in July 2010.

“I feel like I’m about 90 percent now, and hopefully by nationals (in June, In Eugene, Ore.) I’ll be back to 100 percent,” the 6-foot-2, 265-pound Waltz said.

Stacy and Ian bought a house, five minutes from the Olympic Training Center, in 2008.

“She just wasn’t going to have those dorms anymore,” Ian said.

HAD HIS mother, Sue, not accepted a transfer offer from the U.S. Forest Service and moved to Post Falls just before Ian’s ninth-grade year, Waltz may have never gotten into throwing.

In tiny Butte Falls in southern Oregon, they didn’t even have a track team — Waltz said it took all the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade boys to fill out the middle school’s eight-man football team.

At Post Falls, he got the chance to throw, and to work with throws coach Dan Nipp — and as a senior in 1995, he launched that legendary throw of 203 feet, 9 inches at the state track meet in Boise, a state record and the top throw in the country among high schoolers.

“It was awesome,” Waltz recalled of that day. “And to be honest with you, coach Nipp and I wanted that shot put record so bad, and we fell short.”

The discus was next day. Waltz had thrown 197 feet at regionals, which was further than the state record — though state records could only be set at the state meet.

“I remember throwing (at state) and it felt so good,” He said. “I’ll never forget the guy sticking the stake in the ground, zipping the tape out, and it comes to an end and they’re still not to my mark yet. It took ’em five or so minutes to scramble up another tape, and I was just so excited, because everybody was in suspense to know how far it was. ... It was definitely one of the highlights of my career, even to this day.”

WALTZ WAS an eight-time All-American at Washington State, winning Pac-10 titles in both the shot put and discus. He still holds the school record in the discus (211 feet, 5 inches). He hasn’t thrown the shot in nearly a decade, so he could concentrate on the discus.

His next big meet is nationals in June, where he is a three-time U.S. champion, and where he hopes to qualify for the world championships in Korea in August for a fourth time. Next year’s Olympic Trials are in Eugene, where he’ll try to make his third Olympic team for the London Games.

“I’m just trying my best to make the best out of these two years,” Waltz said. “Hopefully win another national championship and make another Olympic team, and we’ll see what happens after that.”

He’s considering retiring after the 2012 season, or perhaps after the 2013 season.

“Then I’ll have to get a real job,” said Waltz, a kinesiology major at WSU, with a laugh.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at mnelke@cdapress.com.