It's a good thing Matt Deamer doesn't believe in bad luck or Murphy's Law.

Deamer, a junior at Susquehanna University, has had one of those years that might have sent a lesser person home from college. Instead, he will be making his third trip in three years to throw the javelin at the Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championships May 23-25, where he hopes to throw off his ring of bad luck.

In February, Deamer's off-campus apartment caught fire. Though he wasn't home when the fire started, Deamer arrived in time to see it ablaze. He watched as his personal belongings went up in flames, leaving him with only the clothes on his back.

"After the fire, I took a whole week off from classes because I needed to deal with the insurance, the landlord and the fire company, along with trying to find a new place to live," he said. "In that week, I missed three tests and really got behind. Then I came back after that week, and it probably was not good for me with the javelin, since I had to spend a lot of time catching up with book work. I still made it though all the practices, but I had to leave (to go study or take a test) pretty quickly."

Fortunately, the marketing major is a good student as well as a good athlete, and he was able to regain lost study time quickly.

Then in March, Deamer lost his good friend and former high-school and college football teammate Randy Zook, who was an all-American offensive lineman at Susquehanna. Zook died of cancer March 22 at the age of 23, just a little over a year after receiving the Middle Atlantic Conference Offensive Lineman of the Year Award at the Melberger Awards Ceremony in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

"We went to high school together and he was always someone I looked up to and thought of as a good friend," said Deamer, who also was a defensive end for the Susquehanna football team his first two years of college.

Deamer and other Susquehanna friends went to visit Zook at the hospital, but Zook was so ill they were unable to see him.

"We heard it still made him feel good to know we were there. It was pretty upsetting, to know (his death) happened so quickly. He died a couple of days after we visited. I think about him a lot. He'll always be with us."

Though other problems were small-time compared to the fire and the death of a friend, Deamer also endured two burglaries of his car, again losing personal belongings, including his CD player and his CD collection.

"This year has been rough," Deamer said. "What I thought (while it was happening) was that, 'Everything is bad now but I just have to keep on going and not dwell on the bad things -- see what I can make out of it.' The javelin has always been pretty good with me. It's been something to cheer me up a little, so I think it's definitely helped me through all of this."

At the Middle Atlantic Conference championships recently, Deamer took home the javelin title with a throw of 226-1, which was the longest toss in Division III this year and broke the previous conference record of 222 feet. The throw also was the fourth-longest in Division III since 1986, when the javelin was changed and became weight forward.

That throw was quite an improvement over the 203-11 toss Deamer had last year to place third in Division III. It also was good enough to earn him a piece of the Hope Myers Memorial Award as the MAC Outdoor Championship's Outstanding Thrower, an honor he shared with Widener University senior Mike Ruff, who took home the MAC discus and hammer titles.

Despite the rough year, which also included Deamer overcoming a minor injury in March, Susquehanna's throwing coach Cris Delbaugh wasn't surprised that Deamer kept working.

"He's a tough kid. You can't stop Matt Deamer from throwing the javelin," Delbaugh said.

Deamer has spend the last couple of weeks practicing throwing off of an all-weather runway, which is what he'll need to do at the Division III championship. If he can master that, he has a pretty good chance at becoming Susquehanna's third national champion and sixth all-American in nine years under Delbaugh.

Either way, competing in the national championship will be a fitting ending for a challenging year.

"This will be a year I'll never forget. There certainly have been a lot of eventful things happening," Deamer said. "I could see this as being a good thing to end on -- like everything worked out. It would be like I made it through the bad things and life is looking more positive now."

As it is, Deamer is always looking up and always looking forward. That's a good practice for a javelin thrower, but it's also a good practice for life, where you need to be ready for whatever gets thrown your way.