The Oklahoma State University Cowboys have won three of the last four NCAA titles in men’s cross country. If they notch a fourth title this fall, as many fans and coaches predict, they’ll cement their place among perennial powerhouses like Colorado, Stanford and Wisconsin. But unlike these storied programs—many of which have taken more than a decade to amass their wins—the Cowboys’ ride at the top is only a recent phenomenon.
What’s behind their meteoric rise?
In this exclusive series, Running Times joins the Cowboys through the 2013 season as they try to defend their 2012 NCAA title.
Part II: The Calculus of Cross Country
After the last wires of lightning disappeared, and the worst of the thunderstorm moved out over eastern Oklahoma, officials finally said it was a go. It was almost noon by then, on Saturday, Sept. 28. Five lightning delays had pushed the morning’s 9:15 race time forward almost three hours. Teams were anxious. When they heard the news, they emerged from their tents and vans and looked skyward. A thin rain fell.
It was the first weekend of cross country season, and the Cowboy Jamboree was 15 minutes away. Teams hurried into action.
The muddy staging area quickly turned into visual nausea. Raingear swished and piled up as the competing men changed into their singlets and shorts. Spikes were triple-knotted against the mud. Then re-checked. Every variation of kicks and jumps and drills commenced in silence. Athletes stood shaking their limbs on the starting line, staring out through the rain. They sprinted away from the line and huddled together for pre-meet rituals and last-minute strategizing. The portajohns suddenly amassed an absurd line, and university chants rang out, competing for airspace.
Ten minutes to go, the announcer boomed.
In the center-right of the 10-team field, the OSU Cowboys, ranked No. 1 for the third consecutive week in the coaches’ poll, lined up four abreast on the sloppy starting line. It was their first race of the year. Wearing their trademark iridescent orange singlets, they high-fived and mouthed words of encouragement. Even though they were without two key runners, due to injury and sickness, they were ready to defend their ranking and home turf. The starter walked out to the center of the hill and waved his orange-sleeved arm.
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The crowd of athletes milled around and eyed the starter 100 meters away. Behind him, the course ran up the steep hayfield hill and seemed to vanish into the gray sky. To calm themselves, the Cowboys went over Smith’s race plan again in their heads: Stay relaxed through 5K, climb the last hill, then drive for home. A cold wind started to blow in out of the north, sending the low clouds up in mist.
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Before the race, while his men lay strewn about stretching in the locker room, Smith had reminded them of what was at stake: “Start the season off right. Stay poised, shadow the boys in yellow, and beat them.” He paused. “We need to keep that mental edge.” He was referring to the No. 2-ranked NAU Lumberjacks, who were poised for a potential upset. Now they waited just a few spray-painted boxes away.
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Advertisement - Continue Reading Belowth Annual Cowboy Jamboree, which claims to be the oldest cross country race in America, was supposed to be the head-to-head match-up of the year. The host, OSU, had won three of the last four titles in cross country, but had lost two of its starting seven to graduation and personal reasons, whereas NAU was returning all seven, including OSU transfer Matt McElroy, from last year’s fourth-place squad. With any luck, the Lumberjacks would be the early season test OSU rarely got. With more, they’d be the new team to beat.
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One hundred and two bodies muscled off the starting line. Mötley Crüe’s “Shout at the Devil” blared over the lead-Gator’s speakers. Running only feet behind, the field elbowed for position up the hayfield hill. Swinging wide right at the top along a sagging wire fence, seven bright orange jerseys already jostled near the crest of the pack. Texas Tech’s Kennedy Kithuka, the defending NCAA champion, had by then asserted himself and taken a 10m lead. The pack was happy to concede it. He strode away after Adam Goucher’s 1997 course record, 23:25.
At 1K, four NAU guys found OSU’s top seven, and the pack twisted right and left in two muddy jeep ruts. They passed through two 10-foot wooden posts and descended into the “fire hole,” a series of narrow woodchip trails that careen and rise and fall steeply through a thickly overgrown ravine. In spots, cypress and pine and oak shade the spongy trail completely, giving it the effect of a tunnel of brush. Spectators lost sight of the pack for a few K, until they re-emerged with Kithuka way out front, heel-striking and sitting back on his stride.
By 5K, where the course crosses back over the starting line, running up the hayfield hill again, six of OSU’s seven were in the top 12. Three NAU runners were there as well, but it looked like it was all over. OSU had too much firepower up front.
Down the homestretch, with Kithuka already hydrated and giving interviews, OSU’s Kirubel Erassa, last year’s indoor 3K third-placer, battled his teammate Shadrack Kipchirchir, 18th at the 2012 NCAAs, for runner-up honors. Right behind were NAU’s top two, Futsum Zeinasellassie and Brian Shrader, who snuck in front of OSU’s leader, Tom Farrell, for fourth and fifth. All-American Joseph Manilafasha was No. 4 for the Cowboys, right behind Farrell in seventh place, beating NAU’s No. 3, Caleb Hoover in ninth. Then Brian Gohlke sealed the deal for the defending champs, coming in 11th.
Smith’s kids, always the soft-spoken party-liners, gave the requisite interviews and stayed reserved in their final judgments: “First big step. That’s a great NAU team. Tough conditions out on the course.” They cooled down without any large fanfare and ate a catered barbecue lunch outside under a white tent, where two flat screens showed the OSU vs. WVU game.
The times were slow, but that was irrelevant. The final tally: 29-57. OSU got the win it wanted over NAU. But that seemed to be irrelevant too, just now, considering the missing team members on both sides.
NAU left McElroy, No. 3, and Nathan Weitz, their No. 5, at home in Flagstaff, while OSU sat sub-4:00 miler Shane Moskowitz, who’s still recovering from surgery on a hip labral tear, and a sick Craig Nowak, winner of last year’s U.S. junior cross title. With that kind of mutual handicapping, reading any relevancy into the race was kind of like judging a prize fight where both boxers had their left arms tied behind their backs. Beyond abstraction, it was hard to make heads or tails of who was actually better. In a sport that rarely sees a watchable race outside of November, the 77.
On paper, it was OSU. And Smith, for one, didn’t think that was irrelevant.
A few days before, seated in his office at Gallagher-Iba Arena, looking out over the eastern end zone of Boone Pickens Stadium, Smith wasn’t that eager to talk about Saturday’s race. He was curious to see the progress made by his team since August camp, and to size up NAU, but he was less willing to grant any larger importance to the race. “If I see positives [at the Jamboree], yes, then it’s important; but if I see negatives, then, nah.” He pauses and smiles. “Hindsight, you decide how important it was.”
He laughs at his circular logic and looks around the room. It’s littered with glass and wood trophies. By the window, there are three NCAA championship trophies and matching Coach of the Year honors. One side of his horseshoe desk is completely taken up by five Big 12 glass bowls. And yet there’s nothing on the walls, which makes it feel as if he’s just moved in, or perhaps on his way out. That’s not happening, of course, but that Friday morning there was some cause for trepidation in the OSU offices.
Ten minutes to go, the announcer boomed, Sports Illustrated had published the last of its five-part series, “The Dirty Game,” alleging widespread abuses by OSU football, including drug use, academic misconduct, pay-for-play and student ambassadors having sex with recruits. The school immediately promised to look into the claims, many of which fell outside of the NCAA’s statute of limitations, but almost as quickly, reports started to pop up accusing one of the writers of misquoting sources and taking comments out of context. The criticism was so damaging, in fact, it all but stopped the story from gaining any traction. By Friday, things at OSU were fairly quiet, relaxed even, as an independent party started an investigation.
Smith, wearing a short-sleeve orange and white button-up and jeans, swivels to check some old results, then opens a battered composition notebook that contains the year’s workouts. He nods to affirm something in its pages. Matrixes of workout times and paces show that his guys have made improvements from where they were last year, which Smith feels is more relevant than early season race results, at least in the context of a title run.
After a long lunch with his staff, which Smith pays for every work day, he pages through 2007’s book: “Tuesday, Saturday—that’s set—I just know it: We do 4-milers and 10-milers.” And he rarely wavers; sticking to that routine helps him accurately compare his current team to other championship-ready squads. “The year [Ryan] Vail was 11th [2007] … the fastest he ever ran was 19:38 and 52:24,” he says. “Vail was good, but he wasn’t a mega-talent like some of the guys I got now.”
He tells me that just the week before, Farrell and Erassa ran tempos together at 19:16 and 50:16, and that most of his top seven were ahead of where Vail was six years ago. In fact, that 50:16 was the second fastest 10-miler on Sangre Road (a hilly, clay road west of town where OSU runs their tempos) ever, Smith says, behind German Fernandez’s freakish 48:47 solo in 2011.
Asked if he’s curious about this weekend’s other meets, he perks up quickly and says, “Like to see what Oregon does.”
In the last few weeks, there’d been growing chatter online and in the locker room that Oregon, ranked an unassuming No. 12 in week-two’s poll, could be a title threat. They’d recruited two stellar freshmen in Jake Leingang and Edward Cheserek, and transferred in Northeastern stud Eric Jenkins (13:18 5K) and France’s Tanguy Pepiot (8:33 steeple). Smith raised his eyebrows listing off their roster: “On paper, they should win.”
At Boston College that Friday, they did. In a wild stretch run, Cheserek and Leingang went one-two and led the Ducks to a dominating win over Wisconsin and Syracuse, ranked No. 8 and No. 9, respectively. The fact that the win came without the two transfers, or 2013 1500m champ Mac Fleet, was the real eyebrow-raising part. And while it’s sensible to be hostile to the idea of transfers and freshman leading a title team, the sheer level of talent in the Eugene locker room meant the Ducks were going to be a real cause for concern in Stillwater.
After the Jamboree was over, there was other action to analyze. In Minnesota, BYU, ranked No. 4 and led by All-American Tylor Thatcher, won the Roy Griak Invitational. But they did so over a pretty soft field. Third-ranked Colorado showed off wunderkind Ben Saarel at the Rocky Mountain Shootout, but the team ran about a minute slower than last year. Plus, there have been circulating rumors that their No. 1, Jake Hurysz (32nd at NCAAs in 2012), might be redshirting due to an injury. Even with Smith’s cool eye, it was hard to know just what to make of all this. (Week three of the coaches’ poll, which is technically the fourth week of voting, released the following Tuesday, reflected this uncertainty. While OSU stayed on top, Colorado leap-frogged NAU for No. 2, and the Ducks moved from No. 12 up to No. 4, overtaking BYU.)
As the Jamboree showed, cross country results can be tricky calculus. What Smith could rely on, then, was program pedigree and talent. NAU, BYU and Colorado all have seasoned coaches at their helms. Smith knew they’d show up ready to roll in November. And Oregon? They have enough raw talent to make up for their inexperience.
This was the kind of stuff that kept Smith up at night. But assistant coach Bobby Lockhart—who has worked under three national-title winning coaches and who Smith credits with most of their recruiting success—immediately turned his focus to what they could control: their own team’s preparations to race in Terre Haute. “With Moskowitz and Nowak back, I think we have the best team in the country,” Lockhart says. “So that’s what we work toward.”
Sunday after the race, it was business as usual. The coaches drove their team west out of town, where the red clay roads wind through the hills. There was little mention of the Jamboree or other meets. The guys, Nowak included, hopped out of the vans and went out for a 2-hour long run, chatting about OSU football’s disappointing loss to West Virginia. The ditches along the road were clogged with mud and debris, reminders of the weekend’s heavy rains.
Jamboree win or not, the guys were focused on what really matters: The championship season. It was five weeks away.
See Sangre Road, One minute to go.
Check back during conference weekend, Nov. 2, for the next dispatch from Stillwater, which will introduce the personalities of the Cowboys in more detail and cover their attempt to win a sixth consecutive Big 12 title in Waco, Texas. They are set to battle a ranked Texas squad and begin their championship run to Nov. 23.
One minute to go was a multitime Colorado state champion in cross country and track and ran at the University of Wisconsin. Gallagher Shannon’s work has appeared in Slate and Two weeks prior, All About 75 Hard.
