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.
Foods That Cut Inflammation to Improve Performance
Part II: The Calculus of Cross Country
Health & Injuries
Part IV: It Comes Down to the Mud
The wind chill is 19 degrees and the Cowboys are peeling layers. They’re shaking out their bare limbs against the biting cold, readying themselves to race. The 30 other teams here today, Saturday, Nov. 23, to contest 2013’s NCAA championships in Terre Haute, Ind., are doing the same. Tom Farrell’s skin is pink and mottled from the wind, but he’s oblivious to it. Like Kirubel Erassa, expressionless behind Oakley shades, he’s marooned in his own thoughts. This is the moment the Cowboys have been training for and dreaming of for 97 days. No one talks. There’s a tightness living in the air between each breath.
Kneeling on his shirt to avoid the icy mud, Shadrack Kipchirchir triple, then quadruple knots his spikes, just to make sure. Assistant coach Bobby Lockhart does the same for Shane Moskowitz, whose hands are too numb for the job. A combination of steady rain and plunging nightly temperatures over the last two days have left LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course, host of 10 of the last 12 title meets, in a thawing, muddy disarray. No one wants to lose a shoe.
The PA squawks to life: “Five minutes, men.”
Dave Smith, OSU’s head coach, swaddled in a black hoodie and parka, saunters toward his men, clapping slowly. Farrell joins in, drawing toward him. The rhythm increases. They chant “O-S-U” to the beat. The others move in to join them. The chugging of the chant and clap increases, faster and faster, rumbling like an engine. At the crescendo it suddenly ceases. Smith leans into the huddle: “Proud of you guys, the way you’ve worked. This is the icing on the cake. Stay calm. Execute.” The men jog to the starting line.
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About 30 minutes from now, after 10,000 meters of running, the NCAA will crown 2013’s national champion. Northern Arizona is ranked No. 1, according to the final coaches’ poll. Voters on Letsrun and Flotrack, though, have OSU winning a fourth title in five years. Lurking in the background of everyone’s mind, especially Smith’s, is Colorado, No. 3 in the final poll. Unlike last year, where Smith was confident no one could touch the Cowboys, this year he has his doubts. Asked if it’s because of a summer injury that curtailed Moskowitz’s training or Joseph Manilafasha’s poor performance at Big 12s, he says, “I don’t have to look very far for things to worry about.” But none of that matters now.
“Two minutes.”
The pop music playing over the PA stops. The starter walks to the middle of the field. Thousands of parents, reporters and spectators lining the green chain-link fence suddenly hush. The only sound is that of the flags over the finish line whipping in 20 mph gusts. The sun is an orange blur behind thin clouds. All the runners are completely still. The scene appears to vibrate at a very low frequency.
Smith is jogging up the course toward the 1K mark as the gun sounds. His breathing is constricted in the cold. Assistant coach Mason Cathey asks him if he’s nervous. “This is the best part,” Smith says, grinning behind orange sunglasses. “I’m calm now.”
With the starting area compressed, only Tom Farrell (left) and Kirubel Erassa can stand on the line.
Brian Gohlke 436 on his way to a 91st-place finish.
It’s the morning of Nov. 22, the day before OSU’s NCAA title defense, and the Cowboys are surveying the quiet scene. They stare out the bus windows, shaking their heads. The Cowboys are a mere 24 hours from the season’s culmination, but they don’t like what they see.
Zipping up his rain gear, Farrell files out of the bus. A stiff wind whistles down out of the northwest, and the rain seems to hang there in the low sky. The 12 other OSU runners, all wearing matching black tights and tops, follow the senior out. The gravel lot is empty and cold. To the west and south are dark fields of corn and country roads that stretch to the horizon.
Ahead of them, on 280 acres of grown-over landfill, lies LaVern Gibson course. Its gentle topography of hills and woods is a soggy mess: muddy, pock-marked, with standing water and mounds of sand. The largest puddles are staked off with orange ribbon. The start/finish straight, which sits down in a shallow swale, is almost totally underwater in spots. The runners are quiet.
A gator surges by, interrupting the silence. It’s barely visible in the gloom save for its yellow headlights. A sheet of muddy water sprays out in its wake. Suddenly the runners spring to life, toe-walking and splashing through the puddles. They joke with each other as they jog the course. “Not as bad as it looks,” Farrell says, running through a boggy depression.
Smith is less positive. Seeing the course in such dismal condition puts doubt back in his mind, when just the week before, their victory at the Midwest regional championships had squeezed most of it out. That day, the five scorers, led by Farrell, finished seventh through 11th, with a 6-second spread. And although the pace was less than hot, his men showed poise, particularly Craig Nowak, which suggested he’d shaken off his poor performance at the Big 12s and was ready for nationals. “Nowak: best thing that happened to us in the last few weeks,” Smith says. Now the course conditions seem like the worst.
That evening in his hotel suite, Smith, seated cross-legged in muddy jeans and a gray hoodie, mulls over his amended race plan. “With mud,” he says, “you’re running a longer race; it’s 11K now.” Based on results from 2004 and 2006, when there were similarly wet conditions, he figures the pace will be about a minute slow. “That means right around 31 minutes for All-American,” he says. That puts his lead guys—Farrell, Kipchirchir and Erassa—in the 15:20s for 5K, and the rest in the 15:40s.
But he’s quick to qualify what might seem like a purely pace-based plan. “You just have to have that instinct,” he says, “to know that at some point the race becomes more about what place you’re in.” Mud cripples that instinct in many runners, however. “It’s a wild card, this weather,” he says, running a hand through his hair.
Smith’s worst anxiety, though, is that track specialists like Farrell and Erassa, who “prance up on their toes,” making mud-running especially taxing, wouldn’t actually be able to run the pace he prescribes. He worries if they go out slow they’ll just struggle in the muck anyway and won’t be able to move up. But he also worries they’ll get impatient and start to spin their wheels too soon. “It takes discipline, it takes confidence,” he says, “to go out that slow, in those mushy conditions, and actually move up late.”
The trend thus far on muddy championship days is not on Smith’s side, either. “Mark Wetmore [coach of Colorado] has done this before,” he says, holding the results from ’04 and ’06, when Wetmore won in muddy conditions. “Beat teams he shouldn’t have on paper.” Smith uncrosses and recrosses his legs. “Last two times it was muddy, Colorado won.” He looks at the floor. “There’s a lot of scenarios where we don’t win.
Brian Gohlke (436) on his way to a 91st-place finish.
Twenty-four hours later, one of those scenarios begins to unfold.
As the field surges away from the starting line, Erassa, OSU’s No. 1, and Moskowitz, their probable No. 5, slip and fall in the mud and struggle to get upright. “I had to steeple them,” Kipchrichir says later, referring to his two teammates. They would never really recover. Standing water on the starting line had forced officials to compress team boxes from the normal 2.5 meters to about half that. This left teams crunched and elbowing as the gun went off.
By 2K, there’s more bad news. The Cowboys are buried way back in the 253-man field, while NAU and Colorado have their packs jostling near the top 60 runners. “Not today,” Smith says, shaking his head.
“Still lots of running to go,” Lockhart says, as he hurdles a bush on his way over to the 4K mark. The LaVern Gibson course is bean-shaped, with two inner loops, which allows for spectators to dash back and forth across the grassy acreage to watch the race at various points.
Early tallies from the press box have BYU, ranked No. 5 going in, out to an early lead. But on muddy days, where the loose footing and uphill slogs bleed a runner’s reserves, this is a tactical disadvantage. In 2004 and 2006, when Colorado won in similar conditions, they did it in the last 2K. Their men were patient, waited until the strain of running in the mud caught up with the fast starters, and then hammered past them. (It’s not a coincidence that three of the top four finishing teams at the 2013 championships turn out to be Mountain Region teams. Altitude-trained kids tend to be better at running slow but hard in difficult conditions.)
Noah Gallagher Shannonth and 30th place, open-mouthed, with mud on their faces. But still there’s no sign of Erassa. Lockhart finally spots him, but Erassa isn’t moving up. He’s stuck in the 70s. Nowak is similarly bogged down, back in the low 100s, where he’s running now with Gohlke. At 5K, OSU’s No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 are all well back from those of CU and NAU. Manilafasha is even farther back and losing ground quickly.
Meanwhile, Edward Cheserek, a freshman from Oregon, is shadowing defending champ Kennedy Kithuka as they make their way up the long hill from 6K to 7K. Suddenly, as they disappear behind a knoll, the PA shrieks with feedback and the announcer says Cheserek has pulled even with Kithuka and is stamping down on the pedal. By 8K, he’s got a 100m lead and is glancing over his shoulder to make sure the previously undefeated Kithuka is buried.
Shadrack Kipchirchir recovers after the race. He finished 31stth-place finish, earning his fourth All-American award. Kipchirchir loses six places, but still manages 31st. Ask the Coaches: Foamy Sweatnd. Erassa, who was neck-and-neck with Nowak entering the last 800m, falls back to 83rd. Gohlke is OSU’s fifth in 91st. Smith’s scorers are across the line. Now he wonders if it’ll be enough.
Yesterday was a different story.
The last 97 days of the cross country season suddenly compress themselves down into five chaotic minutes. Smith needs to find his runners. But it turns out near impossible in the mess of fans and parents.
As the last stragglers are still lurching over the finish line, the throng of spectators surges from the course, slipping and falling in the mud and wet grass, over to the tented team area. They’re trying to find their loved ones and friends, figure out who’s won and lost, but most of all, get out of the weather.
Faces and hands are beet-red from the gusting winds. Pants are mud-caked from the knee down. A portly official in an earflap hat tries to untangle a soaked power cord from a spectator’s ankle. Two are pushing a gator out of a bushy ravine.
There’s been no official mention of the day’s winner. A few hundred meters from the tented area, officials are checking the computerized scores, tallied from chips tied to the athletes’ shoes. But down in the muck, no one seems to know what’s going on.
Amid the frenzy, Smith finds his runners sitting next to the press tent. Varying unofficial tallies have NAU and Colorado as winners. Smith is pecking at his iPhone with gloved hands, trying to pull up results. There’s no whisper of the Cowboys’ finish yet.
His seven runners are still struggling to recover from the polar mud bath. Farrell splays out on a dry patch of grass, hands over his eyes. Kipchirchir leans against the white tent, anxiously tugging a pair of black tights on over his crusty shoes. Erassa, whose spikes are being undone by a kneeling teammate, stares out at the woods to the south. There’s dried mud in Nowak’s hair. Everyone else is sitting down, talking quietly about the race. They know they’ve lost, even if no one else does yet.
“Here we go,” Smith says and turns. None of his runners move. He pivots over to the Colorado team and the Buffaloes crowd around behind him. They erupt in cheers and fall over each other in the muck. “Congratulations, you guys,” Smith says. He forces a smile as he walks away.
The final scores: CU, 149; NAU, 169; OSU, 230; BYU, 267. It’s the highest point total ever by a winner. Only nine of the past 75 champions have scored more than 100 points, in fact. Asked what the difference was today, Smith says, “We didn’t execute; they did,” nodding toward the CU team. It wasn’t exactly dominant, but it was all theirs.
As the Cowboys wait in the cold for the award ceremony to start, Smith and Lockhart immediately begin to strategize for next year. It doesn’t look good. How in the world are they going to beat a Colorado team that returns all seven (and adds All-American Jake Hurysz) and a NAU team that returns six, when they lose Farrell, Kipchirchir and Manilafasha? “We’ll be fine,” Lockhart says. “We always are.”
“But we’re going to have to get somebody,” Smith says, “from overseas or transfer or something.” Lockhart, the recruiting coordinator, shrugs and screws up his mouth. “You better get on it,” Smith says, slapping him on the back.
A coach from an opposing team clasps Farrell on the shoulder and congratulates him on his fourth All-American award. “You don’t do it for the individual awards, mate,” he says with a wincing smile. Next to Farrell, Erassa stays hidden in his hood and glasses, eyes on the ground. Kipchirchir and Manilafasha are gazing off in the distance at nothing at all. Not a lot of words pass between the men.
OSU is called to the award stand to collect their third-place trophy. Farrell leads the 13 Cowboys, dressed for the last time that season in their matching orange and black. On the stand, Farrell hugs each member of his team as they funnel past. The disappointment is palpable. Smith cradles the trophy for the photo, but few smile.
“You always feel like you kinda let the guys down when we don’t win,” Smith says, “like maybe we should have done something different, or tweaked this or tweaked that.” He pauses. “But when you look at it and you got beat by 80 points, there would have to be a major change to make that different.” What that is, he doesn’t care to guess.
Smith and his men knew all along, since the first day on Sangre Road, that they would need a little luck to win. They knew that even after 97 days of training and an undefeated season, all that really mattered was who performed better on that particular Saturday in November. So today, no excuses are heard. No one considers any what-ifs. No one points a finger or lays any blame. They snap their photos and quickly file down the stairs, back down into the mud.
Check back in early December for the last dispatch from Stillwater, Okla. The Cowboys will reflect back on the 2013 season and what went wrong. They’ll discuss the highs and lows, where they go from here and what it means to be a Cowboy.
joins the Cowboys through the 2013 season as they try to defend their 2012 NCAA title 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 With the starting area compressed, only Tom Farrell left and Kirubel Erassa can stand on the line, among others. He lives in New Mexico.
