The OSU men’s track team ran its final lap of the 2008 season at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 13.
The team sent five runners to the regional competition and two of them, redshirt junior Ryan Vail and senior David Jankowski, qualified for the national championship.
Vail ended his season at nationals with a remarkable fifth-place finish in the 5,000-meter run with a time of 13 minutes, 42.85 seconds. His performance secured him OSU’s first track and field All-American honor since Chuck Sloan earned it in 1998 for his performance in the steeplechase.
Vail’s fifth-place finish earned OSU’s only points at the championship and clinched a 40th-place tie.
On Tuesday, ESPN the Magazine named Vail an Academic All-American.
Jankowski ended his career with a 17th-place finish in the 10,000-meter run with a time of 29 minutes, 53.48 seconds.
Coach Dave Smith will need to fill three key positions on the team because Jankowski, Brian Ehlis and Terry Josserand graduated in May.
“All three of them were good leaders of the program and good examples of what we want in all our athletes,” Smith said. “They were great students as well as athletes. They’re good guys and were very popular amongst their teammates.”
Smith preparedfor the graduates’ departure by recruiting three of the top 10 distance runners in the nation.
German Fernandez, Colby Lowe and Ryan Prentice have signed letters of intent to OSU.
“Our recruiting class is one of the best in the country,” Smith said. “We got Fernandez who is the best distance runner in the United States this year in high school. We got Colby Lowe who is also in the top two or three and Ryan Prentice who is in the top 10. So we’ve got three of the top 10 distance runners in the United States.”
Fernandez graduated from Riverbank High School in California last month, but not before setting two state meet records and one national record at the CIF State Track and Field Championships.
Fernandez first set a state meet record in the 1,600-meter run with a time of 4 minutes, .29 seconds, then about two hours later set a national record in the 3,200-meter with a time of 8 minutes, 34.23 seconds.
Fernandez’s California state meet time was as fast as Vail’s best time ever, Smith said.
“For him to do that 3,200 after his first race, just amazing,” said John Vizcaino, Fernandez’s high school coach. “People were telling me it might be the best distance-double ever by a high school kid in the nation.”
Smith has high expectations for Fernandez in next season’s cross country and track meets, but he is also looking to this year’s underclassmen to step up and play a vital role in the team’s performance next season.
“The younger guys got to step up,” Smith said. “They’ve had the luxury of sitting behind Vail and Jankowski and watching those guys lead, but now it’s time for some of them to graduate and for the younger guys to step up and become contributors.”
Smith said there is little room for improvement for the cross country team, which sealed a third place national title and a second place title in the Big 12 conference.
However, until the track team has a complete roster it will be difficult for them to compete for a national title. Currently, the team is comprised of mainly distance runners who also run cross country. This makes it impossible for them to score as many points as teams with athletes competing in all the events.
Smith said he has the athletes running at least 100 miles per week for summer training and that he looks forward to them returning for team practice starting Aug. 11.
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