Friday, May 27, 2011
Posted: 11 a.m.
By Reuben Frank
CSNPhilly.com
Theres a park bench near the Sunoco minimart adjacent to the entrance to Fairmount Park where Wissahickon Drive meets Lincoln Drive in Mount Airy.
Concrete base. Wooden bench and back panels. Typical park bench.
That park bench is where the career of one of the best college distance runners in the nation got started.
This was the spring of 2009, and Temple distance coach Matt Jelley had his runners gathered after a training run. He told them he needed somebody to run the steeplechase, the grueling 3,000-meter test in which a runner has to navigate not only 7 laps around a 400-meter track but hurdle unforgiving 36-inch barriers and clear seven 12-foot water jumps.
It takes a special kind of runner to race the steeple. Sure, being fast helps. But you also need somebody whos athletic enough to hurdle the barriers and tough enough to survive getting trampled, wiping out into the water pit or smashing into a barrier.
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So that day on the edge of Fairmount Park, Jelley asked his guys who was interested. And an unassuming freshman from Central Jersey named Travis Mahoney said, I can do that.
Mahoney had never run the steeplechase.
I hadnt even heard of the steeplechase before I got to college, he said. We dont have it in any high school meets. I didnt know anything about it.
But he knew he was good at jumping over stuff.
In high school, when we were out doing our runs, I would always hurdle stuff, Mahoney said. If there was a couch in somebodys front yard, I would jump over it while we were running.
Jelley figured theyd go back to campus and test Mahoney over some hurdles.
No need for that, Mahoney said.
He said, Coach, this bench is right here, Jelley said. I told him, Are you sure you can get over that? He said, Yeah, Im OK.
I told him, Just be careful, dont hurt yourself. Probably not my best coaching decision to let him try it.
Mahoney took a couple strides on the grass and then soared gracefully over the bench as cars sped by a few feet away on Wissahickon Drive.
I was amazed how athletic he was, Jelley said. He just kind of glided over it.
And just like that, a steeplechaser was born.
He was like, All right, youre in the steeplechase, Mahoney said.
Two years later, Mahoney is one of the best in the world.
At a school known for its historic basketball program and rejuvenated football team, Mahoney has emerged this spring as one of the most improbable stories in college track and field.
Mahoney, a good-but-not-great high school runner at Old Bridge High School, is ranked No. 2 among NCAA steeplechase runners going into this weekends Division I Regionals and with a time of 8:37.23 is the top seed in the NCAA East Regionals, which started Thursday in Bloomington, Ind.
It just doesnt seem real, none of it, said Mahoney, a Temple junior. A year ago, I saw guys running 8:35 or 8:40 and I was like, Youve got to be kidding me. How can you run that fast? Now Im running that fast, and Im amazed I could ever get to their level.
I never expected this. Nobody expected this. Ive never even been close to making NCAAs before and now Im going into Regionals as the No. 1 seed. Its just crazy.
Mahoney was hurt for long stretches of his first two college seasons but still ran 9:15 in the steeple as a freshman and 9:14 as a sophomore, placing seventh and second in the Atlantic 10 Conference meet.
Nothing earth-shattering but promising for a newcomer.
He was just natural at it, Jelley said. The thing about Travis is that hes played a lot of other sports, hes done gymnasticshes a lot more athletic than a lot of distance runners, and that really helps him in the steeple.
Mahoneys big breakthrough came at the Larry Ellis Invitational at Princeton late last month, when he lowered his PR from 9:00.68 to 8:41.66.
With one race, he had become an elite college runner.
I was just hoping to go under nine, Mahoney said. With two laps to go I was at 6:30 and I was thinking, Great, I should be under nine. Then Im on the final stretch and I see 8:30 on the clock, and I couldnt believe it. It took me 15 minutes to realize what I had just done.
Mahoney trimmed another four seconds off his personal-best earlier this month when he won the steeple at the Atlantic 10 meet in Charlotte in 8:37.23. He closed in 2:10, crazy speed for the final 800 of a steeple.
Travis was a couple years ahead of me, and when he graduated we kept in touch, said Mahoneys friend and high school rival Robby Andrews, the NCAA 800 champ last winter for Virginia. I would ask how hes doing, and he would say, Doing OK, nothing special. So that 8:37 was kind of out of nowhere.
Hes really progressing rapidly, and if he keeps it up, he can have a really good time and do really well at NCAAs.
Mahoney ranks No. 9 among U.S. men this spring and No. 2 among collegians, less than a second behind only post-graduate Steve Finley of OregonAndrews former teammate at Virginia. Finley ran 8:36.98 at the Payton Jordan Invitational at Stanford.
On the IAAF world performance list, Mahoney is ranked No. 32, and only three of those ahead of himtwo Kenyans and a Ugandanare younger.
What makes Mahoneys emergence so remarkable is that he wasnt a great high school runner.
I wasnt that good at all until senior year, he said. I wasnt close to the top guys in the state.
Mahoney ran 4:23 and 9:16 by the end of his senior year but spent his career in the shadow of nationally renown runners like Andrews, Brett Johnson of Ocean City, Doug Smith of Gill St. Bernard and Jim and Joe Rosa of West Windsor-Plainsboro North.
The competition was unbelievable in New Jersey when he was in high school, Jelley said. But what I liked about him, he was never out of a race. He didnt win every one, but he sure made a run at every one, and thats the kind of thing you just cant teach. He was just a tough, tough runner.
Mahoney was intrigued when Jelley recruited him, even though Temple had virtually no distance running tradition. Mahoney knew Jelley from his days at Toms River North and felt comfortable with his training methods, which were similar to those of his high school coach, Richard Gebauer.
I had faith that he could take me where I wanted to go, Mahoney said.
What Jelley is doing at Temple is identical to what Al Golden did with the Owls football team.
Taking a nothing program not just to respectability but to national-caliber success.
In 2009, Mike May became Temples first all-conference cross country runner ever. In 2010, a cross country program ranked second-to-worst in the Northeast Region two years earlier earned its first top-15 regional ranking ever. Temple even finished fifth in the conference XC meet in 2010, by far the best in the programs history. In track, Temple has placed among the top three in the A-10 meet the last three years after placing among the bottom three every year from 1997 through 2006.
And now Mahoney is enjoying the kind of success you expect from a runner at Stanford or Oregon or Villanova.
And hes doing it at college that couldnt be farther off the beaten path in track circles.
Temple is not exactly known for their steeplechasers, Andrews said. Or anything, really.
Mahoney is more than just a steeplechase specialist. He won the 1,500 at the A-10 meet in a near-meet-record 3:50.89, closing in 1:56 for his final 800. And at the 90th annual IC4A championships at Princeton, he ran a 1:51 leg on Temples 3,200-meter relay team, which placed fifth in 7:27.62, another school record.
Next for Mahoney is the NCAA East Regionals at the University of Indiana. Hell run one round of the steeplechase Friday and thenbarring disastermove on to the NCAA Championships next month in DesMoines, Iowa. With a top-eight finishor if hes among the first eight Americanshell become only the second individual in Owls history and the first in 18 years to earn All-America status in track.
Its crazy to think Im still kind of new at the event, but Ive already qualified for the Olympic Trials and have a great opportunity this weekend and at NCAAs, Mahoney said. Im just trying to stay in control and stay humble. I dont want to get ahead of myself. I feel like Im still new to the event and have a long way to go. I want to stay hungry and keep improving. I feel like I have so much more I want to accomplish.
E-mail Reuben Frank at rfrank@comcastsportsnet.com
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