Oklahoma State University Athletics
Runners World Chat With OSU's Dave Smith
March 09, 2009 | Cowboy Cross Country & Track
Oklahoma State men's track and cross country coach Dave Smith visited with Runners World.com, the online version of Runners World Magazine, recently. Here is what he had to say in the interview, which was posted on the web site on March 9:
By Peter Gambaccini, runnersworld.com
Dave Smith is the head men's track and cross country coach at Oklahoma State University. His standout runners include freshman German Fernandez, still 18, who has run a 3:55.02 mile and 7:47.97 for 3000 meters this season and won a USA Junior Cross Country title, plus John Kosgei, Colby Lowe, Ryan Vail, and Ryan Prentice. Oklahoma State was third in the 2007 NCAA Cross Country Championships. Smith had previously been a head men's and women's cross country coach and assistant track coach at Texas Tech, after a volunteer assistant coaching stint at the University of Washington and a head coaching with Club Northwest's women's teams. As a collegian himself at Michigan State, Smith was a 1993 Big Ten 10,000-meter champion, an 11-time Academic All-Big Ten selection, and a three-time Academic All-America selection. Smith also won the Big Ten Conference Medal of Honor in 1993. He has a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Washington.
Can you clarify what German is doing in terms of the two important upcoming meets, NCAA Indoor Championships at Texas A&M (March 13 to 14) and the World Junior Cross country Championships in Amman, Jordan (March 28)? Is he skipping NCAAs?
Dave Smith: Yep. Crazy as it sounds, he's going to skip NCAAs. I think physically he can do it, no problem. He's healthy, he could probably handle it (doing both). But I think with time away from school, emotional stress, energy, and all of those things that come with that, he needs a little break. He told me "I think I can run both." I said "if you really want, to that's fine, but I'm a lot more comfortable if you sit one out." He really wants to do well at the Worlds.
How long will be out of the country and where will he stay?
DS: He'll be out of the country for a week. It's right in downtown Amman, actually. They'll be in a hotel. I know a lot of times in the past they've been in a dormitory somewhere, but they'll actually be in a hotel.
How did this decision come about? Did you ask him if he wanted to do one or the other (NCAAs or Worlds), or did he say he did, or what?
DS: We talked about it a long time ago, basically, as far back as when I was recruiting him - what are your goals going to be, and how are we going to match up? He's said all along he wanted to make the World (Junior) Championships team. He made one last year and enjoyed it; that was a great experience. I honestly think for a guy his level, it's important to those experiences, that opportunity. As we went along through the year, it became obvious he wasn't going to redshirt (last fall's NCAA) cross country, and then we thought maybe we'll redshirt indoor track, but he came back from injury still pretty good and he wanted a race or two. All of the sudden that turned into four or five races in a short period, and I said "hey, listen. At some point, we have to make a decision. Do you want to run outdoors, do you want to redshirt, do you want to run the national championships indoors, do you want to go to Worlds? You can't do everything." Eventually, it ends up being too much. He really has some big goals in the 5k (5000) this year outdoors
He would be positioned quite well, even as the favorite, for the mile and the 3000 at NCAA Indoors, so this is a sacrifice, obviously.
DS: Yeah. Like I told other people just recently, we're real lucky that we have an athletic director and an athletic department that both trust us and believe that we say this is probably best for the long term, and you can't put him (Fernandez) in a situation where he's going to put himself at risk. They say "well, I can't believe you're not going to run the #1-ranked guy in the mile at the (NCAA) meet, but if that's the best for him, then do it." We're lucky that we have an administration that understands that.
At World Junior Cross Country, as you mentioned, German wants to do really well. Dathan Ritzenhein (back in 2001) got a bronze there and Matt Tegenkamp was fifth. Is that the king of thing German's hoping for, to get a medal?
DS: We're going into it hoping he can be top 15. The year those guys ran - well, they ran extremely well, but the conditions were extremely muddy and extremely sloppy. I think that might have, changed a little bit, how the race was run. Those guys, if I remember, went for it at the start, and they were out there running with the leaders. They put themselves in good position. And that's his (German's) plan, to honestly go with the front park, and if there is a flier or two to take off, maybe let them go and run with the pack until you get to 5k or 6k guy (the race is 8k) and then make a decision - do I have a shot at going after this or not?
You mentioned ambitious outdoor goals for German for the 5000. Can you be any more specific about that?
DS: Well, there's the American junior record out there, which is a pretty good mark (13.37.91 by Galen Rupp). To start with, that's one thing we're thinking about. He's very cognizant of what the records are and that's one goal he has, to have a shot at that record.
Have you been noticing some the Internet comparisons between German and Australian Ryan Gregson (who's 18 and has run 3:37 for 1500 meters)?
DS: A lot of guys on the team have been talking about it. It's been all the buzz in our team room lately, so yeah, I've heard a little bit about it. He ran some pretty fast times. In fact he wasn't that far behind German last year at the World Juniors. They know each other. I think German said they're talking right now by facebook or one of those sites.
Do you think there's been any interest in getting Gregson to come to an American university?
DS: We contact everybody at that level. We contacted him, he said "no, I'm happy doing what I'm doing." The Australians are VERY happy with what he''s doing.
At the NCAA Cross Country Championships last fall, we saw what we thought was a VERY serious injury for German, who couldn't complete the race. What did you know about it right away? He's come back more quickly and completely than a lot of people thought he would.
DS: I was at the race but not there when he got hurt. I was at the 8k mark (of a 10k). He and John (Kosgei, who would finish eighth) had moved up and they were in that chase pack (behind eventual one-two finishers Galen Rupp of Oregon and Sam Chelanga of Liberty). I was waiting for those two guys to come around the corner, and of the sudden I see come around and I say "oh, this isn't good." And my assistant coach was with me and he said "no, German will be coming." And I said "no, if he's not with John, he's not in the race." And sure enough, about two minutes later, someone comes up to us and says "German's down, it's bad, it's an Achilles." People were telling me - it's amazing how many people claimed to have been right there when it happened - everybody's saying "I saw it, his Achilles rolled up."
Yikes.
DS: I was just mortified. By the time I went to where he went down, he'd been picked up and taken to a medical tent. By the time I got back there, he had ice wrapped around it and was all bandaged up. For a day, I was pretty terrified. The trainer at the meet said "I looked at. There's no obvious deformity. There's some swelling in there, but it's not like people described to you." Not knowing her (the trainer), I didn't know how much to believe. But when he got back to Stillwater (Oklahoma State) for an MRI the next day, the doctor said "this is a plantarus tendon. It's not the Achilles. It's going to be a painful situation, but it's not going to be serious. It's like the extent of a severely sprained ankle. It might be two weeks, it might be four weeks. On the long end it will be six weeks, but he's going to be okay." Within a week, he was out of a boot and walking.
He's obviously a very talented kid, but can you talk about the kind of kid German is?
DS: Yeah, I get that question a lot, especially lately. He is just like every other guy on the team. He's one of the guys, he likes to be a part of the team. He's a pain in the neck most of the time, because he's a prankster. A couple of times I came out of the office and my car is gone. I find it a quarter-mile away at the end of the parking lot, kind of hidden away, in a small parking spot behind a truck or something. Usually, it's him that's up to it. Or I'll come in and my keys will be stuck in my office and the door will be shut and I'm locked out. Stuff like that happens all the time.
This struck me as a little unusual. I went to the Oklahoma State website, and it appeared that the entire men's indoor track team consists of distance runners.
DS: Yeah. We are limited by gender equity numbers to 22 guys on the roster. A decision was made about ten years ago, before I got here, that with 22 guys against some of the teams in our conference that are 50, 60 bodies, it's virtually impossible to go in there and fight a track team like that. So we put all the resources in distance running and see what we can do in cross country. You know, honestly, for a distance coach, it's kind of a dream .... The real focus is on doing well in cross country, and then being successful individually with the track guys.
So if there was some kid who was an Xavier Carter type and could win all those sprints and he wanted to come to Oklahoma State, would you have room for him?
DS: It would be hard to say no to a guy like that, but my associate has told me a couple of guy "I don't care if he's an 18-foot pole vaulter, tell him to go someplace else."
How do you like John Kosgei's chances at NCAA Indoors?
DS: He's rounding into form really well. He's kind of hidden because of the success that German's had. But he run the 5k (at Big 12 Championships) off a really erratic pace. Those guys were running 64s (per 400 meters) early in the race and then as slow as 75s, and then they closed under 60. And then in the 3000, German didn't get away from him until 200 to go, and I think they ran 2:30 the last kilometer, or 2:30. The last 600, both of them went under 1:30. He's getting there. He's not far off right now.
Is Ryan Vail still down there training with you?
DS: Ryan's still got eligibility. He's out of indoors, but he's coming back for outdoors. He is really fit. He also made the Jordan team (in the senior men's 12k). German, John, and Vail are a pretty good group.
Some people were surprised that German picked Oklahoma State, and you have other out of state kids there like Colby Lowe. Is it hard to draw kids to Stillwater, Oklahoma?
DS: You have to be the right kind of kid. If they're looking for glitz and glamor and hype and a lot of bells and whistles, they're not going to find it here. But if they're looking for that kind of blue collar attitude, where everybody gets along and the guys are really tightknit, guys are really attracted to the place. That was really important to German. The guys on the team and the way the coaches and athletes and everybody gets along were a big part of why he made his decision the way he made it. Ryan Vail's the same way - a kid from Portland who was highly recruited on the West Coast and came down here as a throwaway just to take one more trip (before making his college choice) and said "this wasn't the way I thought it was." He really liked the team atmosphere and the mentality. We're pretty rural. We've got hundreds of miles of dirt roads right here on campus. It makes for great training. We do 90 percent of our running on soft surfaces. I think we have two or three guys on the roster right now from Oklahoma. The rest are from all over the place. We've done really well in the Northwest -Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. But now we've got kids from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. We've got kids from everywhere.
Just to wrap up here, will German compete in the NCAA meet outdoors?
DS: That's our plan. I think you can run two (out of three) of these collegiate seasons really competitively and really go for it. Especially for a guy like German, who's going to have summer stuff available to him as well, it becomes yearlong commitment if you're not careful. Indoors, we ran a couple of extra races compared to our original plan. Because of that, we're going to run a very limited outdoor season, maybe one meet before the Big 12 meet, and then Big 12, Regionals, and NCAAs, and then make decisions about the summer. Right now, we're leaning towards maybe not even having a real summer (race schedule) and taking some time off. He's a new runner and he hasn't had any real time off since before his senior year started. He ran pretty much consistently until he got injured and was forced to take two or three weeks off. Even then, he was crosstraining like a demon. I think at some point, as a young guy, he needs time to recover, recoup, and get recharged.
Do you think ultimately, he's going to be more of a 5000 guy than a 1500 guy?
DS: I think he'll be a great 5k guy. I don't know what his true quarter-mile speed is. We don't do time trials or anything like that, we just kind of figure it out. I would guess he could run 50-point on a good day. He says he ran 51.9 in a relay split in high school. I think his strength is his strength. It's his aerobic ability. Beyond OSU, when his career is further down, he's going to be a great 10k. His high school coach still thinks the marathon's his event, but I think that's ten years away. As far as I can see, he'll be a 1500/5000 guy for most of his career here (at Oklahoma State).
You'll have much of the same cast coming back next fall for cross country. Have you signed some promising recruits, too?
DS: We have some kids that are not the level of the class we got last year. This year's been the toughest we've faced in recruiting. The interest we're getting is from the juniors (in high school). I've never been contacted (before) as I have this year by kids who are elite level juniors in the U.S. For the senior, honestly, maybe it's a little intimidating; he thinks "you know, if I go there, there's Colby Lowe, German Fernandez, even Ryan Prentice," who is this weekend running at the NACAC Championships. They look at that and think "I'm going to be fourth, at best, for four years." For the juniors, it's like having the Rolling Stones on their team. They know who these guys are, they've been following them, and I just can't believe the interest we're getting from that class.
