Josh Thompson's Unlikely Path to History

March 28, 2017 | Cowboy Cross Country & Track

The Cowboy senior has taken the track and field world by storm

When Cowboy senior Josh Thompson came to Stillwater last year, no one knew what to expect.

He wasn't highly-touted. The red carpet wasn't rolled out.

The 22-year-old junior college transfer had joined a program with a rich history of middle-distance success. He joined a group littered with All-Americans, conference champions and a national champion.

Yet, within one year, he became a leader on that team.

Instant impact is thrown around a lot in sports, but there is no other way to describe what he did for the Pokes in his first season.

"He kind of came out of nowhere, and he set the world on fire," OSU middle distance coach Bobby Lockhart said.

Nowhere is fairly accurate.

He'll say he is from Las Vegas for convenience' sake, but it's hard to find the Cowboy senior's hometown on a map.

Head northeast from the enticing lights of Las Vegas and the highway eventually runs into Logandale, Nevada, in Moapa Valley on the farthest north shore of Lake Mead.

To call it small makes it sound bigger than it is, but this unincorporated oasis in the unforgiving Nevada desert is Thompson's hometown and where the talented Cowboy middle-distance runner got his start.

He chose to run for Moapa Valley High School for two reasons.

"I was too small to play football, and my dad ran cross country in high school," Thompson said. "I wanted to follow in his footsteps."

His high school career was successful to say the least. He was a stud for the Pirate cross country and track and field program, winning back-to-back 3,200-meter and cross country titles in his junior and senior seasons. He also set the school record in the 3,200 with a time that is still two minutes better than every other time in school history.

Even with four individual state titles and six school records to his name when he turned his Moapa Valley tassel, Thompson didn't catch the fancies of any Division I programs and took his talents to Central Arizona College in Coolidge.

"My times in high school weren't as good as some of the kids across the nation," Thompson said. "I still don't know today how Central Arizona found me. My coach there just gave me a call my senior year out of the blue and said, 'we want you to come run for us,' so I did."

Central Arizona is one of the most successful programs in the NJCAA, so the jump to the next level was still tough for Thompson.

"In high school I was probably doing 10 to 20 miles a week and I didn't run Saturday or Sunday," Thompson said. "I got to [Central Arizona] and I started running 50 to 60 miles per week and it was kind of rough adjusting to that change, but it was definitely for the better."

He redshirted his indoor season, ran the outdoor season, but before the start of his sophomore year, Thompson dropped everything to fulfill a lifelong goal.

"I always knew that I wanted to go on a mission," Thompson said. "I made that decision early in life."

Then just 19, Thompson served in Nicaragua for two years from July of 2012 to 2014.

"That was probably the greatest decision of my life," he said. "It was definitely the best experience I've ever had. It was nice just to experience a new lifestyle."

Thompson spent time working in the southern half of the country near the capital of Managua for most of his trip.

"Being around people who didn't have much but were so willing to give you everything they had was life-changing," Thompson said.

He dug wells and worked with families across the country, but with all of the good being done, his conditioning took a hit.

He found that out the hard way when he returned to Central Arizona for his second season.

"I went to school for a year, took the two years off and then went back to school for another year," he said. "It's unconventional and it was rough getting back into it. I was definitely tired in my first season back for cross country and it was hard to adjust, but I was able to do it and I think it made me better."

It was after his sophomore season when Oklahoma State called.

"It's funny how we recruited Josh because at the start, we weren't even looking at him," Lockhart said. "We'd never heard of him."

The Cowboys weren't calling Thompson; they were calling his teammates.

"We missed out on two other guys from Central Arizona and they recommended a third, they recommended Josh," Oklahoma State coach Dave Smith said. "We weren't overly impressed, but then they said he could dunk a basketball and we realized, this guy's athletic – he's got something."

Thompson knew his teammates were being recruited, and he wanted in on the action.

"One of my teammates was a big OSU guy and he started to get recruited by them," Thompson said. "I just asked if he would mention me and then a few days later I got a call. I agreed to a visit before I hung up the phone."

Thompson committed to OSU shortly after, but he admits that he was nervous about the transition.

"I was definitely intimidated," he said. "All of these guys here were fast and come from good programs and were much faster than I was, but I was excited about the challenge of coming here and trying to hang with these guys."

It was going to be tough for the newcomer to break into the cross country team that was coming off of a ninth-straight season with a top-10 finish at NCAA Cross Country Championships and a seventh-straight Big 12 title.

But it didn't take long for Thompson to make his mark.

"When Josh got here, we weren't sure if maybe we were offering too much," Lockhart said. "We were taking a risk going after a guy who had some OK times, but nobody knew about. We didn't know what to expect."

Thompson finished second at his first ever race with the Pokes at the Cowboy Preview. He then took fifth at the 2015 Cowboy Jamboree and 10th at the Big 12 Cross Country Championships on his way to being named conference Newcomer of the Year.

"Obviously he delivered," Lockhart said. "He was a much better distance runner than we'd thought. He handled the transition fine and he's gotten better and better."

He went into the 2016 indoor season with a personal best mile time of 4:17. The time was good, but he wanted more. A few weeks into the season, he had cut his time down to 4:10, but was still unhappy.

"He told me before Washington that he really wanted to be a sub-four minute miler," Lockhart said. "But at the time, he had just run a 4:10, so I told him 11 seconds is a lot of time to cut down in one race and that I'd be happy if he ran a 4:03 or 4:02. But that kid goes after what he wants."

Two weeks after running a 4:15.73 and nearly a month after running a lifetime best of 4:10.59, Thompson did the improbable at the Husky Classic's open mile in Seattle when he crossed the finish line in 3:58.33, becoming the first collegiate Nevadan to break the four-minute mark.

"I kept thinking just stay with the pack and it will be all right," Thompson said. "The last 50 meters, I looked up at the clock and I was just sprinting as hard as I could just to break four. It was an incredible feeling."

He went on to run two more sub-four minute miles that season as the anchor for the Cowboy distance medley relay team. The first came at the Alex Wilson Invitational where his 3:56 anchor-leg helped the Cowboys claim the third fastest time in NCAA history.

The second for the DMR came on the biggest stage of the indoor season: the 2016 NCAA Indoor Championships.

Thompson, the new kid, the junior college transfer, the guy who came out of nowhere was clad in orange and black waiting for the baton from his teammate juxtaposed with the one of the most dominant athletes in NCAA history.

"Here you have a guy in Josh who is a 4:17 guy the year before in junior college, and now he's racing against multi-time national champion Edward Cheserek and a guy with the best range in the NCAA in Izaic Yorks," Lockhart said. "But here he is battling with these bulls up front. It was just incredible to watch.

"He's just not afraid of anything," Lockhart said.

In the end, Thompson's second sub-four minute anchor leg helped the Cowboys take fifth, earning the quartet first-team All-America honors.

The spot on the podium meant Thompson's time as an unknown was up.

He obliterated his 1,500-meter personal best during the outdoor season, dropping it nearly 20 seconds and qualifying for the NCAA West Preliminary Rounds.

Though he didn't make the semifinal in Eugene, Oregon, Thompson continued to compete during the summer and won the Brooks PR 1,500-meter title over Yorks, American champion and London 2012 silver medalist Leo Manzano and 2016 Olympic 800-meter bronze medalist Clayton Murphy.

His 3:39.61 from the race was less than a second off the Olympic qualifying time for the Games in Rio.

Thompson and the Cowboys had high expectations for the 2016 cross country season.

After the way 2015 ended with no All-America honors for the Cowboys for the first time since 2007, the dominant Big 12 program had to prove it on the national stage again.

At the Big 12 Cross Country Championships, he earned his second-straight all-conference honor and helped OSU land its ninth consecutive Big 12 title.

He then went on to finish just a few hundredths of-a-second behind the winner at the Midwest Regional and the Cowboy senior earned his first cross country All-America honor when he finished 36th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships.

That season made it official: The guy from nowhere has turned into something special.

He finished third in Seattle this year, just fractions of a second off two Olympians in the mile with a 3:56.89.

He finished his Big 12 indoor career undefeated with two more titles, and managed to break the school record in the 1,000 with a 2:22.07 in his last 1,000-meter run as a Cowboy.

Once again, he found himself in a similar situation at the 2017 NCAA Indoor Championships.

This time in the open mile final, as one of the fastest men in the country, Thompson and Cheserek lined up again right next to each other – but this time it was different.

"He's one of those guys who is going to race to win," Smith said. "If he doesn't win, he doesn't win, but he's not going to take it easy out there. You have to take risks to win and he's willing to do that."

Thompson hung on to Cheserek and the leaders for most of the race and finished sixth for his first individual All-America honor and became just the fifth Cowboy in school history to earn first-team honors in the mile.

"It was cool to be with all of those athletes and racing against a 17-time national champion," Thompson said. "It's just great to get that experience and it was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so it was great to be a part of that."

But Thompson said he feels his work isn't done yet.

"It keeps me hungry for more and keeps me humble," Thompson said. "I'm ready to come back with fire and I have some unfinished business with outdoors."

Thompson has the opportunity to become the first Cowboy since Christopher Kenebei to earn All-America honors in three consecutive NCAA athletics seasons over the course of one year.

That happened exactly 20 years ago, from 1996-1997.

The once exciting, eye-opening times aren't enough for him this year – he's going for medals. He's going for more records. He's going for championships.

Signing Thompson back in 2015 was a risk, but it's been one of the most rewarding risks in program history.

He's going to leave OSU in the summer and move on to bigger and better things, but in just two years with the Cowboys, Thompson has cemented himself as one of the top athletes to come through the historic program.

It hasn't all been unexpected, though, for Thompson.

"I've always been very competitive," Thompson said. "That's kind of my thing: I always dream too big."

The Cowboy senior will open his final outdoor season this weekend in Palo Alto, California, with the goal of running a qualifying time for the 1,500, and securing his spot in the West Preliminary Rounds for the second-straight year.