By Craig Pearson
TERRE HAUTE — Hundreds of elite cross country runners will arrive in Terre Haute today for NCAA Championship.
No runners developed in Terre Haute will be racing Monday, but there is one knocking on the door.
Indiana University redshirt freshman Zach Mayhew had a breakout season for the Hoosiers, but the former Terre Haute North standout finished one heartbreaking second from earning an at-large berth to Monday’s race at LaVern Gibson Championship Course.
When Indiana was ranked as high as 17th in the nation in October, it appeared Mayhew might be racing on the same course which he started racing in middle and high school for Otter Creek and Terre Haute North.
The Hoosiers, however, had disappointing efforts as a team in the Big Ten meet as well as the Great Lakes Region meet on the IU Golf Course. Mayhew was a bright spot in both of those meets, racing to sixth in the Big Ten and 11th in the Great Lakes.
“Starting out the year, I wouldn’t have thought the level of success I had was even possible,” Mayhew said this week. “To do this my freshman year, was a big accomplishment for me. Coach has been training me just as hard as anybody else. I’ve just really adapted to the training and to Indiana in general.”
Mayhew arrived at IU in 2008 suffering from mononucleosis, which made the decision to redshirt an easy one for coach Ron Helmer. That year of training paid off for Mayhew.
“It took me a while to get me adjusted to the higher-intensity training,” Mayhew said. “Being able to train that whole first year, I’m really glad that [coach Helmer] decided to do that for me.”
Helmer admitted Mayhew’s rise to being one of the Hoosiers’ top three this season was a bit of a surprise. Helmer recruited Mayhew, but the all-state high school runner joined the Hoosiers as a walk-on.
“Some of our best recruiting has come after we run out of money,” Helmer said. “He had a really good year of training as a [true] freshman. We could tell things were starting to happen [based on some of his training times].”
Mayhew got stronger as this 2009 season went along, and making the first-team All-Big Ten was definitely the highlight.
“Since they’ve had the first-team and second-team, I’m only the 8th Hoosier to ever get that. It’s unbelievable. I still don’t believe that it’s happened,” Mayhew said.
Mayhew was one of several IU runners to get out fast at the region meet, but he lost some ground later in the race that he would regain in the final 2,000 meters.
“I wasn’t quite used to the extra distance,” Mayhew said of the 10K distance that NCAA men jump to in the final two weeks of the season from 8K. “With about 1K to go, I was able to move up on the field again and able to pull out 11th place.”
But Mayhew was 1.37 seconds behind Purdue’s Caden Shields, who earned the final at-large berth from the Great Lakes.
“[Shields] hadn’t beat me all season. That’s the way it happens sometimes,” Mayhew said. “I’ve got three more cracks at it. I’m confident next year my team will make it. I’ll be in the national meet soon enough.”
Helmer has the utmost confidence that Mayhew will have a chance to race in the NCAA meet in the next three years.
“We will have a team — we were too young, too inexperienced in high pressure situations,” Helmer said. “He’s going to be on a very good cross country team.”
“We’ll be a player at the national meet once we can get a handle on it,” Helmer said. “Every kid on our team, has at least 2 years of eligibility left. Zach’s definitely going to be right in the middle of it.”
