Persistence pays off for Wadhwani
RUNNING: Recent high school standout’s decision to focus on improving times attracts WSU scholarship
The freshman’s future is finally firm.
Each June, in The Province’s annual Head of the Class special section dedicated to the best and brightest Grade 12 high school studentathletes, there is a caption under each honouree’s photo which indicates their collegiate destination.
We call it Freshman’s Future.
“Washington State was the right choice because I think I’ll be near the front of a program that is moving up.” — Nathan Wadhwani
En route to winning the grand middle-distance trifecta during his final year of high school — the B.C. high school cross-country title, as well as the 1,500 and 3,000-metres races at the provincial track finals — Nathan Wadhwani looked like he was in a position to write his own ticket to the collegiate program of his choice.
Yet when our 2014 Subway Head of the Class edition came out, Wadhwani’s Freshman’s Future caption read: “Undecided.”
“I did well in my Grade 12 season in the high school meets, as far as winning races,” says Wadhwani, “but I didn’t hit the times I was looking for. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea, and maybe it was a little risky, but I decided I was going to take the year off.”
There were some offers he could have accepted, but not at the kinds of elite NCAA Div. 1 schools he felt would help him maximize his potential. So, placing trust in his ability to hit those times while training away from the academic setting for the first time, Wadhwani went about the tough task of trying to make his best second impression.
He ramped up his mileage and lived the sport 24/7. In the end, it paid off. Last week, the standout from Port Coquitlam’s Terry Fox Secondary signed his national letter of intent with the Pac 12’s Washington State Cougars, where he will run crosscountry, as well as indoor and outdoor middle distance, beginning next fall.
His breakthrough race, the one that made that all-important second impression to the bigger schools who wouldn’t take notice last season? On Sept. 27, at the Stanford Invitational in Palo Alto, Calif., Wadhwani posted the fastest time by any college freshman-aged runner in the men’s invitational eightkm race, finishing 14th in the 361man field in a time of 24:13.
“After that race, I felt like a lot of coaches believed in me,” Wadhwani says. “But they needed to see some proof, and 24:13 for 8K is what people are interested in.”
In the end, Wadhwani got his wish. Three suitors — Arkansas, Oklahoma and Washington State — became his finalists. After weighing each school’s environment, its coaches and runners, and the all-important level of financial aid available at each, he found his best fit closest to home with WSU.
“Washington State was the right choice because I think I’ll be near the front of a program that is moving up,” said Wadhwani of a school that has produced more individual men’s cross-country champions than any other program in NCAA Div. 1 history, and through the mid-1980s was one of the best collegiate outdoor track and field programs.
“They are trying to work their way back and their facilities are amazing,” said Wadhwani. “And since I am taking this whole year off from school, I won’t need to redshirt there next year. I can go right in, if that is their plan.”
Wadhwani becomes the seventh Head of the Class honoree to attend Washington State. When he arrives next year in Pullman, he will join Surrey-Panorama Ridge’s Chelsea Harkins, from the women’s soccer team, as active HOC Cougars. Coquitlam-Centennial’s Lisa Egami, a 2006 HOC honouree, is a former member of the Washington State cross-country and track teams. And although he’s me this No. 1 goal of finding a place to both run and study toward a business degree, there is another more immediate goal on Wadhwani’s plate these days.
Last November, when the Canadian cross-country championships came to Jericho, Wadhwani took a nasty tumble on a downhill stretch of the course and never got a chance to cross the finish line.
He’s hoping to make amends when the 2014 race returns to the same course on Nov. 29.
“The top six make Team Canada and I feel that is within my range,” Wadhwani says. “I have run the course before so I feel a lot more confident with it. I just feel a lot more expectation going into this one.”
That is Wadhwani speaking from the heart, and doing the thing that, maybe above all else, he does best: trust his gut. After all, it got him pretty far this season.