BOOK IT: KEELAN SET TO TAKE OFF
St. Ignatius senior aims to win state distance races
One of the team-building exercises for the St. Ignatius boys crosscountry program is reading a cult classic novel called Once a Runner.
One of the book’s supporting characters is Jack Nubbins, an annoying freshman who — spoiler alert — gets his comeuppance at the hands of some upperclassmen.
“I kind of fit the description, so my name turned into ‘Nubbins’ at that point,” Wolfpack senior Jack Keelan said.
Keelan’s story has a happier trajectory than Nubbins’, though. Four years after joining the crosscountry program more to keep fit than anything — and having some Nubbins-like misadventures — Keelan is arguably the state’s premier distance runner.
He won the Class 3A crosscountry title last fall and committed to run track and cross country at Stanford. Now he has turned his attention to his final season of prep track. He is the top returning runner in the Class 3A 1,600 meters and the second-best returner in the 3A 3,200.
Not bad for a kid who played soccer, football and cross country in grade school and liked soccer a lot more than distance running then. But he joined the cross-country team anyway and had some immediate success.
“He was a varsity top-five crosscountry runner as a freshman,” St. Ignatius coach Ed Ernst said. “By the end of track freshman year, he ran the fastest 3,200 on the team.”
But there was still a little Nubbins in Keelan then. He forgot his number when he went to the starting line at the Catholic League meet, not realizing his mistake till the race had started. Meet officials forgave the freshman brain cramp, though.
Another cross-country episode didn’t end so well when the Wolf- pack failed to qualify for state in 2011 and Keelan didn’t advance as an individual.
“I worked the whole season, and it kind of fell apart on me,” Keelan said. “We went on our cool-down [and] everyone was bummed out.”
The Wolfpack’s season wasn’t over; the team planned to run in the Nike Cross Nationals. So Keelan took a couple days to clear his head, going on a couple of solo runs while he sorted through his feelings.
“In the grand scheme of things,” he remembers thinking, “it’s still cross country. I’m still having a great time. It’s not the end of the world.”
Instead, it was the beginning of Keelan’s ascent on the Illinois distance-running scene.
He swept the distance races as St. Ignatius won its own track sectional last spring. Then, on a stifling day at state, he was runner-up in the 3,200 in 9 minutes, 8.48 seconds and seventh in the 1,600 at 4:15.77. That was followed by a 3A cross- country title last fall, when he ran 14:05 for three miles.
Now Keelan is getting ready to run the distance double again at state track. And he hopes to win them both.
“That would be the goal,” he said. “There’s a lot of fast guys coming out this year, especially from cross country. It’s a tall task.”
What kind of times would it take to accomplish? That will be determined by the weather in Charleston in mid-May.
“It all depends on the day,” Keelan said. “Last year, the 90 [degree]-plus weather slowed me down for sure.”
But the ballpark numbers he’s looking at are below 9:00 for the 3,200 and under 4:10 for the 1,600.
Keelan also will be looking for some fast times when he heads to the Arcadia (Calif.) Invitational on April 5-6 to compete against a national field. He passed up on a chance to do the same at the Brooks PR Invitational last month in Seattle but has no regrets.
Instead, Keelan and his teammates went to the opposite coast to compete.
“That was the first time we’ve done anything like that,” he said. “To get on a plane to go to Washington, D.C., with the team was a lot of fun.”
He ran a 9:11 in the 3,200 without being pushed, and now he’s looking forward to California.
“I showed that I’m in that fitness level, I’m ready to run like that,” Keelan said. “I guess [the idea is] save it for Arcadia.”
And hopefully avoid any Nubbins moments.