David Ribich shows that no place is 'too small' to succeed

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

Coming out of tiny, remote Enterprise, Ore., David Ribich had just one promising lead with an NCAA Division 1 coach.

And when Ribich called a few weeks after making initial contact, the coach on the other end apologized for not getting back to him. He claimed to have lost Ribich’s number.

At that very moment, Ribich decided that he was going to accept an offer a couple of hundred miles to the west in the Willamette Valley – at Western Oregon.

Ribich, a senior, will travel with his teammates to Pittsburg, Kan., this week for the NCAA Division 2 Indoor Track and Field Championships. He’s entered in the distance medley relay, which the Wolves won in 2017 in a photo finish. And he’ll run the 3,000 meters, an event where he broke the all-time Division 2 record, clocking 7:50.81 (albeit on an oversized track).

Four years into this, Ribich takes pride in the fact that he has made steady progress under Western Oregon coach Mike Johnson. In Monmouth, which is located halfway between big-time running programs in Portland and Eugene, Ribich has had the space and freedom to grow and excel at his own pace.

“We’re in a weird location,” Ribich said. “It’s not a place where this stuff typically happens. But we travel up to Dempsey (Indoor), we go to Mt. SAC and Bryan Clay. I want to mix it up with the best. I have that chip on my shoulder and I find it to be an advantage. I think everyone needs that. I’m the underdeveloped, small-school guy. That’s my identity.”

Pride of Enterprise

Enterprise and nearby Joseph are two towns in Northeastern Oregon that sit on a wide plain surrounded by mountains, once occupied by the Nez Perce. The dominant feature is the Wallowa Mountains, which rise to the south and have more in common with the Rockies than the Cascades. They resemble the Alps of Europe and they encompass a pristine wilderness of snow-capped peaks, alpine lakes and forest.

Ribich’s mother worked for the forest service for 32 years. His father fights wildfires for a living, traveling all over the country from May to October with his crew. Last fall, he worked on the Napa Valley fire in California.

Ribich, who has an older sister, grew up on the outskirts of Enterprise. Most of his friends lived on ranches. He was in 4H and raised a swine every year and took to the Wallowa County Fair.

His first summer job was changing sprinkler pipes, seven days a week, in the vast grazing pastures and alfalfa fields nearby.

He was small and tenacious.

“Growing up, he was an ornery little runt,” Enterprise coach Dan Moody said. “He was a little squirrel. There was also a desire that you always knew he had.”

Ribich entered the ninth grade at 4 feet 11 and 86 pounds.

Football was out. The only other fall sport at Enterprise is cross country and Ribich had been building his identity as a runner since the seventh grade.

“I ended up winning my first cross country race in Elgin,” Ribich said. “I remember this ecstatic feeling. Oh, cool. I won!”

When he got to high school, Ribich was eager to use success in running to build up his status, if not his stature.

“Moody would corral me a bit, but I wanted to go, go, go,” Ribich said.

The coach, who has been at Enterprise for four decades, was careful not to let “the little squirrel” bite off more than he could chew.

“He always gave me enough work to do what I wanted to achieve without over-stressing my body,” Ribich said. “I knew nothing about mileage.”

Coach Moody would typically take his eight or nine distance runners in a van out to a long, flat dirt road. He’d drop them off and then drive up the road, an unspoken distance, and wait for them to show up.

“When you get to the van, you’re done,” Ribich said.

Ribich won three Class 2A state championships his senior year – one in cross country and two (1,500 and 3,000 meters) in track. In Eastern Oregon, small-school track, he was a big deal.

“For Wallowa County, I was running times that everyone, including myself, thought were incredible,” Ribich said. “I had people at school telling me you ‘You’re going to be in the Olympics someday.’ But no one really understood what it took in running.”

The truth was, Ribich graduated from high school with the 60th best 1,500-meter time in Oregon in 2014 (4:10.45) and the 35th-best 3,000 meter time (8:57.32).

But those that met Ribich, or knew him well, saw that there was something special in his desire to get better, in the way he moved, in the confidence that he carried. And his body was finally catching up to his ambition.

“I told his coach, Johnson, I haven’t even scratched the surface on this kid,” Moody said.

Ribich might have been a hidden gem, but the Western Oregon coach saw enormous potential for growth the day he met him.

“It was more what you felt than what you saw,” said Johnson, a veteran distance coach with previous stints at the University of Portland, Washington and Boise State.

Johnson saw an athlete who fit the program and the culture he had been building at Western Oregon.

“We have more of a board game group than a video game group,” Johnson said.

Pressed to explain that description, the soft-spoken coach goes to the heart of what it means to be a Division 2 athlete in a world that remains hyper-focused on Division 1.

“They’re not dependent on outside recognition,” Johnson said. “They’re intrinsically motivated. They are very connected to reality. It says quite a bit, really.”

Growing Up

Ribich entered Western Oregon in the fall of 2014 full of desire to prove himself but very little understanding of how to get it done. He knew nothing of mileage. And at least early on, he felt like his new coach was “distant.”

“I didn’t fully buy into (the program) until my freshman indoor season and I ran a 4:13 mile,” Ribich said. “I got totally mind-blown by that. I had only run 4:10 for 1,500 meters less than a year earlier.”

Johnson approached Ribich that day and told him he was going to be a miler.

Ribich kept getting better. Outdoors, at the conference meet, he drove his 1,500 time down to 3:50.58 and won the title.  

As a sophomore, Ribich grew a little more and drove his 1,500 time down to 3:43.41 at the Bryan Clay Invitational. He placed fifth at the Division 2 nationals.

With PRs tumbling at such a regular pace, Ribich admits he got full of himself.

“My junior year (fall) I did a workout and afterwards I found out I had inflamed the bursa sac behind my Achilles,” Ribich said. “I didn’t run for a week.”

He placed fifth at his conference cross country meet, one spot worse than the year before.

“It was the first meet I’d ever gone backwards from one year to the next,” Ribich said. “It put everything in perspective for me. I was taking everything for granted.”

That December, after failing to qualify for the Division 2 Cross Country Championships, Ribich and a few of his teammates decided to stay in Monmouth during the Christmas break.

A.J. Holmberg, Dustin Nading and Josh Dempsey stayed behind as well. Johnson put the group through workouts in the cold rain and they went on runs together at Peavy Arboretum outside Corvallis.

“It was a big turning point,” Ribich said. “We fell in love with training and the progress of it. I started focusing on the day to day (work) and not the outcome.”

Twelve weeks later, Ribich and the three who stayed behind for Christmas break set the NCAA Division 2 record in the distance medley relay and beat Adams State by a thousandth of a second.

Ribich crashed over the finish line, throwing his body forward in order to keep anything in front of Adams State’s hard-charging Oliver Aitchison.  WESTERN OREGON VIDEO

“I didn’t know I had won until 10 minutes later,” Ribich said. “It was so close. I hit the ground thinking I just blew it.”

All four runners on that Wolves’ DMR team have a tattoo over their ankles: “.001”

“We didn’t get that (tattoo) to immortalize ourselves. We got it to remind ourselves that we have to fight for every thousandth,” Ribich said. “That last lap was insane.”

For Ribich, it was a last lap worth fighting for.

As much as he wants to chase his own dreams, he also wants to foster the culture that Johnson is building at Western Oregon.

“David wants to be a teammate, wants to be a leader,” Nading said. “One of the reasons that I came here is because you begin to see the possibility of a strong culture that cultivates character and has values that lead to success. We’re going to take care of each other and be good teammates.”

Process vs. Prize

Two kids moved into position to snap a cellphone photo as athletes prepared to take the track for the prelims of the 1,500 at the USATF Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Sacramento.

Ribich, in his Western Oregon uniform, happened to be standing next to Olympic champion Matthew Centrowitz.

“You think they are taking a picture of you, or me?” Ribich blurted out.

Centrowitz glanced over at Ribich, studied him for second, from his shoes to his uniform.

“Definitely you.”

It was classic Ribich. Ambitious. Unafraid. Eager to pocket a story that he could share with the guys back in Monmouth.

“That’s David,” said Nading, a Western Oregon junior who has run 4:04.5 for the mile and 8:10 for 3,000. “When you are with guys with better PRs, or just as D2 athletes, with people better respected than you are, you have to have a light-hearted attitude when you go to that stage. I think he’s tried to imbue the team with that attitude.”

He had won the NCAA Division 2 1,500 title and then lowered his time to 3:39.56 at the Portland Track Festival, where he outkicked Oklahoma State’s Craig Nowak in the second-fastest heat. INTERVIEW

The time put Ribich on the bubble for the U.S. Championships.

He sat near his computer all night, refreshing the list of declarations. He was 34th on the list and knew he needed a few people ahead of him to scratch in order to race in Sacramento. He was on pins and needles and his name kept getting pushed further and further down the list.

“I was getting caught up in the prize again, and not the process,” he said.

Before finally learning that he was officially in, Ribich packed a bag for the trip, then unpacked it, and then re-packed it.

Ribich survived the prelim and then raced in the final, where he was ninth.

The momentum has continued. The culture built by Johnson now has something of a rock star in Ribich, who became the 501st American to break the four-minute mile in January and followed it two weeks later with his Division 2 national record in the 3,000.

Ribich has been writing a daily journal – started the night before his U.S. Championships prelim – and hopes to publish it if and when he signs a professional deal this summer.

He hopes to let others know that it’s OK to choose a place, and grow, off the beaten path.

“I like to think of myself as a pioneer,” Ribich said. “You don’t have to go to a (particular) school. You can go wherever it works for you. It’s your decision. You just have to know the coaching plan will work for you.”

He also knows he hasn't gotten this far by himself.

"What I do is made easy when I have support system consisting of my girlfriend (Olivia Woods, an 800-meter runner) and my family and friends," he said. "The list can go on and on for the names of people have supported me since then journey began."

In Enterprise, Ribich’s accomplishments are celebrated. As track practice gets started, Moody said 50-60 kids are coming out for the team. That’s roughly half the student body.

“It doesn’t matter where you’re from,” Moody said. “You run a four-minute mile (at Western), it’s the same as if you do it at the University of Oregon. It’s great to go to these big places, but you’ve got a lot to prove, and quicker. At a place like Western, you can take your time to develop.”

In Monmouth, Johnson taught Ribich how to be consistent, allowed him to have freedom within a framework, and set goals three to four years into the future.

“The philosophy is – achievement today, achievement today – 365 days a year,” the coach said. “Recovery is more important than work. If you don’t recover right, the work is spoiled.”

Ribich has some physiology working for him. He metabolizes quickly. He strikes the ground well. He’s able to run fast when he’s tired.

But in Johnson’s assessment, there is more to it than that.

“The secret is he’s a good person. He works well, has good DNA, and hopefully we do good work,” he said.