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Here Come The Irish - Notre Dame Men Seek First Penn Relays Title In 76 Years

Published by
DyeStat.com   Apr 23rd 2019, 11:27am
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Here Come the Irish

 

A DyeStat story by Dave Devine

 Editor's Note: Watch The 125th Penn Relays Live From Philadelphia, Pa.

_______________



Start with the photograph.

The grimacing runner, stilled by a camera at the moment of triumph. Twine taut across his chest. The black and white image like a time machine.

Late April, 1943.

The familiar brick wall hemming Franklin Field’s outside lane. Men in fedoras and wool overcoats, angling from the bleachers. Consulting stopwatches. Children congregated at the iron rail, elbowing into the gaps, eyes trained on the finish.

Ollie HunterThe University of Notre Dame’s star distance man, Ollie Hunter, barreling away from Michigan and Penn State to claim the distance medley relay in 10 minutes, 23 seconds.

The chipped and whitewashed cement curb. Smattering of fans in the sun-splashed East grandstand. Not exactly, “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky…”— the iconic lede to sportswriter Grantland Rice’s 1924 story on Notre Dame’s “Four Horsemen” — but it’s something.

A convincing Championship of America run for the Irish squad, paired with an equally impressive win in the 4xMile relay.

Another sporting accomplishment for the scrappy Catholic school whose identity has long been tied to athletic achievements.

Another piece of Notre Dame lore.

No one in the stands that day, watching the nation’s top two-miler anchor his team to victory, could have known that Hunter wouldn’t even make it to the starting line of the NCAA championships that June.

That the senior harrier would depart immediately after graduation to enroll in the Navy’s V-7 officer program, bound for combat in World War II.

None of the fans straining across the railings could have imagined, given Notre Dame’s dominant weekend, that they were witnessing the university’s last distance relay title at Penn.

Or that the team, so popular in eastern seaboard cities, would eventually spend more than 50 years away from the venerable meet.

They certainly couldn’t imagine that 76 years later, a motley assemblage of Irish runners, buoyed by an indoor national DMR title, would return to Franklin Field poised to reclaim the mantle last held by that 1943 squad.

And if this Irish team can to do that — if Dylan Jacobs and Edward Cheatham and Samuel Voelz and Yared Nuguse can walk away with one of the famously massive Penn Relays “wheels” — it would be understandable to wonder which of the four was the unlikeliest champion.

Would it be the callow blue-chip recruit who spent the winter battling an Achilles injury?

The Division III transfer, who had to scrap his way in the door?

Maybe the former team manager who twice attempted to walk on?

Or the reluctant miler, convinced to quit his high school bowling team to run track.

It’s hard to know.

Perhaps, as with that yellowed photograph, it’s best to begin with a single image.

Not at the finish line, but the start.

Begin with the leadoff man, shaking out his lanky limbs.

The 1200 guy…


Dylan Jacobs

THE ROOKIE

Here’s Dylan Jacobs, nine months removed from his senior year at Carl Sandburg High in Orland Park, Ill.

He’s on ESPN now. Stone-faced and dialed-in.

It’s the live broadcast from the 2019 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Birmingham, Ala. The camera is trained squarely on the Notre Dame freshman as he glances left and right. Shifts his balance like a lightweight boxer, foot to foot.

A single word — Irish — scripted on his green singlet.

One of the announcers, Dwight Stones, mentions that Notre Dame is the top-ranked team coming into the race. “On paper,” he emphasizes, voice rising in a way that hints at skepticism.

“I don’t know how they do it, Dwight,” his broadcast partner, Dan O’Brien, says. “You look at these legs, and nobody’s in a final at these championships.”

Which is true.

The men’s distance medley relay is Notre Dame’s sole qualifier for the NCAA champs. Sophomore Yared Nuguse could have run the open mile, but he’s elected not to; the Irish are all in on the DMR.

For Jacobs, it’s a moment he’s been pointing to for some time.

“Carlson and I had been talking about this,” he says, “since I was being recruited last year.”

“Carlson” is Notre Dame assistant coach, Sean Carlson, responsible for the men’s cross country team and the men’s distance and mid-distance runners on the track. Over the course of eight years at ND, he’s been one of the primary architects of a culture shift in the program.

At the 2018 NCAA indoor meet, he watched a quartet of his guys nearly steal the DMR title, with true freshman Nuguse coming up short in a bid to overhaul Virginia Tech in the homestretch.

After that runner-up finish, Carlson says, “There was really only one way to go.”

In February, the Irish DMR recorded a sterling 9:26.10 at their final home meet, second-best clocking in collegiate history, but if they were going to back up that mark at NCAAs, they’d need a solid carry from their largely untested freshman.

Carlson acknowledges the tendency to view Jacobs as a distance guy after his 2017 Foot Locker title, but points to his chops in shorter races, as well.

“We knew he had some pretty good mid-distance range. He won the mile at the Illinois state meet.”

Jacobs also anchored Sandburg’s 4x800 to a title at that state meet, and joined the Irish squad fully dedicated to relaying for the benefit of the team.

“In track,” he says, “you can get individual sometimes, but all these relays — they’re way more exciting than any individual achievement.”

After a fall in which Jacobs redshirted cross country, the indoor season was his first opportunity to prove himself in an Irish singlet.

“I felt like he wasn’t quite aerobically strong enough yet,” Carlson says, “so we spent a lot of the fall working on his aerobic base.”

But just when Jacobs was rounding into shape, dropping a solid 8:11 for 3,000 meters at a low-key December meet, he developed Achilles tendonitis running the snowed-crusted roads in South Bend.

The injury sidelined him well into the undercover season.

That layoff meant a dearth of evidence that Jacobs was the man to lead off Notre Dame’s best shot at a national podium.

“If you look at his TFRRS page,” Carlson says, referencing the collegiate results site, “he doesn’t really have any marks that are all that impressive.”

But as Jacobs rehabbed the Achilles injury, he and Carlson zeroed in on two meets: the Alex Wilson Invitational, on their home track, and Nationals.

“I knew I needed to stay confident in myself and work through it,” Jacobs says. “And if I did that, I’d have a chance to be part of the DMR.”

At Alex Wilson, still shaking off injury, he split 2:56 on the relay that dropped the No. 2 time in collegiate history, including the fastest on an oversized track.

Three weeks later, on the opening night of the NCAA meet, he provided a 2:57 carry that Carlson acknowledges wasn’t the perfect race, but was what Notre Dame needed.

“Dylan’s a freshman,” Carlson says, “and he’s learning a lot about racing tactics. I don’t think it was a perfect day for him, but we talk a lot about how, if you’re not firing on all cylinders, it’s not the end of the world, but you still have to show up. You still have to compete for Notre Dame.”

For a kid who spent part of the winter on the shelf, that was all he was hoping to do.

“I have a ton of confidence in the other three legs,” Jacobs says. “I knew that if I put us in a decent position, that Yared would for sure be able to bring it home in the end.

“I just needed to get it to Edward…”

Edward Cheatham 

THE MANAGER

Here’s Edward Cheatham, three years ago, setting up hurdles. Breaking them down. Adjusting heights as needed: 33 inches. 42 inches. Back to 33.

Repetitive, necessary work.  

Sometimes he marks long jump landings. Handles the tape measure, rakes the sandpit flat again. Often, he’s recording video; playing it back for the coaches.

He’s a student manager.

A kid who loves the sport of track and field so much, he couldn’t stay away.

When he graduated in 2015 from Fayetteville-Manlius, the New York high school best known for distance running dominance, Cheatham was a sprinter and a hurdler. He ran the dreaded 800 exactly once, a last-minute substitute on a state-meet 4x800 squad; otherwise, he steered well clear of anything longer than 400 meters.

Coach Bill Aris — known more for mentoring harriers than hurdlers — nonetheless made a deep impact on his life.

“Coach Aris instilled in me a love of sport,” Cheatham says, “at a time that I had almost given up on sports. Even though I wasn’t a distance runner, being part of a program that has such a strong culture of excellence and family, instilled in me a love for track.”

Arriving at Notre Dame in the fall, Cheatham immediately felt the pull of the Irish oval.

“I couldn’t stay away,” he says. “I tried to walk on, and I was nowhere near the sprint qualifying times.”

Alan Turner was the head coach at the time, but Carlson, working with his distance guys, was aware of the eager young sprinter.

“Honestly, he wasn’t quite there yet,” Carlson says. “Just didn’t have the times.”

With an eye on Cheatham’s 51-second 400-meter speed, Carlson wondered if he might be able to convert the freshman to a half-miler, but Cheatham took one look at the mid-distance workouts and realized he wouldn’t be able to hang.

“So, I became a manager,” he says, “and that was the best decision I made. I was able to be with the athletes and help administer their workouts. They really brought me in.”

A quick study and a diligent worker, Cheatham’s duties soon expanded.

“Coach Turner really approached my managership from the direction of, ‘Let’s get you able to coach at this level, let’s show you the things coaches think about.

After shooting video, Cheatham would huddle with Turner to observe how the coach analyzed the footage.

“I got to understand track from the opposite side.”

Around the pressing demands of freshman year, Cheatham tried to stay in shape — running, lifting weights, squeezing in occasional repeats on the track.

At one point, he was administering workouts to Chris Giesting and Pat Feeney, a pair of Notre Dame stars who would become world champions on the United States’ 4x400 at the 2016 IAAF Indoor Championships.

“You’re thinking, These guys are good,” Cheatham says, “but there was something in the back of my head that said, ‘I can do these workouts.’”

At the end of his freshman year, he weighed some heavy questions:

Do I still have what it takes? Is it worth it?

Should I even try?

Home in Manlius for the summer, he made up his mind to give it one more shot, and then circled back to what he knew — the old high school track.

The familiar workouts. The ingredients that got him there in the first place.

Determination. Commitment. Repeats and drills.

Coach Aris.

“I went back to Coach,” Cheatham says, “and asked him for advice about getting fit in June, before I just threw myself into D1-level track workouts. He was really helpful.”

Using the knowledge he’d gained trackside at Notre Dame, he recruited his twin sister, Shauna — a walk-on at Cornell — and another friend to serve as training partners.

“I don’t know if I could’ve done all of that alone,” he says.

When Cheatham returned to South Bend for his sophomore year, fit from his summer in upstate New York, Turner offered another tryout.

“The tryout went…okay,” Cheatham says. “I think he wanted to see what I could do later, because if it was just based on the tryout, I don’t think he would’ve let me walk on.”

Cheatham had a spot, but it still felt precarious, resting solely on Turner’s belief in his work ethic.

Year on year, though, Cheatham improved.

A senior now, his open sprint times aren’t eye-popping — he knows that — but relay splits have been his bread-and-butter. He’s gone from barely cracking 50 seconds with the stick to splitting 47-low a few times.

“Every time he steps to the line for a DMR,” Carlson says, “he’s going to give a 48-second split or better. He just comes in clutch when he knows other guys are depending on him.”

One of those 48-second carries helped deliver the former manager and his squad to a national title.

“It was a real ‘Rudy’ moment for me,” Cheatham says, alluding to the Notre Dame football walk-on, Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, whose triumphant appearance in a game for the Irish was immortalized in the 1993 film, Rudy.

At his first practice after the NCAA Indoor victory, the Notre Dame staff asked Cheatham to pass his trophy around, then led the team in applause for their former manager.

“That’s when I realized, thinking about all the other national champions at Notre Dame, and at Fayetteville-Manlius, that I was part of that. I had done something that people could point to and say, ‘Work hard, and you never know what can happen.’

You just never know…”

 Samuel Voelz

THE TRANSFER

Here’s Samuel Voelz, sitting in a truck in the middle of an Indiana summer.

He’s on his way to the next call for his job with a home restoration company. Long, sweaty days crawling under houses to scrutinize mold, into musty attics to examine water damage.

Houses ravaged by fire or flood. A steady progression of ruin and rot.

It’s the sort of summer job that leaves you sitting in a truck cab, daydreaming about other jobs. Other places you could be. Wishing you were somewhere else.

Voelz knows exactly where he wants to be, he just hasn’t been able to get there.

Notre Dame was his dream school two years ago, heading into senior year at New Palestine High, but he lacked the grades for a direct acceptance in the fall. His junior year track times weren’t enough to move the needle on the athletic side, either.

He reached out to Carlson after receiving his denial letter, but there was little the ND coach could do.

“He was like a 1:57 half-miler,” Carlson recalls. “He just hadn’t done anything that noteworthy.”

Resigned to pursuing his collegiate career elsewhere, Voelz found his 800 times dropping dramatically in the spring, from 1:57 in May to 1:52 in early June, good enough for the Indiana state title.

Two weeks later, he was fifth at New Balance Nationals Outdoor in 1:51.90.

“He reached back out,” Carlson says, “and was kind of like, ‘Is there any way this can happen now?’ And I tried to be very honest with him. I said, ‘Listen Sam, there’s no guarantee that I can even get you in here. Ever. But one thing you can do is go to a different school for a year, and then try to transfer.”

Hotly recruited by several midwestern Division I programs at that point, Voelz elected instead to attend Division III DePauw University, an hour away in Greencastle, Ind.

At DePauw, he worked hard to pull up his grades, redshirted the indoor season to preserve as much eligibility as possible, and then became an All-American outdoors for the Tigers with a runner-up 800 finish at DIII Nationals.

Still, no acceptance from Notre Dame.

Carlson, who competed in Division III track for perennial power North Central College, had remained steadfast — calling, texting, checking in, holding out the Notre Dame possibility — but Voelz also remembered the coach’s words from a year earlier — No guarantee...ever.

“At some point,” he says, “I realized I needed to start reaching out to other (Division I) coaches, in case Notre Dame didn’t pan out.”

As spring turned to summer, hope was starting to slip away.

Which is how he ended up sitting in the company truck, sophomore year looming, waiting for something. Anything —

A text, a sign, some indication of where to go next.

Which is when his cell phone rang.

It was Carlson’s number on the display.

“I answered,” Voelz says, “and Carlson’s like, ‘You’re in. I’ll see you here in two months.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

Overcome with emotion, he texted his parents the news.

“I’ll never forget that moment,” he says. “That was just another average day, going to a job I didn’t like, and it turned into maybe the best day of my life.”

For Carlson, forever preaching a culture of loyalty, commitment and love, the addition of Voelz felt like a no-brainer, another chance to add a true believer to the mix of talent he’s already assembled.

“It speaks to how committed he was to that ND jersey,” the coach said. “How much it was his dream school. He had to sacrifice so much to even have that opportunity.”

When Voelz arrived on campus, Carlson told his new charge that if he worked hard, he had a shot at the vacant 800 leg on a distance medley that had finished second at NCAA Indoors in 2018.

“But the most important part of all of that,” Carlson told him, “is not the training piece, it’s you getting those other three guys to believe in you. To know that you care about them, and love them, and that you’ll do anything for them.”

Voelz set about doing that immediately.

He made connections and built relationships. Earned respect and engendered trust. He put in the work, held up his end of the bargain. A low-mileage guy in high school, he gradually increased his runs, and then learned to listen to his body.

“When I first got here and saw the workouts the distance guys were doing, it was like, ‘Whoa — this is The Show. I’m here.’ Eventually, it got to the point where I thought, ‘This is a workout I could never have done in high school.’”

The journey was nearly complete.

The 1:57-guy who couldn’t get his foot in the door had carved himself into a sub-1:50 relay leg, carrying his squad to the doorstep of a national title in his first season.

All that remained was the anchor.

And everyone believed in him.

The rest of the dream?

That was in the hands of…

Goose 

THE GOOSE

Here’s the kid the P.E. teacher was talking about — Yared Nuguse.

He’s a ninth grader: reedy and bespectacled, with a toothy smile and a last name that’s pronounced like the waterfowl. Na-Goose. He’s talkative, but humble; confident, even-keeled, with an easy laugh and a self-deprecating sense of humor.

Mostly, he’s into math and science, hopes to do something in medicine someday, but who really knows? He’s only a freshman at duPont Manual in Louisville, Kent.; there’s time to figure it out.

His extracurricular plans? Those include Science Fair and the bowling team.

“Coming into high school,” he says, “I really wanted something to do. I knew I was good at math or science, but I wanted something aside from school to help on my college apps or whatever — just something I was interested in. So, I joined the bowling team because it seemed kind of easy, to be honest.”

At 13, he’s not particularly athletic, at least not that he’s realized yet — hence, the bowling.

“It wasn’t really a sport,” he says with a laugh, “but it was like, a sport.”

But here’s the thing: Nuguse’s days of spares and strikes are already numbered.

His smooth stride and quick turnover have been noticed in gym class, and the P.E. teacher has been talking to Tim Holman, the track team’s distance coach.

It’s perhaps the most cliched origin story you’ll hear in running circles: the track coach flags down the freshman in the hallway and makes his pitch.

“After some convincing and thinking it through,” Nuguse remembers, “I decided to quit the bowling team and join the track team.”

His career began modestly enough — raw talent, no racing savvy — but by junior year he was the Kentucky 3A state mile champion.

In the fall of his senior year he added another title in cross country, but lacked the national-level laurels to draw the attention of big-time college coaches. And like his eventual teammate, Voelz, his biggest breakthroughs didn’t come until late spring of 2017.

As a result, Carlson says, “Yared really wasn’t recruited that heavily out of high school. If you ask him what schools he was down to, it was kind of a hodge-podge. You’d scratch your head.”

A visit to Notre Dame during a football weekend sealed the deal.

“The first thing I saw was the energy around the entire stadium,” he says. “And then once I got to hang out with the guys more, it became something that I could really see myself doing in the future. It didn’t seem fake when I visited, and I appreciated that.”

When Carlson sized up the young recruit from Kentucky, he saw the same thing the P.E. teacher saw, same as the track coach in the high school hallway: potential and promise.

“He was a 4:14 miler when I started recruiting him,” Carlson notes. “That’s really good, don’t get me wrong, but by no means did it indicate he’d be one of the best milers in the country.”

Nuguse committed to Notre Dame, and in the spring of his senior year he winnowed his mile PR down to 4:06.30.

Then he won four state titles in one day at the Kentucky 3A state meet, anchoring duPont Manual to the 4x800 win in 7:57.77, before tripling the 800 (1:54.13), 1,600 (4:17.94) and 3,200 (9:19.07) in a stunning display of range and endurance.

Between races, he was wearing a warm-up shirt that read, Golden Goose.

His freshman year at Notre Dame was a revelation: A 3:56 carry for the Irish’s NCAA runner-up DMR indoors, third in the ACC 1,500 outdoors, a USATF Junior 1,500 title, and a slot on Team USA for the IAAF World U-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland.

But for the all of the individual accolades, the quality that most stands out to Carlson is the one he looks for in all his recruits, a deep commitment to team.  

It’s something that was instilled in Carlson by legendary North Central coach Al Carius, an attribute he has adopted and sought out in other coaching inspirations during his time at Notre Dame.

Coaches like Lou Holtz, who, in his first season at the university in 1986, found an insipid, downtrodden team waiting for him in South Bend. Carlson relates how the coach began holding 6 a.m. practices in an effort to reverse the program’s culture, rolling out gray practice t-shirts with the word TEAM in large letters across the chest, the word ME in small letters underneath.

TEAM over ME.

“Basically, I just kind of brought that back,” Carlson says.

He was trying to change a culture, too.

Get back to something that had been missing on recent Irish track teams. When he wrote Holtz a letter about the shirts, and sent him a photo, he didn’t expect Holtz to write back.

The former Irish icon sent a handwritten reply.

“Probably one of the greatest football coaches of all time here,” Carlson says, still sounding surprised. “Writing to the track and cross country teams.”

When the Irish DMR showed up for the 2019 NCAA indoor champs, they were wearing the shirts: TEAM over ME.

No Golden Goose t-shirt for Nuguse, not anymore.

Just the actual Goose, bouncing in the exchange zone, waiting for the baton.

The other guys had run well, but he still received the stick in sixth place, over seven seconds behind Iowa State’s anchor, Dan Curts.

“I knew I had to slowly make that up,” Nuguse says, “but also get there quickly — so I could relax. And then move again towards the end.”

The Goose went to work, blowing through 800 in 1:54 to make up the gap, then settling into second behind Curts. If some observers were wondering whether the ambitious early pace ruined Nuguse for the final lap, Carlson wasn’t one of them.

“We were only down a second-and-a-half in 2018,” he says, recalling the runner-up finish 12 months earlier. “It was realistic for us to run for the win a year ago, but we weren’t emotionally ready. Fast forward a year later, we get the baton seven seconds back, and there was no question in my mind we were going to win.”

Back to that ESPN broadcast —

Dwight Stones and Dan O’Brien have the call.

They’re talking about how much work Nuguse has done, how good Stanford star Grant Fisher looks with a lap to go.

Fisher has powered to the lead and opened a gap on Nuguse on the backstretch. As the two anchors curve into the final straight, Stones makes his prediction.

“I don’t think, when Fisher gets the lead this late, that anybody catches him.”  

But Nuguse has always had something special, an ability to excavate a gear no one expects. That gift has only gotten more refined at Notre Dame.

“I’ve had it ever since high school,” he says. “It’s not like I have something left over — I don’t — but I dig down and somehow find something more.”

Running out of real estate, the sophomore drifts into the second lane and draws even on Fisher.

“I knew when he swung wide,” Carlson says, “he was going to get the job done.”

On the broadcast, Stones issues a hasty retraction:

“Here comes Nu-guuuuuuse! I’m wrong.”

With a sterling 3:56 carry, and one final, bottom-of-the-tank burst, Nuguse blows past Fisher for the 9:31.55 victory.

“Seeing Yared pass Grant in that last second,” Cheatham says, “I can’t really put words to that experience, what that meant for all of us.”

After the race, Nuguse says he wasn’t just running for the other three guys on the relay, he was running for the entire locker room. Including more than 30 teammates from the Irish men’s and women’s teams that drove nine hours from South Bend to Birmingham for a race that would last less than 10 minutes.

“It would have been easier to give up when I was so far behind the Iowa State guy,” Nuguse says, “but to have them there for me — it means a lot.”

When those assembled Irish fans, all clad in green shirts, stuck around for an hour-and-a-half after the race to serenade the triumphant quartet on the podium with Notre Dame’s Alma Mater, the moment only got sweeter.

It’s a song that’s traditionally sung from the student section at the end of every Notre Dame football game. The Irish players — win or lose — gather in front of the stands to sing along and salute the loyal crowd.

Another Notre Dame tradition.

But to have that song belted out for these kids?

The rookie and the manager and the transfer and the goofy kid called Goose?

“Chills,” Cheatham says. “We didn’t really know what they were doing, and then to hear them start singing those words — I’ve always just been in the crowd singing those words, so to have them sung for you…”

“It was truly amazing,” Jacobs says. “You want to be the people putting your arms around your teammates and singing it back to the crowd. To be in that moment, with the greatest teammates, and — honestly — the greatest locker room, for all those people that made that nine-hour drive for one race, it’s something special. I’ll never forget that moment.”

* * *

Team 

When, in April 2017, Notre Dame returned to the Penn Relays after more than 50 years away, it was largely at Carlson’s behest.

“I really want to win a Penn wheel,” he says. “We haven’t had one in a long time, and I think it’s one of the most competitive relay meets in the country.”

Although Carlson never had the chance to compete at the Relays himself, he’s long had an appreciation for the meet’s prestige and history.

“If you asked someone 30 years ago, do they know the Penn Relays, they’d probably know it. And you know what? Thirty years from now they’ll still know it — Penn Relays. It’s a pretty cool, historic, timeless meet.”

In a way, it’s not unlike the university that employs him: Tied to history and legend. Tradition and lore.

There’s the carnival atmosphere. The enormous crowds. Hours of 4x400 races. The chaotic paddock and the unremitting, metronomic schedule.

Those massive “wheel” trophies. Prestigious watches.

And the famous “Woo Corner” on the final turn, where erudite fans erupt into raucous Wooooo’s whenever a race gets close.

It’s the kind of setting in which the Irish might thrive.

And to a degree, they have. The team’s return to Franklin Field has already yielded a measure of success, with several individual field event wins and a 2018 shuttle hurdles championship for the Notre Dame women.

But a relay title on the men’s side continues to elude the Irish.

Carlson wonders if this might be the squad to end the drought.

“It’s kind of a rag-tag group,” he says, revealing a Holtz-ian knack for underselling his team’s resumé. “Just a bunch of misfits that come together to get it done.”

Last year at Penn, Nuguse anchored the DMR to a runner-up finish behind hometown favorite Villanova. Cheatham, bothered by asthma, was relegated to 4x200 duty and didn’t run his typical DMR leg.

The other two, Jacobs and Voelz, will be newcomers to the meet.

“If anything,” Cheatham says, “we have a larger target on our backs, but it’s very much the same.”

They’ll enter the weekend with the same humility, he says, the same underdog mentality. The same connection to a locker room built on love.

They know that if the first three legs can take care of business, if Nuguse can get the baton within striking distance, then maybe this will be the team to wake up the echoes.

Maybe Nuguse will swing wide again off the final turn — as he did in Birmingham — or maybe he’ll already be well clear, or discover just enough daylight along the rail to break through.

Maybe, with the race on the line, some of the raucous Wooooo’s in Woo Corner will turn to Gooooooose!

Maybe 76 years after Ollie Hunter brought the Irish their last Penn title, Goose and the boys can deliver another.

Not the Four Horsemen, exactly, but something else.

Four brothers.

Four friends on a rag-tag relay, bigger than the sum of its parts.

The unlikeliest of champions, hoisting a massive wooden and bronze wheel over their heads for a stadium to see.

_______________

 

Team photos courtesy Notre Dame Athletics. Ollie Hunter photo, Historic Images Outlet.



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