Isaac Wood is back with another edition of The Sleeper. You can follow Isaac's inside info either on his blog The Wood Report or follow him on Twitter at @isaacegbertwood.

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To better illustrate why David Rooney is our “sleeper” of the week, consider this. Diego Estrada, Girma Mecheso, Brandon Bethke, and Chris Derrick are the last four runners to place seventh at the national championships in cross country. Other former seventh place finishers are: Donald Sage (2002 NCAA 1500m champ), Bernard Lagat (1998), Abdi Abdirahman (1997) and the list goes on.

Now you are wondering what on earth this has to do with David Rooney. Just to be clear, some of the latter runners listed are some of the most notable runners in the past 15 years in NCAA cross country. David Rooney is no exception to this list, as he too finished seventh place at the national meet in Louisville this past fall.
 

It is incredible to think that an athlete as talented as Rooney and as accomplished has gone under the radar for so long. Rooney is going into his fifth and final year as a Cowboy at McNeese State and has done some pretty impressive things in his college career. Early in his career, David finished 50^th  in 2010 at nationals in cross country and he ran 14:07.58 for 5000m.

After a tough 2011, for personal and other reasons, where Rooney redshirted, the outdoor track season of 2012 was outstanding. Rooney won the Southland Conference 5000m and 10000m and finished third overall in the east regional which allowed him entrance into the NCAA Championships outdoors. A good, but somewhat disappointing 17^th place finish in the 5000m left Rooney hungry and wanting more for the upcoming cross country season in 2012.
 

The 2012 cross country season was the official David Rooney coming out party as one of the top-tier cross country runners in all the land. Rooney surprised a lot of people (outside of his coach and teammates) with his fifth place finish at the Notre Dame Invite behind four very good athletes (Chris O’Hare of Tulsa and Henry Lelei of Texas A&M to name two). He followed that up with another solid placing at Pre-Nats where he ended up 7^th behind Anthony Rotich of UTEP, Paul Chelimo of UNC-Greensboro and a handful of other top runners. Rooney dominated the Southland Conference meet winning by over 27 seconds over his teammate Alex Bruce-Littlewood. David was preparing himself a final time for a fantastic finish at nationals by placing second overall at the South Central Regional Cross Country Championship where he took second place beaten only by Henry Lelei of Texas A&M once again.

Everything all came together for Rooney at the national championships in Louisville.  He was able to get out well and settle in to the main front pack of runners from the gun. This allowed him good position to make a move at the end of the race. Rooney said that when he realized with two kilometers to go that he was right behind Mo Ahmed of Wisconsin, David felt he could make a final push to catch Ahmed and he did just that finishing seventh.



Rooney’s seventh place finish at the national meet is probably one of the most unexpected top ten finishes by any runner in the last twenty years. This is especially true considering how deep NCAA cross country was in 2012. The end of the NCAA cross country season at McNeese State closes the most heralded career of any cross country runner in school history by a long shot.

But, that was not the end of David’s cross country season. He was selected to be on the Irish European Cross Country Championship squad where he said that he struggled because the warm climate and flatlands of Louisiana had made him “soft.” The Euro Cross championships were held in Hungary where it was hilly and -6 below zero. Subsequently, all of that combined to make him sick and led to an eventual poor race for Rooney. 

Looking ahead to the indoor track season Rooney is flying under the radar once again even though he proved himself to be one of the top distance runners in the country. He is in the process of getting back to the shape he was in during the middle of cross country season after missing much of the last month due to being sick.

As the indoor season is not as much of a focus for Rooney as outdoor is (a common theme throughout the country) he is still one to keep an eye on as the season progresses and where his times fall in the top 16. Look for David to run a fast mile at his first home meet at McNeese State and to surprise many runners at the University of Washington meet in a few weeks where he is looking to run a fast 5000m to get him a spot at indoor nationals in the 5k. David Rooney, our “sleeper” of the week, is going to wake up and surprise a lot of people in 2013.

As a man from Dublin would say, “Erin go bragh!”