Zach Perkins doesn’t look like a 1,500 meter runner at 6-foot-3, and he certainly wasn’t among the favorites to finish on the podium in the race at the NCAA Division 1 outdoor track and field Championships.
Sure, Perkins — a senior at Air Force and graduate of Alameda High School in California — finished as the surprise runner-up at the 2013 meet as a sophomore. But he had struggled through injuries his junior year and through this last indoor season. Still, he won his semifinal heat on Wednesday at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., to advance to Friday’s final.
With 300 meters to go in the final, Perkins found himself boxed in eighth place among the 12 other runners in the field, and his chances weren’t looking promising. It was anybody’s race (or, least, anyone with a strong kick). The race played out in a fashion typical of championship meets, where winning trumps any effort to run a fast time. The runners started slow, then got slower and then finally kicked into high gear over the last lap-and-a-half. It came down to the guy who could sprint fastest over 400 meters.
But no one saw Perkins swing to the outside.
In the homestretch, still behind, Perkins edged out to the third lane and thundered down the track, bounding by others with a brutal finishing kick that propelled him to the runner-up spot once again behind Oklahoma State’s Chad Noelle. He clocked in at 3 minutes, 55.08 seconds. Noelle finished .12 faster in 3:54.96.
The result earned Perkins, in his final race as a collegiate athlete, his second All-America honor, tied for second-most All-American awards by a track athlete in Air Force history.
From the outset, it was clear no one wanted to race hard early. The runners went through in 63.4 seconds before running a 71-second second lap. Perkins was boxed in until about 200 meters left in the race, when an opening appeared, and he managed to slide out to make his final push down the track.
It was the best performance of the meet of any of the Colorado schools who have sent athletes — Air Force, which has sent three; Colorado, which has seven competitors; and Colorado State, which has two.
Footnote. On Friday, Colorado junior Morgan Pearson was 17th in the 5,000 meters in 14:21.10. He stayed in second for most the race before it picked up with three laps to go. Pearson wasn’t able to hold on.
CU’s Sara Sutherland and former Niwot runner Elise Cranny of Stanford at 3:15 p.m. (live on ESPN2). For the first time this year, the championship meet has alternated which gender competes on days — men on Wednesday and Friday — and women on Thursday and Saturday.
