Aidan Tooker lay on the ground of the winner’s circle trying to catch his breath. He scanned the scoreboard, and Syracuse was nowhere near the top of it. Tooker thought a foggy Saturday in Louisville, Kentucky, would be his breakout day en route to another Syracuse cross country national title. Neither happened. He placed 109th.

“It was a hiccup,” Tooker said, “for me, the team, all of us.”

A few feet away, Justyn Knight finished embracing his mother and conducting interviews. As Tooker watched teammate Knight bask in his first national championship, he wondered why his legs weren’t there. But that wasn’t important in the moment. Tooker stood up and pounced on Knight.

He wanted to feel what Knight was feeling, but he wasn’t ready. It wasn’t his time, yet.

For Knight, along with fellow 2017 seniors Colin Bennie and Philo Germano, it was the Orange’s most accomplished recruiting class’ last cross country race in a Syracuse uniform. For SU, it was the start of a new reign: one with Tooker now at the helm.

The past two years, Tooker has been in the shadow of Knight’s success. This season will be Tooker’s first time with the team’s expectations weighing on him, and he’s ready for the pressure, he said.

“He’s the best guy,” redshirt sophomore Joe Dragon said. “We’re just trying to chase him now.”

When Tooker came to Syracuse in 2016, the Orange were fresh off a national championship. At first, he was shy and kept to himself, which was unlike the usual enthusiastic and lighthearted approach he had in high school, Saratoga Springs’ head coach Shane Zanetti said.

While most recruits assume they will redshirt their freshman year, Tooker displayed to then-head coach Chris Fox and then-assistant head coach Brien Bell he could contribute.

Trying to be the only one in his class not to redshirt, Tooker made his mark by practicing longer and running further than other freshmen. The coaches bought in and took a chance, as they had with a freshman Knight.

Tooker’s first race was at the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational on Oct. 14, 2016. His expectations were high, he said. Tooker finished 166th: the last of SU’s seven runners.

“I saw college running in its rawest form,” Tooker said. “It’s not gentle at all — it’s harsh and real.”

Two weeks later was SU’s annual Tully run, which is a dirt road equivalent of the team’s Sweet Road trail. Athletes run for 24 minutes until they reach a 1000-meter plateau at the top of the hill.

From there, seasoned vets like Germano ran six to eight intervals with brief breathers every kilometer. Most young runners drop halfway, running three to four sets. Tooker didn’t. On the way up, he ran stride for stride with Knight and Bennie and held his own on top of the hill with eight-straight reps.

“He made it look effortless,” Germano said. “That’s when, in my mind, he punched his ticket to what he was about.”

Tooker’s role was still limited at meets — and he didn’t run in the postseason — but he started to develop relationships with older athletes on the team. Tooker wanted to learn how to “lurk” from Knight, a technique used to put the bulk of a runner’s energy and skill into the final 200-meters of a race. Knight, who was known for his kicks, took Tooker under his wing.

During a workout several days before the 2016 NCAA championships, Bennie raised the idea of Tooker replacing SU’s big three. Tooker had never thought that far ahead before.

“Things were just going off through my mind, things just clicking,” Tooker said. “It was terrifying.”

Going into 2017, Tooker’s role expanded as Syracuse remained a top team in the nation. At Nuttycombe last year, Tooker went from the last Orange runner to cross the line to the first. The sophomore placed 10th, beating Bennie and Germano on a day Knight didn’t run. As a sophomore in 2015, Knight led the Orange with a second-place finish at Nuttycombe, too.

Tooker followed up Nuttycombe with All-ACC and All-Northeast Region honors as the Orange sported a No. 3 national ranking.

The night before Tooker and Dragon’s first NCAA Championship meet, they stayed up past 11 p.m. talking about the possibilities. The roommates at SU also roomed together on the road, but they never talked about strategy that late into the night. They were amped, Dragon said.

But SU had a collective bad day. Even Knight, who placed first, didn’t run his best race, Bell said. Hours after the Orange’s 13th place finish, Fox gathered his players in the Louisville International Airport. Before they boarded a plane to New York, Fox sat them down. One thing he said that stood out to Tooker: “We’re better than what we showed.”

“It’s a layered statement,” Tooker said. “It can be taken as a disappointment of a season or that we have more potential and that the past is the past.”

Two days later, he texted Germano to start training again, and the two took a lengthy run around SU’s campus.

He had a breakout track season in the spring. He snapped a 10-year-old SU steeplechase record with a fourth place finish at nationals. While it satisfied the expectations he’d fallen short of so many times before, he won’t be fulfilled until he proves himself on the grass.

Back home in Saratoga Springs, after two weeks off, it started with 30-minute runs. Then 40. Then 50. As days continued, times got longer.

Tooker ran almost every day, usually resting on Sunday. When July hit, Tooker pushed his limits. There were no late nights anymore. This was his “time to expand,” Tooker said, to start the process of replacing Knight.

The first days of SU cross country practice opened with a team reflection on its race at Louisville. The coaching staff apologized to the team, new head coach Bell said. They hoped to pinpoint and learn from the main factors of the race.

Tooker thought about the meet a lot during the summer, but now he wants to move past it. He doesn’t like to think ahead, make predictions or dwell on the past. This season, Tooker said he wants to emulate Knight’s impact on him by incorporating his teaching ways.

Tooker learned from Knight for two years. For the next two, he’s in charge.

“Most programs never see a Justyn, and if they do, they never see them in consecutive fashion,” Germano said. “You could tell he was in line to be the next Justyn, and that’s big for a program. We told (Tooker) that this would be your show this year, and it should be.”

Published on September 18, 2018 at 11:03 pm

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