The sting of the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase semifinals at the 2024 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships has stayed with Rob McManus.
He entered the race in Eugene, Oregon, with the seventh-fastest time, but finished seventh in his heat and 13th overall in 8 minutes, 33.43 seconds — missing the final by one spot.
MSU head coach Lyle Weese saw the difference between McManus’ appearances at the 2023 and 2024 NCAA Outdoor meets: the first a product of a breakout season and the second adding the weight of expectations.
He also noticed how McManus didn’t dwell on the race and wanted to use it as motivation. It hurt missing the final, McManus said, but it made him realize he belonged with the NCAA’s best.
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McManus has relied on that mindset in his redshirt junior year, earning All-American honors at the NCAA Indoor Championships in the mile, winning the Big Sky Outdoor title in the steeplechase and placing fourth in the NCAA West First Rounds last weekend.
In his return to Eugene for NCAA Outdoors next week, McManus is ranked No. 6.
“He understands what it takes to get to that final and he’s very confident about it,” MSU teammate Owen Smith said. “He’s done all the right work. He’s healthy and he just feels like it’s his time.”
McManus said the younger version of himself — as a runner at Cashmere High in Washington state — would be “pretty shocked” to find out all that he’s accomplished.
McManus said he was better at track than cross country — although he did finish second in the 1A WIAA state cross country meet as a junior in 2019 — mostly running the 1,600 meters (4:10.90 PR) and 800 meters (1:56.31 PR).
Those marks opened the door to running in college. McManus wanted to leave Washington, but not go too far outside the region. While he didn’t know the full effects of training at elevation, McManus also saw the Rocky Mountains as an optimal location. MSU checked all boxes.
“(Bozeman is) a beautiful location, beautiful town,” McManus added. “It felt far enough from home, but also familiar enough that it wasn’t a crazy change.”
Weese saw how McManus coming from a rural area (Cashmere has a population of about 3,300) could fit in well with MSU’s current team. He added that a runner who specializes in the 1,600 often has a wide range of events they can run.
McManus may have shown more of a range in high school track if not for his junior season (2020) being cancelled and his senior season (2021) being truncated due to COVID-19. He also got injured during his senior cross country season.
“It definitely, in some areas, motivated me because I really wanted a chance to find that success,” McManus said, “and I felt like I was kind of denied that my last few years of high school.”
It took some time, especially with the “reality check” that came during his first MSU cross country season in 2021, he said. McManus found adjusting to bigger college races challenging, like stepping up to 8,000 meters at Pre-Nationals (261st place, 25:38.2) and the Big Sky Cross Country Championships (66th place, 26:29.1).
“I don’t think there was ever any doubt in my mind about my ability,” McManus said. “I just kind of knew that I wasn’t at that point yet, and it was going to take a lot of work to get to a point where I could truly be happy in my fitness and my athletics.”
His teammates quickly realized how serious McManus was about achieving those goals. Duncan Hamilton, who overlapped with McManus for two years, said the talent was “undeniable.” Hamilton also teased McManus about trying to out-kick him at the end of workouts, even though it was an indicator of the speed he could muster on tired legs.
“With Rob, you could always tell that he was there for the right reasons,” Hamilton said, adding, “He purposely wanted to be great and he wanted to keep pushing his body and improving.”
Smith, who joined MSU in 2020, was intimidated by McManus at first given they were competing for similar spots. That fostered competition between the two and made them grow closer as teammates.
“He really enjoys the faster stuff, especially at the end of a workout when it’s getting hard and people are suffering,” Smith said. “You can see him really thrive there.”
McManus, who redshirted his first outdoor season in 2022, made more progress in the fall. He helped the Bobcats reach the NCAAs in cross country for the first time since 2002. After redshirting indoors, he alternated between the 1,500, the 5,000 and the steeplechase outdoors.
Coming into college, McManus didn’t know much about the steeplechase. He saw Hamilton’s success at NCAAs and the 2021 Olympic Trials. McManus also learned of Weese’s background as an All-American steeplechase runner at MSU and saw Levi Taylor qualify for NCAAs and the U.S. Outdoor Championships in 2022.
Weese saw how quickly McManus acclimated to hurdling drills. McManus also relied on advice from Taylor and Hamilton, like alternating legs on jumps and building confidence in the event.
“I think just having that legacy, having those people who you can follow in their tracks and who have a lot of really good advice and good knowledge in the sport that you can really trust, I think that definitely has turned me towards the event more,” McManus said.
After placing second to Hamilton at Big Sky Outdoors, McManus ran the sixth-fastest time (then-PR of 8:31.13) at the 2023 West Region First Round to qualify for his first NCAA Outdoors.
Amid the heat and humidity in Austin, Texas — which MSU runners tried to combat with ice baths and dunking hats in water — McManus placed 16th overall (8:47.86) to earn second team All-American honors. The race completed his first full outdoor track season since his sophomore year of high school in 2019.
McManus was happy with the race, he said, but dealt with imposter syndrome at NCAAs, something he had to mentally work through that offseason.
Earlier that season, McManus had mentioned how his main goal was to simply make it to NCAAs. With the times McManus was running, Hamilton and Taylor told him to dream bigger.
“It’s hard the first time at an NCAA meet to not just be happy to be there,” said Hamilton, who was a national runner-up in the steeplechase in 2022 and 2023. “I feel like it’s hard to perform well at your first NCAAs. But I was glad to kind of be able to tell him to step up his goals a little bit.”
The expectations continued to grow. McManus once again helped the Bobcats reach NCAAs in cross country, along with contributing to a second-place team finish at Big Sky Indoors and a conference title at Big Sky Outdoors in 2024.
After finishing with the fifth-fastest time of 8:40.18 at the 2024 West Region First Round, McManus finished 13th at NCAA Outdoors. Later that summer, he placed 23rd at the USATF Olympic Trials.
With Hamilton and Taylor becoming three-time All-Americans and representing MSU in the steeplechase final at NCAAs four years in a row, the bar had been raised, said Smith, who placed 23rd at NCAAs last year. It caused Smith, McManus and Weese to reevaluate the approach.
For the 2024-25 cycle, the timing of harder workouts has moved to allow for fresher legs. The Bobcats have done fewer hurdle-specific drills. MSU has done progressive runs on Saturdays, which include each mile getting faster until the group reaches five-minute pace.
“We would do pretty much whatever (Weese) would ask us to do or tell us to do in workouts,” McManus said, adding, “But obviously the goals remain the same, the plan remains the same to have success at the national level.”
First he qualified for NCAA Indoors, earning second team All-American status with a 15th-place finish in the mile.
The race was overwhelming in a way that reminded McManus of his first time at NCAA Outdoors, he said. Still, it was an experience he will never forget, McManus added, which included seeing teammate Harvey Cramb place 11th in the mile.
McManus became the fifth Bobcat to earn three All-American honors in men’s track and field, joining Taylor, Hamilton, Weese and Shannon Butler. It’s another accolade for McManus, who is ranked No. 2 in MSU history in the steeplechase (8:26.83), No. 2 in the indoor mile (3:53.59), No. 4 in the outdoor 5,000 (13.40.04), No. 5 in the outdoor 1,500 (3:40.14) and No. 5 in the indoor 3,000 (7:54.78).
“As an athlete, you kind of always have these big goals in the back of your head, and it’s kind of scary to really embrace them and really hope for them,” McManus said. “And I think that’s something that my teammates have inspired me in a lot of ways to really hone in on these goals and say, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
In April, he set new PRs in the 1,500 meters and steeplechase at the Bryan Clay Invitational, along with a PR in the 5,000 at the Payton Jordan Invitational. McManus won the Big Sky Outdoor title in the steeplechase (8:36.37) before his fourth-place finish at regionals.
At Bryan Clay, McManus closed hard in a fast race to finish second. At Big Sky Outdoors in Sacramento, he took the lead with about a mile to go and hammered the final stretch.
The nerves still got to him, especially before Big Sky Outdoors. McManus attributed that to defending his 2024 title and coming in with the top seed time. In his eyes, he had more to lose and less to gain.
Having more experience in big races can certainly help build confidence, Weese said. After winning the LA Marathon in March, Matt Richtman, McManus’ former teammate and current roommate, told the Chronicle he was confident enough to make his decisive move after running in the Houston Half Marathon and the U.S. Half Marathon Championships.
Still, that internal struggle “never goes away,” said Hamilton, who runs professionally for Nike/Swoosh TC.
“You can get it with really good workouts and good races and some positive self talk and visualization and affirmations and all that,” Hamilton said. “But for me, it’s hard to artificially inflate my confidence. No matter how much I try to tell myself something, I feel like I really need good workouts and good races to back it up.”
For McManus, consistency at the highest level has been key. The lingering doubt still creeps up days or even minutes before a race, he said, and can be squashed by quality results. The Big Sky Outdoors title did that for him.
McManus credited his teammates and Weese for getting him to this point and making MSU the “best-case scenario” for what his college running career might look like. Smith said it’s been an honor to watch his ascension over the last few years, and Hamilton has been proud to pass the torch to the next wave of MSU steeplechase runners.
McManus wants to follow Hamilton’s lead of setting up the next generation. In the short-term, that means rectifying what went wrong last year in Eugene.
“I’m very confident in my ability to perform well no matter what kind of race it is,” McManus said. “I just got to trust myself and remember the successes I’ve had in the past and the reasons those races have gone well.”
Braden Shaw can be reached at bshaw@dailychronicle.com or 406-582-2690. Follow him on Twitter @ByBradenShaw
