Runners! To your marks...

These 12 athletes will be running 1.86 miles. That's seven and a half times around the track.

There are 28 three-foot-tall barriers spaced around the track,

as well as seven treacherous water jumps.

The steeplechase is a real difficult, challenging race because there's obstacles. It's a long distance race, but then you have this element of these hurdles and the water jump that just add this completely different element into what it takes for someone to be successful. And they're not the kind of hurdles when you're watching these, these sprinting event hurdles where if you run into it, the hurdle goes down. This is the kind of hurdle or barrier that if you run into it, you go down.

A lot of people like to watch it because it's not unusual to have a fall or two. It's a great event.

My name is Kenneth Rooks. I knew the steeplechase. I watched it in the Olympics growing up. My dad actually ran the steeplechase a few times in college.

Kenneth had run earlier in the year, had won the US College Championships, the NCAA Championships in Austin, Texas, and he did that in a really dominating fashion over the last lap, just pulling away from the competition and just showing that he was the best college steeplechaser in America.

Kenneth Rooks leaps over the last barrier, pulling further away from all of the other runners.

Brooks is 65m ahead of his nearest competitor, and he wins the national championship race by over six seconds.

But when you go to the US championships, then you're also competing against the very best, the professionals essentially, and people who have made Olympics teams. The US Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, this is all of the top runners in the United States. And the top three athletes, the top three finishers at the US Championships were going to qualify to run in the World Championships. And so there was big, big stakes. Generally, the professionals are the ones that carry the day. I had a lot of confidence going in that I could be able to be in a position to qualify for the World Championships, but... Let's go against these pros. Let's beat as many of them as we can. And I really felt like he had a great opportunity to at least finish in the top three and punch his ticket to the World Championships.

When the gun sounds right before everything is just like, really, really quiet.

It was more important for me to focus on performing to the best of my ability than it was getting a certain place. I didn't know if I was going to win or not, but I knew that was a possibility. And so I went into the race with a mindset that I just wanted to give it everything I had and then see what was going to happen. So the race started off and Kenneth did exactly what we wanted him to do, and that was to get out well. Gets out in the position that we hoped he would get out. I was kind of in the middle, the middle of the pack. He was running very smooth perfectly through the first lap.

Second lap, we were going around. He was running behind a couple of different runners, and one of the runners directly in front of him... Took a couple stutter steps. I tried not to run into him and I just flipped over the barrier and fell down. He’s down! He’s down! He’s down! I’m actually surprised no one else behind me fell. Immediately, I just kind of slumped down in my, uh, in my seat. I actually pulled my hat down over my eyes and kind of folded my arms and went, “Uggh,

darn it.” And then we just got quiet. We we sat there probably for.

30, 40 seconds in silence.

In a race like that, if you fall down and have two rolls and the pack is away from you and you're running against these pros and you're

the only one of the few college guys, sometimes the guy will just say, well,

that's there goes my day.

When I see Kenneth, you know, it puts a smile on my face. He’s just the type of person that’s—he really kind of lights up the room. He just has a great spirit about him. The nicest guy on our team, but he's also the most competitive.

I think any time you are preparing for an event that means a lot to you, that you’ve worked hard, and particularly when you have a spiritual center like Kenneth Rooks does, that it’s important to connect with your Maker and with a higher power. So when you're getting ready for a race, there's a lot of distractions, thoughts in your mind like, do I really want to be here today? Like, oh man, I'm not sure if I want to do this, and it can be a little distracting. So one thing I like to do, especially when I'm getting ready for races, is to read scripture to... it helps calm me down. I think that there are lots of people that like to listen to music or other things, and that can be something that might calm them down, get them in the zone, or it might hype them up. But for me personally, I want to try and like, stay as relaxed as possible because I do get so nervous and the scriptures help calm me down and help me remind me what matters most. Prayer is very important, I think. I try and hold on to gratitude on race day, and so I’ll say a lot of prayers of gratitude.

And I've never heard in any of these prayers asking that he might be victorious or reign terror on his competition. It's more help me to do my best. Help me to put the training and this hard work into practice. And might I be competitive in this event.

Kenneth, he embodies the disciple of Jesus Christ and his spiritual side, I would say, is even stronger than his ability to run on the track.

And that’s because he’s taken the time to develop that, those spiritual attributes.

The most important thing with the steeplechase is understanding that it's a race. It's about being efficient. And it was important to me to make a plan that I would try and catch back up slowly if I fell, versus trying to catch back up right away. It was really tough seeing him fall. And there was a split second where I had some semblance of doubt. Then I just remember that it was Kenneth I was watching. And Kenneth Rooks is one of the most resilient people and runners that you will meet.

And we just saw a fall, Paul.

Oh.

Backstretch. That was the NCAA champion. Kenneth Rooks.

He's back up.

In a championship race of that magnitude, nobody ever comes back. It's it's too competitive. It's at too high of a level. Because I had fallen in practice like a few weeks earlier, I had come up with a plan of what to do if I was to fall,

which my plan was to get up and then just work my way back up slowly and gradually and just get back into a rhythm. Kenneth began to close on the competition, and we kind of said, okay, well, let’s let’s see how many— you know, it’s kind of like, bless his heart. Let’s see how many of these guys he will catch. He was just too far behind in our mind, and the level of competition was just too good. So it took me two laps before I even caught the back of the pack. And once I caught the back of the pack, it was a relief. For, you know what he was picking off runners. He just kept proving us wrong by just moving up a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. All of a sudden he's in the top six. Well, I'm just going to control what I can control. And I'm going to just give it everything I have and see how many people I can catch.

As the bell sounded with one lap to go, he was actually in position to oh my goodness, he's now in the top six and he has a chance to to make the team. Now all reason is out the window. All the reasons why we thought he couldn't do it. We're believers now. Peter is in the mix. Bastien is hanging in there.

Lee, look at this story of Kenneth Rooks, the NCAA champion who fell, who got back up, reattached himself to the pack, and now is running in this and making a run for the championship title. The question was, how much energy did he have left? I just felt like a burst of energy. And also the crowd was cheering. And so that also helped give me a little bit of a burst of energy as well.

Being able to scream and cheer as loud as we could as he finished those last two laps, as he caught up to the leaders, as he passed them in the last hundred. So at that point in time, there’s pandemonium. And we just lost our minds. We were jumping up and down. Wow, what a story this is!

From falling...

to the finish!

And a national championship!

Really, really exciting to cross the finish line and realize that I had actually come back and won after going through that.

I think any time we fail in life, I, you know, there are those of us sometimes who want to just curse God and go, why me? Life is hard. Life is hard. And we do all have challenges that come our way, and sometimes the challenges we might see coming

and other times they blindside us.

I've wondered a lot of times why bad things happen to us. I don’t think I have all the answers to that question, but, one thing that I know is that we have a Father in Heaven who loves us, who cares about us. And I also know that we have a Savior, Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for us. And part of the reason why the Savior did what He did for us was because life was going to be hard.

I couldn’t control the fall 100%, but I could control how I responded. I could control being in the moment, being present, making decisions. If everything falls together the way we want,

we should be able to be in this position and finish. But what happens if we do fall? What happens if we get a bad start? What happens if someone falls in front of us. Because we’re all going to fall. And whether that’s temporally, whether that’s spiritually, it's going to happen because none of us are perfect.

It’s not fun to go through some of those challenges, and sometimes it doesn't really feel fair.

But I know that that’s why Jesus Christ performed the Atonement. As we strive to just keep trying and do the best we can to come unto the Savior, He will reach back to us and He will strengthen us. I’ve felt His hand in my life a lot. I know that He’s strengthened me. I know that He’s never truly left me alone. I know He’s always been there for me, even at times when I've not recognized it right away. I am so grateful to have a testimony of the Savior, because it is a strength for me. It's a foundation in my life.

And it keeps me going in times where, where I’m not sure exactly if I can keep going.