Running down a dream
Ben Bumgarner decided to become a runner his freshman year at Waynesburg High School not because he sought greatness but because he wanted to lose some weight.
He lost the weight and gained a scholarship.
Bumgarner capped his senior season by winning a PIAA Class AA championship in cross country, an accomplishment that got him a scholarship to Penn State.
Bumgarner chose Penn State over Pitt and Lehigh from his final list of schools. Not only did he love the campus, but knew one of the employees.
“My dad works there,” said the 17-year-old Bumgarner. “I really like the town. It’s everything you could want in a college town and campus. I used to go up there all the time with my dad.”
Bumgarner’s father is employed as an extension agent in the agricultural side of the school. Interestingly, he has never managed to catch a football game.
“I’ve always been a Penn State fan,” said Bumgarner.
That he reached this point in his life seems to genuinely surprise him. Bumgarner was a three-sport athlete in middle school: football, basketball and soccer. When he got cut from the basketball team, he was devastated.
“I love basketball,” he said. “So I decided to go out for the cross country team as a freshman. There were a lot of runners better than me there. I was just out to lose some weight and have some fun.”
It wasn’t until he ran a pair of 5K races in Springfield, Ohio, slicing 30 seconds from his personal-best time that he thought he might be able to use cross country as more than a dietary deterrent.
“I just thought if everything went perfect, I might qualify for states some day,” he said.
Bumgarner finished in the 200s at the WPIAL championships at Cooper’s Lake and had a PR of 20:18. As a sophomore, he cut his time down to the high 16s but a fall during the WPIAL championships, again at Cooper’s Lake, ended the season.
As a junior, it began coming together. He finished seventh in the WPIALs and seventh in the state tournament.
“The WPIALs were really not my priority in my senior year,” he said. “I wanted to win states.”
At the state tournament, Bumgarner covered the Parkview Cross Country Course in Hershey in 16:01. He won by 12 seconds over runner-up and two-time WPIAL champion Zach Skolnekovich of Quaker Valley, who defeated Bumgarner at the WPIAL meet eight days earlier.
“At the end of the past summer, I thought I could do it but it was more of a dream,” he said. “It was always my goal and it’s crazy that it really happened.”