WICHITA, Kan.-- Scott Reed began running in middle school. His love of aircraft began much earlier. The Omaha, Neb. native shares his focus with each.

Reed lettered all four years in both track and cross country in high school, along with being named to the Superstate Cross Country team. Once in college, Reed earned spots on the Wichita State all-time lists for indoor and outdoor track. In 20 cross country races, Reed has finished in the top 20 eleven times.

None of those reasons, however, brought him to Wichita State.

“By coming here I can just go right into Aerospace Engineering,” Reed said. “One of the best aerospace programs and industries is right here.”

Besides being a team-leading, two-sport student-athlete, senior distance runner Scott Reed is undeniably brilliant. He came to Wichita from Omaha North High School—a magnet school specializing in engineering technology and mathematics.

Before he turned 20 years old, he had been named to the Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athlete team and earned a MVC Commissioner’s Academic Excellence award. Now well into his senior year, the Omaha, Neb., native continues to hold a cumulative 4.0 GPA in aerospace engineering.

Wichita State offers the major, and although Nebraska—a mainstay in the NCAA cross country championships for the last 25 years—may have been closer to home, Reed didn’t hesitate in his decision. Planes and spacecraft have always interested the 21-year-old runner, and Reed’s capitalizing on that passion in WSU’s aerospace engineering curriculum.

“Aerospace engineers will mostly design aircraft and spacecraft in the broad sense, and then everything that’s basically in the structure of the plane, such as how it flies and how it moves,” Reed explained.

Aerospace engineering may be what moves him, but it’s certainly not the only moving he’s doing. On Sept. 20, Reed made his senior season debut at the Missouri State Cross Country Classic. The first Shocker to cross the finish line, Reed placed fifth in the 8K with a time of 25:56.65, guiding the Shockers to a third-place finish.

The senior leader admitted to being pleased with his performance, but noted that the race would likely have turned out differently if he could have ran at 100 percent. Aside from studying and running, Reed has spent a sizeable chunk of the fall healing.

An IT Band injury made the third competition of the season for the Shockers only the first one for Reed. Early in the fall, pain in his leg was diagnosed as an Iliotibial Band injury. Defined as a classic overuse injury causing pain in the knee and lower thigh, it sidelined him for the first time in his career.

According to Reed, he and his trainers caught the injury quickly enough to avoid further damage and a longer, more painful recovery process. He did have to take a few days off before starting a workout regimen in the pool to keep up his aerobic strength. Though Reed said the rehab stint didn’t take long, the time off his feet was unfamiliar to him.

“It’s the first time I’ve been injured, so it’s the first time I’ve never gone to workouts and gotten in the actual work that I was supposed to do,” Reed said. His injury still forces him to cut back his mileage from his normal 13 miles a day to 10-12 miles. “I probably won’t get back up to there right now throughout the cross country season so it doesn’t come back, and I can finish strong.”

Finishing strong is no stranger of Reed’s. In all but one of his cross country races dating back to last season, Reed crossed the finish line first for the Shockers.

During his indoor track season last winter, Reed moved up to the number five Shocker of all-time (5,000m) after winning the Adidas Classic with a time of 14:51.37—more than three seconds faster than his previous year’s time. Last spring, Reed took sixth at the outdoor Missouri Valley Conference championship. His time of 30:35.64 is good for seventh on WSU’s all-time list.

Arguably more important than his consistent success, is his emphasis on making the team better. Distance running may appear to be a solitary sport, but Reed strongly disagrees. The coaching staff sees to it that the cross country runners warm up and cool down as a team, and even assign training partners for workouts.

Reed trains with freshman Trace Kendrick. The partnership is paying off generously. Before Reed’s return, Kendrick was the top finisher for the Shocker men with two top-ten finishes in his first pair of collegiate races. Upon Reed’s return at Missouri State, Kendrick finished right behind Reed in sixth place.

“He’s doing pretty good at keeping up,” Reed said, regarding their workout sessions. “We both have our off days and our on days. So whoever’s on pushes the pace that day. It works out well having someone there.”

Especially considering the amount of training this team does. When the cross country season ends, it’s off to indoor track in the winter followed by outdoor track in the spring. For distance runners, Reed said the preparation for each sport is pretty similar.

During cross country season, almost all of their workouts are done on grass or dirt roads. Both the indoor and outdoor track seasons require more time on the track. Spoken like a true cross country star, Reed ranks the outdoor season over the indoor.

“You get to run the 10K. It’s 25 laps around the track, I think it’s kind of fun but most people don’t,” Reed laughed. “You definitely have more scenery, too. You get to see the stadium and around it instead of being in some building.”

The fan accessibility also plays in the favor of track. From a spectator’s perspective, a 10K is much easier to watch from the stands than it is on a cross country course. In either case, Reed is well-aware of their presence.

“I can hear and usually understand the people that are yelling at me,” Reed said. His parents, David and Cynthia, travel to almost every meet. “It does make an impact. Sometimes my mother will remind me to relax while I’m running. She was a runner in college, too, so she’ll do that and I can hear it and sort of adjust.”

The senior made need a little extra advice heading into Saturday’s Cowboy Jamboree at Oklahoma State. Of all the courses Reed has conquered, he pegged OSU’s course as his least favorite.

“I don’t like OSU’s course,” Reed confirmed. “My freshman year was the first time I was there. It had rained a lot the week before so there was like two feet of standing water on parts of it, and then they have quite a few hills and they were all full of mud. It’s that red mud so it got on our uniforms and our shoes and everything.”

Stillwater’s red mud might be the only aspect during his time as a Shocker that Reed shows any negative feelings. Heading towards the end of his undergraduate career, Reed has a definitive strategy for the future. Upon graduation from Wichita State, he plans to attend graduate school and finish with his doctorate.

Although Wichita State could fulfill those plans on both the graduate and doctorate levels, Reed acknowledges that getting all three degrees from the same school is generally not beneficial. He is considering staying in Wichita for grad school, but Michigan and Purdue are also in the running.

Wherever he decides to continue his academic passion, Reed can guarantee his athletic drive will not be neglected. Thirteen miles a day might not be as commonplace, but running always will be. Though Reed confessed to feeling a time crunch in his time as a two-sport, scholar-athlete, his love for the work is obvious.

“I just enjoy it,” Reed smiled. “It feels good to go out and just do a run. The hardest part is finding enough time. And with all the running we do, you get tired. Then you won’t want to do something, but you’ve still got to go out there and do it so you can get better.”

-Wichita State-