UI's McClennan stands out in a crowd

CHAMPAIGN – By Dennis Rodman's kaleidoscopic standards, Scott McClennan's hair color was about as exotic as vanilla.

But to the University of Illinois cross-country runner, a dye job gone haywire last fall was reason to furtively slap a cap on his head and keep it there every waking hour.

"I had wanted to dye my hair red, and it turned out sort of a purple shade," the brown-haired McClennan recalled this week. "It was really bad. I wore a hat for like two months."

Problem was, the then-sophomore could keep his bad-hair days a secret for only so long.

"I had to take it off for the race," he said.

And that's when McClennan's purple haze became an all-too-inviting target for hazing.

"It was just ugly," assured teammate Mike Lucchesi. "I mean, he would have really been struggling to get a date on the weekend.

"I don't think I'll ever dye my hair now, after Scott."

There's no denying McClennan stood out in a crowd last season. But it would be splitting hairs to suggest McClennan attracted attention primarily because of his dye disorder. After all, the St. Catharines, Ontario, native did have one mighty eye-catching season on the cross-country trail.

"He ended last year basically No. 1 for us," Illini coach Gary Wieneke said.

Started out No. 1, too. In each of Illinois' first four meets last season, McClennan was his team's top finisher and among the top five overall.

Then came a bump in McClennan's promising road to the postseason. In mid-October, running on the same course in Ames, Iowa, that would be the site of the NCAA District V meet, he was just the third Illini to cross the finish line.

Two weeks later, McClennan finished fourth on his team – and 47th overall – at the Big Ten Championships in Columbus, Ohio.

"I might have got a little too excited at the beginning," said McClennan, who not only was competing in his first Big Ten meet that day but running in front of his parents for the first time in his collegiate career. "I went out a little hard and didn't finish as well."

With his season on the slide, McClennan returned to Ames with redemption and a trip to the NCAA Championships on his mind. He accomplished the former, leading the Illini across the finish line more than a minute ahead of his next closest teammate.

But his second goal proved agonizingly elusive. A 14th-place finisher, McClennan came in one spot – and one second – behind the district's final NCAA qualifier.

"That in itself is a big motivation for this year, knowing that I was so close last year," he said.

The motivation shows, says Wieneke. When the Illini gathered last month to begin team workouts, it was obvious McClennan not only had diligently put in his miles over the summer, but had lifted weights with an unprecedented dedication.

"He's much more physical," Wieneke said of the 5-foot-10, 130-pounder. "He's been really diligent about getting in the weight room. ... He's really strengthened up physically, which is going to help him."

With the help of his high school coach, McClennan got the word out during his senior year in high school that he wanted to run for a U.S. university.

"I never thought much about going to a United States school until halfway through senior year," said McClennan, who ran on three Ontario team champions at Sir Winston Churchill High School. "And then I realized that maybe I was good enough to come here."

Among the coaches Gerry Hinton contacted was Wieneke, who was in his second year at the UI when Hinton achieved All-America status in cross-country in 1968 at Southern Illinois.

What Hinton had to say about his star runner understandably caught Wieneke's attention. McClennan had run on Canada's national team in the 1996 Junior World Cross-Country Championships. He had qualified for the Canadian Olympic Trials. And he had run a time in the 10,000 meters (30:21) that had been surpassed by only a half-dozen American high school runners ever.

McClennan whittled his choices to Illinois, Ohio State and Oklahoma State, then settled on the UI because he said it offered the best combination of academics and athletics.

"You don't find too many universities in the United States that have a good engineering program and a good running coach, a good running program," he said.

That McClennan is as serious about his studies as he is about running was publicly recognized last spring. That's when he received the UI's Outstanding Scholar-Athlete Award in the male sophomore category.

Now that he's a junior, McClennan can be considered one of the old hands in Illini cross-country. One of the few, in fact, on a 15-man roster that includes 11 underclassmen. The kind of guy, based on his experience and achievements, that the younger runners will look to take their cues from.

"He's leads more by example, but I can tell the difference," Lucchesi said. "This year it seems like he's trying to be a little more vocal."

Wieneke's looking for important things from McClennan, too. Like pulling this youthful Illini team along with him in races.

"Ultimately, to be good in cross-country, you have to have somebody – or maybe more than that – penetrate the front ranks of everything you're running," Wieneke said. "And he appears at this point to have the best chance to do that for us."

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