Whelan provides leadership, sets example for Orange

When Joseph Whelan decided to come to Syracuse and join the cross-country team, he had no idea what kind of effect he would have on the team.

Five years later, Whelan has such a strong influence on his teammates that he commands respect.

“I just think that the way he kind of lives his life and his lifestyle, is just kind of like the goal that everyone on the team should follow,” said redshirt sophomore Martin Hehir.

However, it wasn’t always that way. When Whelan arrived at SU, he redshirted his freshman year, just like most runners do. Now that he is a fifth-year senior, Whelan has been through the entire process and knows what it means to be a leader.

But when Whelan arrived in Syracuse, becoming a leader wasn’t his only goal.

“I wanted to be a part of making a nationals team,” Whelan said. “When I was getting recruited, (Syracuse) hadn’t even made nationals yet. Now, we are in it every year and we’ve been in the top 15 the last four years.”

Halfway through his final season on the team, SU is ranked 11th in the country and first in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

When Whelan was in high school, schools such as Wisconsin that already had top-ranked cross-country programs recruited him. But that didn’t matter to Whelan. And that kind of attitude has helped him grow into a leadership role with the team.

“He and Griff (Graves) are our leaders,” assistant coach Adam Smith said. “He’s an incredibly important part of our team.”

But the thing is, Whelan has the ability to affect the team even when he isn’t running.

Whelan is going through fatigue right now, Smith said. As a result, he has only run in one race this season, the Harry Lang Invitational, where he finished fifth.

“He’s a tough kid and we know he wants to get back out there,” Smith said.

Even when he isn’t racing, Whelan makes sure he leaves the same mark on the underclassmen that he would make if he were racing.

“My freshman year, for outdoor track at regionals, we roomed together,” Hehir said. “We just kept it fun and made sure not to get all worked up and kind of just hung out. It was a good start, a good memory.”

While positively affecting those around him is important to Whelan, his main goal is to make the program better as a whole. And the redshirt senior was a couple of seconds shy of doing that on his own last year.

“What most people either don’t know or don’t remember about Joe, is Joe was three seconds away from winning the Big East championship last year in cross-country,” Smith said.

In the Orange’s last season in the Big East, Whelan was just seconds away from helping Syracuse leave the conference on top.

In the end, Smith said there’s only one way to truly describe Whelan.

“He’s what hopefully we aspire everyone to be.”