“ Ahead of regionals, Smith made his biggest decision of the season by removing the redshirt from Addisu Guadie, who qualified for NCAAs in the 10,000 last year and owns a 28:10 pb. Last year, he had faced a similar situation with Schoppe and Smith made the opposite choice. His gamble paid off: OK State won NCAAs without Schoppe. This time around, Smith is not taking any chances.

“They came to me, some of the guys on the team and said listen, Addisu is in really good shape, we don’t want to leave anything up to chance,” Smith said. “We know you want to redshirt him for the future, but we want to make sure we get this taken care of. And I kind of agreed. I said, yeah, you’re right. We can’t play games with this.”

If everyone in OK State’s top five has a great day, they may not need Guadie to win. But he offers insurance should one of them falter.”