Bobby Mack has taken a licking during his cross-country career at N.C. State, but has kept on ticking.
Mack has had some outstanding races -- including a fourth-place finish at the recent ACC Championships -- but he also has lost two seasons to injuries. Now a sixth-year senior, he'll run today at noon in the NCAA Southeast Regional at Tanglewood Park.
Mack's long list of injuries includes a stress fracture in one leg and a back injury that cost him the better parts of the past two seasons. He received his undergraduate degree in May 2007, finishing with a 3.67 grade-point average as a history major, and is now taking graduate courses, with goals of teaching social studies and coaching.
Although finished as an undergrad, Mack, 23, still had a chance to run, provided he cleared some NCAA hurdles. He still needed a little push to return. Coach Rollie Geiger provided it, convincing Mack that he could help the Wolfpack. The next step was to petition the NCAA for a sixth season of eligibility.
"Because I was still taking classes as a graduate student, we thought we had a good shot," said Mack, who graduated from North Forsyth in 2003. "I was still in school taking a full load of courses, so I wrote a letter explaining the injuries and the lost time."
The NCAA agreed with Mack on the sixth season.
There was one more step. Last summer, Mack ran several races as a professional and won prize money. Some races paid with checks, which Mack never cashed and simply returned. One race paid a cash prize, but Mack donated the money to charity. Those steps satisfied the NCAA.
"It wasn't like I was a basketball player or something with a four-figure shoe deal," Mack said. "So I just returned everything that I had won."
As a student, Mack made N.C. State's dean's list for all but one semester as an undergraduate. He has a 4.0 GPA in his master's courses and will receive a degree in curriculum administration next May.
Mack will have family watching him run today. His parents, Bob and Robyn, will be there, along with his 79-year-old grandmother Delores Mack, who moved from just outside Pittsburgh to Winston-Salem about 18 months ago.
"It will be nice to have some family and friends there," he said.
Bob Mack said that one of the hardest things his son had to endure when he was injured was not knowing if he would ever return to top form.
"It's wonderful the way he has kept up with his grades, and on top of all that, he's had to work different jobs," Bob Mack said.
In the ACC championships, Mack finished four seconds behind winner Ryan Foster of Virginia and just 1/10th of a second out of third place. Mack said that his priority today is for the Wolfpack to run well enough to qualify for the national championships Nov. 24 in Terre Haute, Ind.
To secure an automatic berth, the Wolfpack -- which also features redshirt freshman Greg Dame from Mount Tabor -- will have to finish first or second in the team competition. The men's favorites include N.C. State, Virginia, Virginia Tech, William & Mary and Louisville.
"I was glad that I got back in the groove of running again and I'm feeling healthy," Mack said. "I'm looking forward to this race."
■ John Dell can be reached at 727-4081 or at jdell@wsjournal.com.
NCAA cross country
• Meet: Southeast Regional
• Site: Tanglewood Park, Clemmons
• Schedule: Today, 11 a.m. (6-K women's race) and noon (10-K men's race)
• Notes: Wake Forest, ranked No. 1 in the Southeast, is among the women's favorites and will send out a team of Cate Berenato, Marley Burns, Allie Kieffer, Anna Nosenko, Dina Nosenko, Merry Placer and Laura Rapp…. The Wake Forest men have three individual entires -- Greg Billington, Zach Hines and Paul Loeser…. Virginia, William & Mary and N.C. State are 1-2-3 in the men's regional rankings, and Wake Forest, Duke, Virginia and North Carolina have the top four women's spots.
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