by Jake Carmin
It’s impossible to find time to interview John Cusick. The man doesn’t sleep, apparently. Not only does he serve as the Criterion’s sports editor, he is the sports director at KMSA, announces games, works for the sports information department, produces a feature for the Grand Junction Sentinel, and runs the blog/podcast My Outspoken View (@outspokenview).
The kicker? He’s doing all this while running 80-plus miles per week.
Cusick, a mid-distance and distance runner, is waiting on the NCAA to rule on whether he’ll be eligible to run his last outdoor track season. He started his collegiate running at the University of Northern Colorado, and didn’t particularly enjoy it (we can’t print what he thinks about the smell in Greeley). He recalls being dropped off by his coach in the remote farm town of Kersey, Colo. and instructed to simply “run home.”
Unfortunately for Cusick’s legs, home was nearly 20 miles away. Though he finished, by the end of cross country season, he’d been seriously injured and dismissed from the team, he then began looking for a new running program. At the time, CMU’s track team was barely a year old and Cusick jumped at the chance to help build a program from the ground up.
A year later, Eeeny-Teeney-Tiny-Little-Baby (ETTLB) Cusick, as he’d been affectionately dubbed, had become the first CMU athlete to qualify for NCAA Nationals in the 1500 meters.
Since then, he’s set the school record in the 1500 and 1600 and qualified for indoor nationals. Yet his focus has remained on building the team; he’s often more excited to see his teammates perform well than he is about himself.
ETTLB Cusick spent the summer in Costa Rica, studying Spanish and learning that he’s terrible at ziplining.
“All that forward momentum, I would just let it go because I would twist[…]the things I’m bad at, everyone just says ‘Why? How?’” Cusick said.
He’s already been awarded his bachelor’s degree in marketing, and after completing his bachelor’s in mass communication, he hopes to move into some form of sports broadcasting, preferably in California.
He’s already landed a weekend job as the team photographer for the Ogden Raptors, an experience that’s cemented his certainty of career choice. Though he doesn’t know what sport or media he’ll attempt to get in, his wide array of experience gives him plenty of options.
