Two years after emigrating from Italy in 2015, Iliass Aouani was second-guessing himself.

A stress fracture in his leg took him off the track. His recovery process was long, but not long enough. Aouani and the coaching staff originally thought the injury would heal in six weeks. Aouani didn’t return for six months, and even that was rushing him.

“I was not ready,” Aouani said. “I did not have enough time to recover. It was a season we could have redshirted. 100%. 110%.”

When Aouani returned, he failed to place at the cross-country nationals for the first time in his collegiate career. He struggled to maintain a positive attitude. Aouani came to America to pursue running, and when his times weren’t up to his standards, he thought there was no reason for him to stay, he said. Though he has racked accomplishments at SU, Aouani has battled with his own career expectations. Now, he brings a new mental and physical approach to his final season of eligibility after having set the school record in the 10k last spring.

“He knew that someone had to step up to the plate after we graduated a very strong class,” former teammate Justyn Knight said in an email. “And for him to fulfill it after I used to talk with him all the time about that was very heart-warming.”

When Aouani transferred to Syracuse from Lamar University in 2016, SU was coming off a national championship and was one of the marquee destinations in the country. Aouani, Lamar’s lead runner as a freshman, was looking for a new challenge and came to Syracuse to compete with the nation’s top runners.

“When I came here for the first time, it was a new thing for me,” Aouani said. “It was a big deal. I was looking around, left and right, and it was crazy to me.”

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In his first two years at SU, Aouani earned 2016 All-ACC honors in cross-country and recorded six top-five finishes — including two silver medals at the ACC Track Championship.

In the fall of 2017, as Aouani continued to recover from the leg injury he sustained the previous spring, Syracuse was ranked third in the nation for the majority of the season. In the final year of Knight’s eligibility, the team’s window of opportunity was closing. Then-head coach Chris Fox admitted that Aouani was only about 75% conditioned when he was cleared, but the team needed him.

He regained his form while running track in the spring, but was dealt another setback when Fox stepped down from his role as head coach. Brien Bell took over in the fall of 2018, and Aouani had to adjust again. Fox once stated that Aouani could place in the top 20 at cross-country nationals, but he never would.

“It was bad timing,” Aouani said. “I don’t believe I expressed my full potential in cross-country.”

Even before the injury, he still never reached the heights he desired. His sky-high expectations served as a burden rather than a motivator, and he said he wasn’t enjoying the process. He needed to learn how to find happiness in other aspects of his life.

It wasn’t until the winter break of 2018, when he returned home to Milan and spent time with his family. His parents want him to do well in track, Aouani said, but they ultimately just want him to be happy. There, he “learned how to live without stress,” he said, and began to stop tying his happiness solely to his race times.

When he returned to Syracuse in January of 2019, Bell revamped Aouani’s training, personalizing his routine. They incorporated increased mileage and more strength-based training into his regimen. Aouani ran the furthest routes he ever had in his collegiate career.

With an overhauled physical approach and fresh mentality, Aouani broke the ACC 10K record during the outdoor track season and won two gold medals at ACCs. For the first time in his career, Aouani made it to the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Nationals. But in the 10k final he stumbled, finishing 20th out of 24 competitors.

“I allowed the race to overwhelm me,” Aouani said.

He said that as an underclassman, he would have let it affect him, but he has since learned from this mistake. This time, Aouani was not discouraged.

“He was constantly in his own head,” former teammate Philo Germano said in an Instagram direct message. “By the time I graduated, he had relaxed and learned to become more patient and disciplined.”

He’s carried that new approach into this year as a graduate student. This past fall, he competed at the Coast-to-Coast Battle in Beantown as an unaffiliated runner and said his time would’ve broken the Orange’s 5K cross-country record if he was eligible to score. He viewed it as another indicator of his progress and plans to continue to ramp up his training heading into the outdoor season — his final stretch of eligibility.

He expects it to be his best season in the NCAA to date. But if it isn’t, he won’t let it set him back.

“You plan something in life, and life brings you somewhere else,” Aouani said.

Published on January 29, 2020 at 10:41 pm

Contact Eli: efjarjou@syr.edu