For someone who had never tasted victory before, David Czerwonky sure knew how to celebrate in a sweet way.

On October 8, Czerwonky, a West Lafayette (Indiana) High School senior, took part in an Indiana high school sectional cross-country championship. Through much of the 5K race, held at the Tippecanoe County Amphitheater in West Lafayette, Czerwonky found himself among a small pack of lead runners, as first reported by the Lafayette Journal & Courier.

But with less than a kilometer to go, he and Will Persin, a junior from rival McCutcheon High School, separated from the group and charged through the remainder of the course side by side. They were so close, in fact, that as the two crossed the finish line, Czerwonky could feel his left elbow brushing Persin’s right wrist.

Czerwonky eked out the win—setting a 20-second PR in the process with a time of 15:49.5—though he was barely able to stand at the race’s conclusion. “I was dead,” he says.

Revival came a few minutes later—at the Silver Dipper, his favorite West Lafayette ice cream shop. A sign in the store alerts customers that the Dipper’s offerings are made of “gobs of Wisconsin cream” and that “If you want healthy, eat carrots.” Czerwonky ordered a double-scoop cone—half orange sherbet half, half peppermint ice cream—without blinking.

Or thinking—thinking back to a time when winning a running race seemed ludicrous and eating a double-scoop of ice cream was a prescription for ridicule.

Today, Czerwonky, 17, looks the part of a runner—he stands 6’ 2”, a slender 168 pounds. His accomplishments match the appearance: His time at the sectional meet put him sixth among West Lafayette High’s all-time fastest cross-country runners, a heady milestone considering the school’s lineage. (The Red Devils are two-time Indiana cross-country champions.) And, in a rebuilding year for the team, Czerwonky captained West Lafayette to a seventh-place finish at the state cross country championships on October 29.

But according to his cross-country coach, David Joest, Czerwonky has done more than run fast races or lead his team. As Joest puts it, “David will forever be remembered for showing what a role distance running can play in the lives of young people. Because of him, he’s changed the way I look at people.”

That’s because Czerwonky himself has changed, and quite dramatically, since taking up running.

In junior high school, Czerwonky became an easy target of taunts and harassment because, he says, he was shy, a bit goofy, and, most of all, “chubby.” He packed 198 pounds on his 5-foot, 6-inch frame. Many of his classmates let him know what they thought of his appearance. In the locker room before gym class, they called him fatso; they told him he was plumper than the Pillsbury Doughboy. Czerwonky took to wearing oversized clothes to conceal his physique.

Stunningly, to both Czerwonky and those who knew him well, running became his remedy. Up to that point, he had never been much of an athlete. His father, Dan, a tennis player and a 4:49 miler in high school, recalls that during the one season his son played T-ball, “[David] was more interested in keeping the bats straight along the batting cage than using them.” (Maybe that eye for precision augured the future: Czerwonky was accepted into the engineering program at Purdue University on November 18.)

But one of his favorite teachers, Brian Fultz, was also an assistant coach on the school’s cross-country team. At the start of eighth grade, Fultz invited Czerwonky to try running with the team. On a late August afternoon, he did a 2.5-mile run with the squad. Czerwonky needed 45 minutes to complete the loop, accompanied most of the way by another coach. Exhausted yet encouraged, Czerwonky decided to come back the next day, and the next. He also began running in the team’s meets. “I finished last in all but one,” he says, “but by less and less each time.”

In the months that followed, he continued to improve, and so did his diet. He cut back on his favorite indulgence—chocolate-chip cookies, which he says he once gobbled down in fits of stress. By the end of eighth grade, his weight had nudged below 180 pounds—just in time for the biggest race of his then young career. In May, his gym class did a one-mile run on the school’s track. Czerwonky won the race, in a time of 6:30, and beat all of his former locker room hecklers.

As they stood near the finish line bent over, Czerwonky walked by. “What do you think of the Pillsbury Doughboy now?” he asked them.

“I didn’t say it that loud,” Czerwonky says, “so I’m not sure they heard me.” Regardless, running had made him fitter, faster, and, according to his father, “a confident person.”

Once in high school, Czerwonky stayed with the sport, and stuck to his commitment to stay in shape. His weight dropped into the low 170s, the product of a training regimen that had him running more than 800 miles from July to November. A growth spurt didn’t hurt: he picked up five and a half inches between ages 13 and 15.

Leanness led to faster times. During his first track season, he cut his 1600-meter time from 5:50 to 4:54. “It was crazy,” says Czerwonky of his improvement. As a sophomore, he beat his dad’s mile time. With cross-country, his time saw similar improvement.

But Czerwonky says speed wasn’t the only thing he was gaining. He realized the value of having teammates. “One of the [older] guys on the team was Cooper Williams. He won the state meet in the 800 meters [in 2016], but he was the most humble guy. He talked to me, and he showed me what people should be like. It was not about being fast; it was about offering companionship.”

As one of the Red Devils’ captains this past season, Czerwonky says he tried to lead as much off the course as on it. He got to know his younger teammates by studying their PRs, so he was better prepared to voice encouragement in practice and at races.

“I always struggle to find the right adjective to describe David,” says Joest, who just completed his first season as West Lafayette’s head coach. “He’s quirky in one sense, but he’s also the type of kid who will hold the door for everyone. He has always been supportive of everyone on his team.” (Czerwonky’s influence has extended beyond his running circle. In October, his classmates voted him Homecoming King.)

He ran his final high school cross-country meet, the Nike Midwest Regional, on November 13. Heading into the meet he wasn’t sure if it would be his last race ever as part of a school team. During the fall, college coaches did not show much interest in him, including those from Purdue. But on the challenging LaVern Gibson course in Terre Haute, he gave some indication of what he might offer a college program ready to take a chance on a former Pillsbury Doughboy: He ran 16:00, good enough for 79th overall and 14th among all Indiana runners. Further proof of where he has come, and a life he has left behind.

“I’ve thought about that quite a bit. I have no idea what my life would be like without running,” Czerwonky says. And what about his former locker room tormentors? “I forgive them. In fact,” he adds, “I kind of owe them.”

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