Kenneth Rooks' rise from small-town standout to Olympic steeplechase silver medalist

Rooks is a 2018 graduate from College Place High School near Walla Walla, Wash. where he won WIAA cross country and track and field championships before learning the new event at BYU

College Place WA product Kenneth Rooks placed second in the men's 3,000-meter steeplechase to Soufiane El Bakkali, of Morocco, for an Olympic silver. / Photo by Andrew Nelles/USA Today Sports

If you heard a loud yell Wednesday come from a campground near Salem, Oregon, chances are it came from Darin Durand.

On vacation, Durand and his family paused Wednesday to watch former College Place High School (WA) athlete Kenneth Rooks run in the men's 3,000-meter steeplechase finals at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Rooks, the 2023 NCAA Division I champion from BYU, held a lead on the final lap, eventually losing to defending Olympic champion Soufiane El Bakkali, of Morocco - but still capturing a silver medal for Team USA with a lifetime-best 8 minutes, 6.41 seconds.

Not bad for coming from an athlete who competed in a state that does not offer steeplechase in the high school ranks.

Durand, the cross-country coach at College Place, said the steeplechase suits Rooks perfectly because he is a "runner-athlete."

"(Rooks) says he enjoys it because it is broken up by all the barriers," Durand said.

A youth standout in soccer and basketball, Rooks came to College Place High School the first year it opened - 2014 - intending to play football.

Durand said he helped talk Rooks out of that plan, instead convincing him to join the boys cross country squad.

Rooks captured the WIAA Class 2B/1B title as a sophomore in 2015, and backed that up two years later by winning the Class 1A championship as a senior.

He was also a track and field standouts, winning the Class 1A boys 1,600-meter run championship as a junior in 2017.

After graduating in 2018, then taking part in his two-year LDS mission in Uganda, Rooks joined the BYU track and field program.

According to Durand, one of the activities BYU program director Ed Eyestone liked to have his athletes participate in at team camp was softball - as a way to identify the better athletes to recruit to events such as the barrier-clearing steeplechase.

That is how Rooks was scouted - and recruited - to run the steeplechase, an event in which he won multiple important national meets and eventually set program records.

This week, community members from the tiny farming town just outside Walla Walla in southeastern Washington, held a viewing party inside the school's auditorium, including Wednesday. Hundreds of folks attended the event for both the preliminiaries and finals.

And, of course, a few campers tuned into it from Oregon as well.

"Cannot describe the goosebumps it gave me," Durand said.