Coming into the men's cross country season this fall, there was no questioning the excitement of graduate transfer Izaiah Steury joining the team roster. The Pleasant Lake, Ind.-product has already had a storied collegiate career, including placing 24th in the 10K at the NCAA DI Cross Country Championships in 2024 with Notre Dame. And in no time at all, he has made an impact wearing the IU Indy red and white by breaking the program record for the men's 8K by more than 40 seconds at Notre Dame's Joe Piane Invitational.

For those who have followed Steury's running career through the years, his latest triumph came as no surprise. However, for Jags fans across the country, this explosion of talent is brand new. Who exactly is Izaiah Steury and what does he bring to the table? As it turns out, it's bagels and cream cheese.

"If I'm racing in the afternoon, I'll always eat like a ham sandwich, apple, banana, Gatorade," he told me in a Zoom interview. "If I'm doing an early morning race, I'm typically eating bagels with cream cheese or just something very simple and light because I don't like to eat a whole lot during the morning."

As expected, like most athletes, he also listens to music before he heads over to join the crowd of competitors.

"It's one of my favorite things to do," he said. "It gets me excited, hyped, to, you know, get racing."

His collegiate racing career began at Notre Dame in 2022, during which he placed 63rd at the 2022 NCAA Championships. The following year, he transferred to Oregon, where he placed fifth in the outdoor track 1500m event at the Oregon Preview and fourth in the 5K at the Stanford Invitational.

For his junior and senior year, he ventured back to South Bend where he once again found success, including finishing eighth overall in the 3000m at the 2024 ACC Championships in indoor track.

His choice to stay in the Hoosier State for his graduate season has a lot to do with being close to home, but there's more to it than that.

"I just like the fact that it's a new place, a new area to me. And there's a lot of community around here as well," said Steury. "One of the biggest factors is it being a big city. I found that not only the running had pretty cool sceneries, but there's a lot of Ethiopian community here as well."

Steury was born in Ethiopia and was adopted by the Steury family in Pleasant Lake. He still maintains plenty of connections to the country and its culture, including taking part in coffee ceremonies and looking up to celebrated Ethiopian track athletes such as Kenenisa Bekele and Haile Gebrselassie. Both Bekele and Gebrselassie have won multiple gold medals at the Olympics and World Championships, a goal that Steury always keeps at the forefront in his mind.

"I think that's pretty much every single runner's dream," he told me. "My goal for that this year is to qualify for the [Olympic] trials. I would love to get a brand deal, whether that's Adidas or whoever that is, and then go to the trials."

At the same time, Steury is aware of the elite competition and difficulty that the trials would bring and that's why, in his own words, his plan is to take 'baby steps.' First, by simply focusing on qualifying for the trials and then doing the work to finish in the top three.

As far as possible events go, Steury hopes to run for the half marathon or marathon. While that may seem incredibly arduous to anyone not heavily involved in running, it's important to remember that even Steury's parents didn't know if he was going to get this far.

"They are very, very proud," he said. "They're always supporting everything that I do. Not that they didn't think I was going to be a runner, but they didn't think I was ever gonna be at this level, if that makes sense."

For all the young runners in Indianapolis and across the country that dream of being in his shoes one day, Steury's advice is simple: never give up.

"Have goals. Set goals for yourself. It could be like a roadmap to where you want to go and make sure each year you progress. Be goal oriented and have fun as well. We don't do this just so that we can achieve things. We do this because we enjoy it and it's something that we love to do."