By MARK MOSCHETTI
Seattle Pacific Sports Information
 
SEATTLE – A big bang in the living room.
 
A big run on the race course.
 
Whether he's building something for one of his computer engineering classes or helping his teammates build up the men's cross country and track programs at Seattle Pacific, Elius Graff is going to give it everything he has to produce some big results.

 

"That's what I've loved so much about being at SPU: It truly has kind of fostered and developed and grown things that I'm passionate about," Graff said in speaking of his academic and athletic pursuits. "It has solidified in me what I want to do with the rest of my life. I couldn't be more happy about the last 3½ years."
 
For the 22-year-old Graff, now in the early weeks of his senior year, that passion has come in particularly handy during the past several pandemic-altered months.
 
Last spring, Graff's studies shifted from the classroom to his campus apartment when all courses went remote. His training shifted from running with the guys to running often by himself when all Falcon sports competition and practices went dark.
 
The solo running turned out to be unexpectedly enjoyable.
 
"I actually found a love for running alone – something I didn't know I had," Graff said. "It was nice because without having competition on the schedule, I could really run because I wanted to rather than running because I felt like I had to."
 
The remote classwork turned out to be … well, at times, unexpectedly interesting.
 
"We had this junior design class, which is a class for one quarter that helps prepare you for senior design," Graff explained. "I got stuck doing all of the building. So for about two months, my living room was essentially just a bunch of foldout tables with a bunch of electronics and electronic equipment on them. … It was all we had, so I had to make it work."
 
And it did  … mostly.
 
"I definitely caused one or two kind of electrical explosions and maybe ruined a couple of fuses in the process," Graff said, now able to look back and chuckle about it. "But we did create something that did work."
 
RUNNING, BUT NO LONGER UP AND DOWN THE SOCCER FIELD
Engineering and computers – even with the occasional living room mishap – have been a long-time interest to Graff.
 
But he's a relative newcomer to track and cross country.
 
"I was a big, big soccer guy. In my high school freshman year (at Wilson High in Portland, Oregon), I did absolutely no running, no track," he said. "Sophomore year in the spring, I did track just to stay in shape for soccer."
 
Even then, Graff went to track practice just two or three times a week, spending the rest of his time training with his club soccer team.
 
Then, something happened. His very first race on the oval that spring of 2015 was a junior varsity 1500 meters in a double-dual meet against Portland city rivals Roosevelt and Grant.
 
Graff won by three seconds, coming across the finish line in 4:37.82.
 
"I was like, 'Oh, this is weird' It was surprising," he recalled. "I'd never done it before."
 
Wilson's track and cross country coach also happened to be Graff's math teacher "so I interacted with him a lot."
 
He ran several more JV races that spring, winning another 1500 and one 800.
 
By the fall of that year, with the cross country and soccer seasons both at hand, Graff, now a junior, was ready to switch sports.
 
"I could just tell that soccer wasn't going to take me where I wanted to go," Graff said. "I didn't really feel like I had a whole lot left in me to give to it. The cross country coach was kind enough to let me race half the season. Eventually, I ran fast enough that they let me race more and more at larger and larger meets."
 
Graff was hooked. He wasn't part of the varsity top 7 that ran in the 2015 Oregon state meet, but nevertheless got to see Wilson take third place, making the awards podium for the first time in three decades.
 
As a senior the following autumn, Graff was Wilson's No. 3 runner and 35^th overall at the state meet as the team placed sixth.
 
"Since then, I've just been dedicating myself to running," he said.
 
A CHANCE TO BUILD – AND THEN DOING IT
As Graff pondered his post-high school possibilities, SPU was on the short list. The idea of majoring in computer engineering in a tech-centric city such as Seattle certainly had a strong pull on him.
 
But just as appealing was the possibility of helping to lift up a men's running program that had been down for a while.
 
"That was definitely one of the things that drew me here," Graff said. "The year I really got into the program (at Wilson), they had built up a team that got third at state and made the podium for the first time in something like 35 years.
 
"When I came to SPU, I saw that same opportunity, and that was what kind of sealed the deal for me a little bit, and just keep sticking with it through the good times and the tough times."
 
Graff said feeling a sense of connection right away with associate head coach Chris Reed, who works with the Falcon distance runners, played a role, as well.
 
"My time here, he has turned me from someone that likes to compete to someone who loves running," Graff said. "During races and hard workouts, when it comes time to really perform, when it gets really tough, he's just the person I want to work hard for. Everything that I've gained has come from that."
 
Of course, Reed was delighted that when it came time for Graff to choose, he chose the Falcons.
 
 

"He took a chance on us," Reed said. "He was a decent runner in high school and there were other programs that had more success that were talking to him. Then to see what he has been able to do in the last three years has been pretty cool.
 
"It was his (recruiting) class that really set the tone for the turnaround," Reed added. "He has been the leader of that group for the whole time."

When Graff arrived in the late summer of 2017, he was one of six freshmen on the nine-man roster. (He and classmate Colin Boutin are still with the program.) The Falcons were coming off a last-place finish in the previous year's Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championships.

 

By the end of that 2017 season, two of those freshmen (Peder Rickbeil and Graff) had led the Falcons to eighth place in the GNAC meet at Lake Padden Park in Bellingham – a jump of three spots from the previous year. In 2018, Graff was in the front of the Falcons' pack at conference in Monmouth, Oregon, finishing among the top 25 overall (24^th) and helping SPU take seventh.
 
Then last fall in the Montana snow at Billings, Graff cracked the top 10, placing eighth, and Seattle Pacific was all the way up to fifth as a team. Boutin, his roommate and the only other holdover (along with Graff) from that initial group of six freshman, was close behind in 12^th.
 
"There's definitely a huge connection there," Boutin said of the bond between him and Graff. "We do a good job working out with each other, and we both know that we're both into it and that we've been here since the beginning. We have different personalities and we also have different goals as far as running. But we respect each other, and that's what kind of makes us click."
 
SO READY TO RACE, WHENEVER IT HAPPENS
Although the 2019 season didn't end the way Graff envisioned, as he was not able to finish the NCAA West Regional race at Western Oregon due to illness, he has grown to the point that he now can put bad days such as that one behind him and focus forward.
 
"I think I was a little bit too ready a little bit too early to put together a great performance at regionals," he said. "I've honestly just kind of thrown that race out. What I took away from last season was not to dwell on the regionals race, but to see where I was at that conference race and use that as momentum going forward, rather than focusing on the one stinker I had last year;"
 
Going forward. Graff and his teammates have started to take that step with some small practice sessions – no more than five to a group, per local health regulations. Coming on the heels of last spring's outdoor track season being shut down, the fall season cross country has been canceled. But the Great Northwest Athletic Conference and its cross country coaches are talking about an abbreviated winter season – three meets plus a conference meet.
 
If or when that happens, Graff says he'll be ready to race.
 
 

"It'll be a relief. Even last weekend in a (team) time trial, it just kind of reminded me what it feels like," he said. "I actually felt way better than I thought I was going to during the race. I've been doing it casually for so long, to finally do it in a competitive mode again was really exciting for me."
 
The added time spent inside during the pandemic hasn't all gone toward building computer engineering projects in his living room. For instance, Graff, like many people, spent some time binging on Netflix, in particular  "Avatar: The Last Airbender," "The Legend of Korra" (the sequel to "Airbender"), and "New Girl."
 
"I've just been hammering those series," he said.
 
But like everyone else, Graff longs for a return to a regular routine.
 
"For me, I would just like to get a degree and find a job doing something that I'm passionate about," he said, adding that if a job doesn't materialize right away after he graduates next June, he'll look into pursuing a master's in computer science, with an eye toward his dream job of computer hardware development. "That's kind of the first priority right now."
 
That, and returning to competition.
 
"I'm maybe a month out from feeling like I'm in really good race shape," Graff said. "My hope is that by the end of the fall quarter, I'll be able to put something together where maybe I can have a PR performance. I'm pretty excited about that."
 
For Elius Graff, it's all about building something that works.
 
Whether it's with a big bang in the living room.
 
Or a big run on the race course.