written by: Thomas Lyons '26

Noah Mahoney '27 didn't always enjoy running, he explained over breakfast during a recent interview, dunking his french toast into a plastic cup full of syrup.

"I really had nothing better to do," he said.

The now National Championship competitor got his lamentable start at 11 years of age in local 5k races.

His parents, both doctors worried about growth plate injuries, didn't want him starting to compete seriously much earlier than that, Mahoney explained. And their brain-conscious aversion to contact sports kept him away from the football or hockey successes the 5-foot-8 athlete would have inevitably enjoyed.

But by junior year, Mahoney had found a gratifying rhythm, he said, eventually rewarded with college-recruitment-level performances.

Two summers ago, Noah said he traveled to campus with his father, Joe Mahoney '94, a Wesleyan runner in his days as a Cardinal student. 

After a campus tour with head Cross Country Coach Leo Mayo, Noah explored the area on a run with some Connecticut-based Wesleyan runners, with his father and sister following behind, he said. The only problem, Noah explained, was the other runners were also pre-frosh, and, while only a few weeks from moving in, they had yet to really know the area.

"So we go for a 10-mile run, and I'm with two kids who have never run in the area before, and we got totally lost," Mahoney laughed. "The whole thing was kind of a disaster."

In Noah's telling, his dad plays the hero and figures out how to get them back to Freeman. Joe had a different take.

"I got them lost," he laughed during a recent interview. "It'd been 20 years since I'd been back on campus." After two stops at different gas stations, they found the road home, and Noah's been running on his dad's old routes ever since.

Road to Nationals

"It had crossed my mind," Noah said about qualifying for Nationals, "but I thought there was no way."

Still, with diligent and consistent training throughout the season coupled with the coach's optimistic vision ("Coach Mayo's like hard rock music," Mahoney said. "Super energetic and always bringing positivity"), Noah said he felt ready when he toed the starting line at the NCAA Regional race in November.

After an impressive 25th-place finish, Noah earned All-Region honors and a spot at Nationals.

"While I was running [at Regionals], I saw two Vassar kids in front of me, and I knew I had to beat them to make nationals," Noah said. 'It was pretty amazing."

Notably, now-sophomore Stephanie Ager '26 also qualified for Nationals as a freshman for the women's team last season. She competed again at Nationals this season.

Noah's individual qualification marked the second such performance from a Wesleyan men's freshman in team history. The first? His father in 1990.

Joe Mahoney ran at Wesleyan in different D3 days, he said. Back when year-round training was anachronistic rather than the expectation.

"I was only running 40 or 50 miles a week in college," Joe said. Mahoney, a North Dakota native, was used to taking the cold winters off and said he didn't compete during the indoor track season until senior year.

Nevertheless, his impressive freshman year season culminated in a 26th-place finish at Nationals, at Grinnell College in Iowa that year.

"Based on my frosh time, I would have been 100th something this year," Joe said. In '88, Joe was the second freshman to cross the finish line, according to his memory. This year, Noah was one of 25 competing freshmen — the first finished 96th. Noah was one of four to qualify as an individual.

Joe cited early athletic specialization as a cause for the increasing competition. As a pediatrician, he wrote he finds this specialization unhealthy, but nevertheless he recognizes "the kids achieve great things."

"I appreciate the people giving their time and energy to the sport," Joe said. "It's not as easy as it used to be."

In addition to the tougher competition, Noah, stricken by the symptoms of a lasting sickness, reported being "in and out of consciousness on the drive down [to Nationals]."

"The day of the race, I was feeling a bit better, but my body was so tired," Noah said. "During the warmup, I felt it wasn't going to go well."

"I'm proud that I finished," Noah said, and he's reportedly set his gaze for the most improved prize at Nationals next fall.

20th Century Middletown

At Wesleyan, Joe started dating another cross-country runner, Deborah Levin '96. They got married in 1998.

"I can only say positive things about our time at Wesleyan," Joe said. "We only have very fond memories and are so glad Noah chose to go there so we can reconnect."

In a Hartford Courant article from 1993, then-coach Elmer Swanson described Mahoney's running stride as "so light on his feet — he just floats along. He doesn't look like he's doing anything until the other runners realize they can't keep up with him."

These days, he's still running "for fun forever," recently finishing a local 5k at 16:50, he said. Though don't doubt his aerobic capacity — Mahoney competed in the 2004 Marathon Olympic Trials.

"I can't let go of the competitive aspect," Mahoney said.