2026 Chesterton Athletic Hall of Fame: David Osborn, Class of 2010, placed fourth individually at the state cross country meet as a senior on the day the team finished second, and in the spring broke school record in 3200 meters on his final day

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

At the state final meet the final stretch of the Lavern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course in Terre Haute makes for quite a sight.
The mass of bodies stretched across the wide finishing area can make it challenging to find the athlete you’re tracking, but on David Osborn’s final day of a phenomenal cross country career at Chesterton, he had no such problem.
When he crossed the finish line in fourth place, he then used every ounce of energy remaining in his body to wheel around to look for teammates. His mind sees that moment as clearly now as his eyes did 17 years ago.
“To finish and look back and see two, three, four guys from our team coming down the straightaway, that was an amazing experience,” Osborn said in a phone interview from his Colorado home. “And then getting second as a team, that made everything you did to get there all worth it.”
Osborn had no trouble naming the highlight of his distance running days at Chesterton.
“Definitely the state meet senior year, not so much for my performance but the whole team’s,” he said. Osborn also took home the state’s Mental Attitude Award, which comes with a $1,000 donation to the scholarship fund of the athlete’s high school.
“The drive toward a runner-up finish for the Trojans started well before the school year,” he said.
“We had a great group all four years and that came to fruition our senior year with how well we did, not just during the season but over the summer, which was a huge part. We had really good attendance over the summer runs. Everybody was consistently coming every single day to get the miles in.”
Osborn followed his fourth-place run at the state meet with a seventh-place finish at the Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Oregon.
During the regular season that same year, 2009, Osborn ran what remains the fastest 5K cross country time by a 21st-century Trojan, a 15:12, at the Artesian Classic in Martinsville.
Osborn’s high school performance earned him scholarship money to attend powerhouse Oklahoma State University, which today ranks tied for third in the country with the most men’s cross country national championships with six.
Osborn attained Chesterton’s best 21st-century time chasing North Central sophomore Futsum Zienasellassie, who placed three spots ahead of him at the state meet for his first of three state championships.
“Very nice guy,” Osborn said of Zienasellassie, who had spent time living in a refugee camp in northern Ethiopia before emigrating with his family to Indianapolis at age 14. “I did my best to recruit him on his visit to Oklahoma State.”
Northern Arizona University won that recruiting battle, and Osborn won a more significant one, recruiting another talented runner to join him for life. He is married to fellow OSU distance runner, the former Janelle Martinez. The Osborns have three children, ages 6, 4 and 2. David, a CPA, is VP of Finance and Administration at Front Range Community College in Denver.
His name still can be found on the expanded track and field Chesterton record book that includes events not run at dual meets or in the postseason. Ryan Cutter, Shane Kenney, Andrew Morris and Osborn ran a 4x1600 relay in 17:54.73 in 2010.
Osborn ended his Chesterton track career in style as well. With a strong kick over the final 100 meters Osborn moved from 10th to eighth in the 3200 meters and broke a 41-year-old school record with a time of 9:16.05. The kick enabled him to edge by five-hundredths of a second the record established in 1969 by Steve Wynder, a member of Chesterton’s first Athletic Hall of Fame class. Jake Kintzele broke Osborn’s record a year later.
Some distance runners prefer going around the oval track, over and over. Others prefer negotiating hills, paths cut through cornfields, and tree roots. Others find a way to enjoy both equally.
Osborn had a strong preference for cross country.
“I think it catered more to my abilities,” he said. “I was a little bit more of a grinder, so having hills and uneven footing lent itself to me performing better than what my physical abilities were and we did a lot of training on trails. We were fortunate to be surrounded by a bunch of trails to train on so that’s what we grew up doing.”
In addition to that, he said, he liked that cross country races kept the mind busier.
“It was a little easier for me in cross country because it was a little more natural to focus on whatever stretch you are in,” Osborn said. “OK, this is a downhill. This is an uphill. I have to make sure I don’t overdo it going up this hill, or, this is a flat section, so I have to pick it up. Track was tougher. It was more of a task to maintain that mental focus. You try not to think too much about yourself and focus on the person in front of you. I stayed in contact with that. Try not to think about how tired you are, especially toward the later stages.”
Osborn had his moments competing for the Cowboys, but also battled injuries. He placed sixth at the outdoor track Big 12 championship as a senior, running a 30:34.15 and placed 10th as a senior at the Big 12 cross country championship meet.
“I had a couple of stress fractures that kept me from being consistent, which is unfortunate,” Osborn said. “But when you’re surrounded by guys like that, you realize you don’t have the natural ability that they do, so you have to push your body as much as you can. It’s a fine line, doing too much, kind of overdoing it, but it’s kind of what it takes. If I didn’t go that hard, I wouldn’t have been able to stay with them.”
Osborn said he appreciated his distance coaches, Tim Ray and Tom Moeller, when he was running at Chesterton, but didn’t fully realize how far ahead of most high school coaches they were until getting to college.
“Talking to the other guys about the mileage of their workouts, for the most part they were far and away less,” he said. “It was more getting out and running and they were kind of getting by on natural ability. It made me appreciate how Coach Ray and Coach Moeller were so intentional with the workouts, so knowledgeable and how much they pushed us, and also did it in a way that we were having fun. That was another key thing. I always looked forward to going to practice, surrounded by my friends. The coaches were great and I had a fun time. I never dreaded going to practice or races or runs and that goes a long way.”
Whereas many high school cross country runners go through the first day of practice having no idea how sore they will be when they wake up the next morning, Osborn was way ahead of the pack in that regard.
The fourth of five children, he had three older brothers who had run at Chesterton.
“They all were running in high school when I was in fourth or fifth grade,” he said.
It looked fun to Osborn and friend/soccer teammate Daniel Carmody, so they thought they would try it.
“We’d wake up early Saturday morning and our parents were driving us to road races all over,” Osborn remembered. “We started running 5ks in fifth grade, sixth grade.”
So started Osborn’s road to stardom.
He will be honored with the rest of the 2026 Chesterton Athletic Hall of Fame class at halftime of the Trojans’ season-opening football game Friday, Aug. 21 and at the induction banquet on Aug. 22 at Sand Creek Country Club. The cocktail hour starts at 4:30 p.m. For ticket information, call the Chesterton Athletic Department at 219-983-3730.