During a run a few weeks ago at a Penn State men's cross country team practice, first-year runner John Iannacone ran a little off course.

"Yeah, I got lost on one of the runs," Iannacone said. "I ended up going three miles farther than I had planned on."

Despite his unfamiliarity with the practice runs, Iannacone isn't exactly a typical first-year runner. Iannacone, 22, earned his undergraduate degree in May from Haverford College and decided to attend graduate school for aerospace engineering at Penn State.

Iannacone was a runner at Haverford, a Division III school, during his final two years and, since he had an extra year of eligibility, he decided to give running at Penn State a shot.

"After I enrolled at Penn State, I e-mailed coach Groves and told him I had an extra year of eligibility because I redshirted one year," Iannacone said. "I said I'd like to run while I'm here so I came to the tryout and made the team."

Since joining the team, Iannacone has become a solid contributor to the team's success and is slowly improving each week. At the team's first race in Lock Haven, Iannacone placed 14th and out of scoring.

In the Spiked Shoe Invitational on Sept. 24, though, he finished 11th overall with a time of 26:16 and was the team's fifth runner over the finish line, scoring for the meet and contributing to the Lions' second straight victory. Iannacone was Penn State's third runner to cross the finish line this past Saturday in the Penn State National Invitational, coming in 73rd place with a time of 26:38.

Iannacone's running career may have never reached this point following graduation except for the fact he still wanted to run competitively, so Haverford coach Tom Donnelly put in a call to Groves.

"Their coach called me up and said, 'You know, this guy doesn't have much background, but he's not bad, and he's got a great future,' " Groves said. "His first two years he didn't compete, but he came on pretty strong last year."

Whereas in other sports it's just not realistic for a Division III competitor to jump into Division I, Donnelly said that running is different, and Iannacone had the tools to succeed at any collegiate level.

"He's very self motivated and a really good competitor," Donnelly said. "Now he's in a great program, and there's no reason he can't get better."

Iannacone's success is all the more impressive because he was injured throughout his first two years at Haverford and couldn't compete until his junior year.

Those two years not competing turned out to be a blessing for Iannaconne. He rehabbed and spent the time off motivating himself for when he could come back.

"He just set an example as a person who was injured and worked hard to get back," Donnelly said. "He used a lot of that pent-up energy to motivate himself during his last two years."

Iannacone spent his last two years running for the cross country team at Haverford, and he was also a distance runner on the track team in the spring. Iannacone's best event last year was in the 1500m, in which he just missed making the NCAA Championships.

Donnelly said results like that and his ability to multi-task as a student made him confident that Iannacone would succeed at the Division I level.

"He's a very bright kid, so it doesn't surprise me [that he's succeeding]," Donnelly said. "A lot of runners may have physical ability, but without the other stuff, it doesn't mean anything."

While Iannacone loves the running, his main focus at Penn State continues to be aerospace engineering, a field he says combined with cross country leaves very little free time.

"Running and going to classes pretty much fills up most of my day," Iannacone said.

While it takes up a large portion of his time, Iannacone said that joining the cross country team has been really important in terms of finding a niche at Penn State.

"That's really helped me out a lot," Iannacone said. "It's helped me get into a good routine and just with little things."

Getting support from the team has been key as Iannacone sometimes feels like even though he's a graduate student, he often feels like a freshman just trying to find his way around.

"I'm older than most of the other people around, but I'm walking around feeling like they know everything," Iannacone said. "Like I don't know my way around, I don't know where I'm going. I get lost real easy."

Whether getting lost on the expansive Penn State campus or on practice runs during practice, Iannacone is slowly finding his ground and believes that he has running to thank for that.

Even if he had decided to focus on studying instead of competing, Iannacone would still be running because when you're a runner, it's a way of life.

"It's kind of a lifestyle sport," Iannacone said. "You go to bed at a certain time, so you can get up at a certain time. So you can run in the morning before class. You do your schoolwork whenever you have time to. It's one of those things where it kind of takes over your life."

That he would choose to compete in running on top of studying aerospace engineering says a lot about the type of student Penn State attracts, Groves said.

"He came here for one reason: aerospace engineering," Groves said. "I think that's important. We get people coming to Penn State because we have something to offer them."