The long run back

On Aug. 29, 2024, Flyer Owen Pukys turned 21 without celebration. Four weeks of being sick, and getting sicker, was wearing on him, so he went to bed.

He wouldn’t wake again until mid-afternoon Aug. 31, on a ventilator in a hospital bed.

This was the start of a new chapter in his life as a runner and an individual, one that would make personal resilience — and reliance on others — important if he was to live, let alone thrive.

Pukys, a computer science major and junior at the time, was on campus in early August for cross country training when his symptoms started. They were manageable at first — a fever and stuffy nose.

“One day during a long run — and I can count on one hand how many times this has happened — I had my coach pick me up because I couldn’t finish the run,” Pukys said. “I knew something was starting to brew, something wasn’t right.”

He began experiencing excruciating headaches, nightly fevers that kept him from sleep, ear infections, weight loss and unmanageable pain. Doctors at the UD Health Clinic and Miami Valley Hospital attributed the symptoms to a severe case of mononucleosis.

But, according to Pukys, “mono was like the broken lock on the gate. It was a snowball that then started to form and turn into something much bigger.”

On the morning of Aug. 30, Pukys’ roommate, friend and teammate, Noah Clemens ’26, saw a text message he received from Pukys’ mom the night before. She said Pukys had not responded to her and asked Clemens to check on her son.

Clemens found him breathing raggedly and not responsive to sound or touch. He moved quickly, gathering their roommates to contact Public Safety and clear the way for emergency responders. Then he had to respond to Pukys’ mom.

“That’s probably the hardest phone call I’ve had to make. She kept asking for me to put him on the phone,” Clemens said, his voice cracking as he revisited the moment. “And obviously, I couldn’t do that.”

Pukys’ temperature was recorded at a dangerous 108 degrees at Miami Valley Hospital’s emergency department, with doctors unsure how long or how high his fever had gone.

Now in a coma, he was moved into the intensive care unit. Everybody else — family, friends, teammates and coaches, and other University personnel — had to sit and wait.

“A good assumption would be that I was going to be in a terrible state, an irreversible state,” Pukys said.

During one visit to the ICU, Clemens and fellow roommates were talking to themselves and Pukys’ parents. Somebody called Pukys a “camel” — a longtime reference indicating his ability to endure and go the distance in intense conditions.

“I looked at Owen and his eyes opened a little bit. I saw his face change, and that was when we were like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s still there,’” Clemens said. “It was a big relief.”

Healthcare professionals eventually identified that Pukys was fighting more than mononucleosis. He also had an infection in his mouth and a liver abscess — a trifecta that, left untreated, could have killed him.

“Time was not on our side by any means, but when you have good decision-makers in your life and people that really care about you, that’s what makes this whole thing so, so special,” Pukys said.

After “enough antibiotics to kill a horse,” according to Pukys, the endurance runner’s long road to recovery began.

Nerve damage from the waist down affected his ability to flex his feet toward his body. This meant relearning how to walk would be hard, but possible. Competitive, long-distance running, however, seemed to be off the table.

“His goal was to be a recreational runner at first, but I never wanted to remove him from our roster,” said David Dobson, UD cross country head coach and track and field assistant coach. “He was part of the team, and we were going to see him through.”

The campus community rallied around Pukys and his family. Marianist brothers visited regularly. Dayton athletics staff drove him to appointments. Ryan Loar, UD sports medicine physical therapist, assisted Pukys with literally every step of his recovery.

Pukys spent the last half of fall semester in physical therapy and other treatments, including for mild post-traumatic stress disorder that gave him nightmares of waking up in a hospital on the ventilator.

He found relief by turning to the things he knew brought out the best in himself — his team and running. Dobson said he remembers trying to encourage Pukys and had to balance accountability with pushing too much too soon.

“I tried to frame it as, ‘Hold yourself to today’s standard, you are not where you were and that’s fine, but chopping wood is about taking a swing every day, the best you can today,’” Dobson said, referencing Joshua Metcalf’s Chop Wood Carry Water, one of his personal and professional growth inspirations that worked its way into the team’s philosophy.

That summer, Pukys ran daily to get back into shape. When he returned to campus for the start of the cross country season and his senior year, he was unstoppable.

He won the team’s first 8K of the season, also the first race he had ever won, at 24:30.8. At the next meet, he broke the school record and set a personal best at 23:51.4.

The cross country team went to the Atlantic 10 championships a few weeks later, where Pukys finished in third place at 23:58.9 and was named first team all-conference for his performance.

“It doesn't matter what I thought at the beginning of the season, if I could be there at the conference, if I could break the school record. It was just another day. Just keep moving on, and those things will come if you surrender the outcome,” he said. “And that's precisely what I did.”

This April, he received a RUDY award during an event hosted by the UD Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and Dayton athletics administration. The RUDY is awarded to a person who most epitomizes what it means to be a Flyer. Clemens, too, was one of two winners of the event’s presidential outstanding scholar-athlete award.

Pukys’ resilience is being recognized nationally. In June, he received the National Association of Academic and Student-Athlete Development Professionals’ 2026 Wilma Rudolph Student-Athlete Achievement Award. Krystal Warren, senior associate athletics director, and other athletics staff nominated him for the N4A award that honors student-athletes who have overcome great odds — personal, academic, emotional or otherwise — to achieve academic success while participating in intercollegiate athletics.

Losing his junior year to illness and injury means Pukys has one more year of running eligibility that he will use at Duke University while earning a master’s in business administration.

No matter where the trail takes him, Pukys is finding comfort knowing that he didn’t —and didn’t have to — do it alone.

“That’s the significance of having good people in your life, good roommates, people who care about you, and a mom whose motherly intuition literally saved my life.”

“That’s the significance of having good people in your life, good roommates, people who care about you, and a mom whose motherly intuition literally saved my life.”

PHOTOS BY SYLVIA STAHL '18

A version of this article appears in print in the Summer 2026 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 17. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE