‘It was blind faith’: Gonzaga’s Rosina Machu, a refugee from Ethiopia, has transformed from solid high-school runner to two-time WCC cross country champion

Rosina Machu has run herself a world away from her earliest memories, without distancing herself at all.

She was just 5 years old when her family managed a flight from the Shimelba refugee camp in Ethiopia, and yet bits and pieces always filter back: the queue to fetch water, the mud house and straw roof, the malnutrition that plagued the populace of 18,000, the soldiers and their AK-47s. She especially remembers the case of malaria that she and her sister Sabunary contracted , the goat skin bed on which she spent the better part of the next year and the caregiver who forced two fingers down her throat as the most direct of cures.

She remembers, too, experiencing the Pennsylvania snow for the first time after her family’s first 7,200-mile relocation. And traffic.

“I didn’t know what cars were or how traffic and signals worked,” she said. “One day, my family was out walking and it was during peak rush hour, and out of nowhere I ran across the street and scared my parents. I didn’t get outside much after that.”

That mad dash was not what set Machu on her current course. There would be considerable reluctance to be conquered before she would run with purpose.

But now, often as not, she’s out in front of the traffic, as she was two weeks ago in her Gonzaga singlet winning another West Coast Conference cross country championship – the first Bulldog to go back -to -back in conference history.

The next stop is just 60 miles down the road at the NCAA West Regional on Friday at Colfax Golf Club, where Machu will try to earn her way back to the national meet – and maybe tow her teammates along with her this time. She was 16th running solo at last year’s NCAA finale and an All-American, circumstances that no one saw in the crystal ball.

Not Machu herself, who considered quitting after her first collegiate practice. And not her coach, Jake Stewart, who could probably take more credit for finding a ruby amid the rubble but won’t.

Fact is, Machu was not an unaccomplished high school runner in Boise, where her family settled after that brief stop in Pennsylvania. She never finished lower than sixth in four runs at Idaho’s state championships, and helped Boise High School to three team titles.

“But I’d be lying if I said what she’s doing now was the expectation,” Stewart said. “She was in that recruiting class after COVID where we couldn’t go on visits and we couldn’t be off campus to see her run. It was blind faith in a lot of ways. She wasn’t even the top runner on her high school team, but I always thought she’d be a solid program runner for us.

“I didn’t see her being a force to be reckoned with, however.”

But then, Machu is all about unlikely journeys.

Her parents, father Shuri and mother Nigisti, had been in Shimelba for a couple of years before Rosina was born. In 2007, with a third child on the way, the family was one of a few hundred in the camp to be granted asylum in the United States.

“They were leaving their families behind to come to a country where they didn’t know the language,” Machu said. “They just wanted a better future for their children and I’m forever grateful.”

By 2008, she found herself in Boise, trying to navigate the same social obstacle course as other 6-year-olds without the benefit of speaking the same language. Her friends were made in English learning development classes – “people in the same boat as me, and they became lifelong friends,” she said. But in regular classes, she rarely spoke or interacted until her confidence improved in the third grade.

“Now I never know when to stop talking,” she said. “My parents tell me I talk too much sometimes.”

This was not altogether different than her athletic development, except that she wasn’t at all interested in having any beyond a game of tag. Her father, a big Arsenal fan, tried desperately to steer her toward soccer. She wasn’t having it. In third -grade fitness testing, she was tasked with running a mile and wound up winning, which set her PE teacher aflutter about her turning out for cross country a couple of years down the road. Sure, Machu said.

“To get him to stop bothering me about it,” she said.

But turn out she eventually did, and discovered that being good at something was fun and another step in her socialization. Boys recruited her for the mixed relay teams. She even stepped out of her lane in one meet and won the softball throw. In high school, the older girls took her under their wing and she was hooked.

“It wasn’t that I was just good at it – I loved the competition and I loved the social aspect,” she said. “Running is different that way, I think. You don’t have people talking trash at the starting line. People are supportive. It’s just so nice. People talking smack, it just doesn’t happen. It’s sunshine and rainbows.”

Well, mostly.

When she got to Gonzaga, the mileage was higher and so were the stakes. It didn’t seem like “just running” as it had been through junior high and high school.

“Her first meet up in Cheney, a low-key 4K, she was crying,” Stewart remembered. “There were tears in her eyes. She was that nervous.”

She ran fourth in that race, but the competitive spikes were dramatic. She was 143rd at Wisconsin’s prestigious Nuttycombe Invitational, then 17th at WCCs. After one track race indoors, she was shut down with an injury.

The turning point, from Stewart’s perspective, came at NCAA track regionals as a sophomore, when she was among the top five with a kilometer to go in the 5,000 before fading – “just not running afraid and tiptoeing through it.” Machu herself points to Chicago’s Lakefront Invitational last fall after a strong summer of training.

“Something changed,” she said. “I led from the go and never looked back. It was just going into the race with no expectations. All expectations can do is suck the joy out of it and I’ve tried to keep it that way ever since.”

Last spring, she ran third in the regional 5,000 meters and 15th at nationals. She owns five school records indoors and out, including a 4-minute, 40.50-second mile and a 32:45.57 for 10,000 meters. And that Nuttycombe race that left her 143rd as a freshman? She was third this time against many of the nation’s best.

And if she runs without expectation, she doesn’t skip on gratitude.

“Sometimes when I start to complain about stuff, I think about what my family has overcome,” she said, “and I realize I cannot complain. We still have family in the camp, struggling every day, no privileges. I’ve been given opportunities and it’s my job to make the most of them when presented. If I think things are getting too hard, that’s all I need to remember.”

The hard times a world away, but still with her every step.