The RoundHouse | 3/7/2019 4:01:00 PM

 
Ben Johnson made a red rectangular charcoal grill for a manufacturing methods class and that group project helped launch Johnson's transformation from a walk-on into an NCAA heptathlon qualifier. 
 
"I'm pretty sure every single dinner my second year of college I ate a frozen pizza," he said. 
 
Johnson improved his speed and technique over the years. He also improved his eating and sleeping habits. 
 
His diet is helped by weekly trips to Sam's Club to buy chicken and Sunday nights grilling for himself and roommate Lucas Shaffer. Johnson, a senior from Tonganoxie, swears he eats the same salad every week day for the past two-and-a-half years – spinach, grilled chicken, sometimes blueberries.
 
"I haven't gotten tired of it," he said. 
 
Johnson competes in the NCAA Indoor Championships heptathlon on Friday and Saturday in Birmingham, Ala. It is his first NCAA national competition. He ranks ninth with a score of 5,705 points, winning the American Athletic Conference title in late February, which ranks No. 2 on Wichita State's career list.
 
Johnson considered himself a football and basketball athlete most of his life. He started track and field as a junior in high school to help his conditioning for football and basketball. He said Wichita State recruited him because a former girlfriend recommended him to coach Steve Rainbolt. During his recruiting visit, he said he looked up the decathlon events on Google. 
 
He redshirted in 2014-15 and finished second in the Missouri Valley Conference decathlon in 2016. He won it in 2017. He finished fifth in the MVC heptathlon in 2016 and second in 2017. Those successes pushed him to make changes to his lifestyle.
 
"I wouldn't say I took it serious – I worked hard, but I didn't take it serious like I do now," he said. "Once I caught a vision . . . then you're thinking about conference titles and national meets. Now, I think I take it pretty darn serious."
 
Rainbolt knew Johnson didn't run particularly fast in high school. He saw a multi-sport high school athlete who could improve, much like past Shocker NCAA All-Americans such as Chris Dickman and Austin Bahner.
 
"Guys can develop if they're into it," Rainbolt said. "The best thing that we do here is that we build an atmosphere, build a culture where guys are working. They're developing athletically. (Johnson) could see guys that were ahead of him and realize that that guy was no much better than I was, or maybe no better than I was, and he really developed. Maybe I can develop."
 
Johnson struggled with the pole vault during the indoor season and Rainbolt called his performance in that event in the conference meet a key moment. Getting faster, however, played a significant role in elevating his scores to the NCAA level. Johnson's best in the 60-meter dash is 7.13 seconds.
 
"He's gotten legitimately fast," Rainbolt said. "Leg-speed development can happen."
 
Johnson also credits the emphasis on the multi-events at Wichita State with pushing his development. The Shockers took four of the eight point-scoring spots in the conference heptathlon. Last season, the Shockers won the 2018 Webb Cup, a national decathlon honor. 
 
"We can coach each other and we're competing with each other so much that we'll get better," he said.
 
Johnson ranked No. 33 in the decathlon last season with 7,272 points. The top 24 qualify for the NCAA Outdoor Championships. In the heptathlon, he ranked No. 19 with 5,615, three spots out of the indoor meet. He believes he pushed too hard during the outdoor season and wore down. This season, he learned patience.
 
"Last year, I almost did too much," he said. "If I didn't think the lifting was heavy enough, I would do more. This year, I told myself I was going to trust the preparation and if I had a day that was light, I would take a light day."

Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.