A big Vermonter from a small town is making waves in national track circles.

Andrew Wheating, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Oregon, entered the NCAA regionals on Friday with the fastest collegiate time in the nation for 800 meters. The 6-foot-5 native of Norwich has been undefeated against national-class competition this spring, but just six weeks ago few people had heard of him.

On May 9 at the Oregon Twilight meet, he ran 3:38.60 for 1500 meters — a time equivalent to a 3:56 mile — blew away a national-class field by more than two seconds, and qualified automatically for the Olympic Trials. He also shocked the track community, summed up by the reaction of the popular running Web site letsrun.com, which wrote: "Two weekends ago we're pretty sure we'd never heard of Andrew Wheating. Now he's upstaging Barack Obama."