BOSTON (AP) – Nick Symmonds showed up at the U.S. championships last year with his high school singlet and an accomplished but unheralded resume.

The middle distance specialist with a hockey player’s body won every NCAA championship race in which he competed – seven titles in all – but he did it at Division III Willamette University in Oregon.

He wasn’t considered much of a threat among the Division I stars at last June’s national championships in Indianapolis. Then he finished second in the 800 meters.

“I was surprised as anybody,” said Symmonds, whose Bishop Kelly “B.K.” singlet and his 5-foot-10, 165-pound build prompted competitors to wonder whether he was sponsored by the burger place.

“When I … looked up and saw my time, I knew at that moment I had made my career,” he said as he prepared for this weekend’s U.S. indoor championships.

The four-time NCAA 800-meters champ is looking for a strong follow-up at the Reggie Lewis center. Although he also won three Division III 1,500-meter titles in college – he will run the 800, a distance he didn’t try until he was drafted for a relay team as a high school sophomore.

He ran his leg in 1 minute, 57 seconds – a time his coach said could win the state championship.

“They just told me to run two laps, and I got the baton and took off,” he said. “I just went off sprinting and didn’t fade quite as much as the others.”

Local favorite Shalane Flanagan knows how one race can change a career. Her milestone race might have been on this very same track. At the Boston Indoors last month, she finished second to Ethiopia’s Meseret Defar but broke the American record in the 3,000, despite running for just the second time since undergoing foot surgery after the 2005 worlds.

Flanagan’s 8:33.25 finish put her in the lead of a points competition that will award a $25,000 bonus to the top male and female performance of the indoor season. Shot putter Christian Cantwell leads the men’s competition, thanks to a 71 feet, 91/2 inch throw at the Millrose Games.

He’ll compete in Boston against Reese Hoffa, the world’s best shot putter and reigning U.S. Indoor champion, and Dan Taylor. Among them, they have 13 of the top 14 throws in the world this year.

The 60-meter hurdles will feature David Payne, who won the event at the Boston Indoor meet; reigning outdoor high-hurdles champion Aries Merritt, who won at the Millrose Games in New York; and David Oliver, who won it at the Tyson Invitational. Joel Brown was second in the three previous indoor meets this season.

U.S. indoor and outdoor pole vault record holder Jeff Hartwig, 39, who won the national indoor title in 1999, will face 2006 outdoor champion Russ Buller and Tommy Skipper, the defending NCAA indoor and outdoor champion.