By Gus Morris
The men of Oregon’s track and field team proved on Saturday that Oregon is more than just a track school; it’s a field school, too.
The male field athletes combined to score 33 of Oregon’s 51 points on the first day of the Pac-12 outdoor track and field championships at Hayward Field, giving the Ducks 69 total points. Oregon holds a 13-point lead over UCLA heading into the final day of competition as the Ducks try and win their 11th straight Pac-12 title.
“I think overall as a group, we put ourselves in a pretty good position heading into Sunday,” head coach Robert Johnson said.
The Ducks scored 11 points in the long jump thanks to Damarcus Sampson — who won with a conference-leading 26-foot, 1-inch jump — and Mitch Modin, who came in eighth with a 23-foot, 9-1/2 inch jump.
Ten more points came in the javelin throw, where Cody Danielson placed second with a throw of 238-11 and John Nizich brought up the rear in seventh with a throw of 209-2.
The Ducks got 12 more points combined from the shot put, high jump and pole vault, highlighted by Cole Walsh’s second-place finish in the pole vault.
Eight individual athletes also qualified for running finals tomorrow. Kyree King and Damarcus Simpson will run in the 100-meter dash. King will also run in the 200 with Marcus Chambers, who also qualified for the 400. Mick Stanovsek will run the 800, while Sam Prakel, Blake Haney and Austin Tamagno will all run the 1,500. Braxton Canady is Oregon’s lone runner in the 110-meter hurdles finals.
Oregon entered Saturday with 18 points, courtesy of Joe Delgado and Mitch Modin, who placed first and second in the decathlon last weekend at the Pac-12 combined events championships.
That early lead served as a confidence boost for the Oregon athletes who took the track on Saturday.
“That was last weekend so coming in here we were excited the whole week,” King said. “That was a great start for Pac-12s.”
The increased confidence definitely did wonders for King, who ran the fastest preliminary time in the 100 (10.18 second) and the 200 (20.70 seconds) to qualify for the finals in each event on Sunday. He also helped Oregon’s 4×100 team run the second-fastest time of the day (39.86 seconds) as it finished a half second behind USC, which ran it in 39.31.
Not to be outdone by his sprinting, throwing and jumping teammates, senior Edward Cheserek put together a dominant run in the 10,000 to collect his seventh overall conference title and second straight in the 10,000. He said he’s starting to run out of room for all his trophies.
“I keep adding them but I don’t know what to do [with them],” Cheserek joked after his run. “There’s a lot in my house. I need a new place to put them.”
Johnson said that on Friday night he prepped his team for dealing with adverse weather conditions, which was right on message for Saturday’s forecast. A light rain doused the athletes for most of the meet, but it turned into a downpour at times.
Johnson told the team that like in life, track will not always be easy and that if they wanted a good chance to repeat as Pac-12 Champions, they had to push fight through the conditions.
“There’s no Sunday without Saturday,” Johnson said.
