Forty-five minutes before the men’s 4×100-meter relay Friday night at the Oregon Twilight Meet, Oregon Head Coach Robert Johnson chose to team up Devon Allen with Marcus Chambers, Travonn White and Christian Sourapas.
In a field featuring Lane Community College, UO Running Club and Pacific Lutheran, Oregon won with ease, clocking a fast finish at 39.61 seconds.
Even before the race, Chambers had already called the time they would finish. However, his teammates begged to differ.
“I said the time was going to happen,” said Chambers. “We are just all confident. I mean, I might have been overconfident, but I just know these guys. We all work hard, so I knew it would come.”
With Allen running the second leg, Chambers was put to run the last leg of the race, an order completely different from what the four are familiar with. However, no matter the order, the four found a way to get the job done.
“It was great, I mean, we always knew that we all can run different legs,” said Chambers. “But we finally put together a team that had the right legs together and went out to go run fast. We’re excited, so it’s all good.”
Allen said they had practiced for a week but didn’t expect to compete.
“I think we are surprised just because we didn’t run together and coach put these legs together 45 minutes before the race, we switched the legs up,” said Allen. “No marks or anything, we just went with it.”
The confidence in the group shows its in the Pac-12 Championships next weekend. Not sure what is going on here with this sentence.
“It’s nice to put this team together in an actual race,” said Chambers. “Practice is practice, but you don’t know what you going to do when the spotlight is on you. So it’s nice to get it to go.”
Whether or not Johnson keeps this talented group intact remains to be seen.
“I mean we ran this leg, we ran this team right now, we showed them what we can do but it’s all up to him,” Chambers said. “If he puts us together we will be ready unless somebody else steps in that’s fine we are going to make it work no matter what, but right now we’re happy with this group right here.”
To call a time is bold. Having the ability to trust in teammates to back up the call shows the seriousness of the four individuals.
“We just wanted to make sure we got in with each other and finally get ready for the Pac-12’s because there are some good teams out there and we want to try to get the win,” Chambers said.
