Raindrops were falling on a chilly Cinco de Mayo as the Oregon track and field team hosted its final meet of the regular season in front of thousands of empty seats at Hayward Field. The cushioned stands were mostly occupied by athletes and staff from competing schools cheering on their runners.
The Oregon Twilight is usually a final signing off before the Pac-12 Championships. A metaphorical victory lap where the graduating class is honored, getting to feel the magic one last time before the end of their collegiate career. The 60-foot-high jumbotron was on, and the athletes were there, but the 12,650 roaring track fanatics Hayward is capable of holding weren’t.
Major results and titles don’t happen overnight, and neither will recapturing the hearts and minds of TrackTown. The magic of old Hayward is that it was a tangible part of the town, a place where students and Eugenians could truly run in the footsteps of legends. Now, it’s gated off. The only time citizens can step foot on it is if they pay $150 and run the Eugene Marathon once a year. Community involvement and championships are the way to make track cool again. That responsibility falls on one person: Jerry Schumacher.
The role of head coach of the University of Oregon’s track and field team in 2022 doesn’t mean simply coaching and winning titles; that’s a given. The burden of resurrecting the winning ways that Ducks of the past like Dan Kelly, Ashton Eaton and Raevyn Rogers have established was immediately placed on Schumacher when he was hired last July.
The other, possibly more difficult, part of Schumacher’s job will be connecting with the community known as TrackTown and getting enough butts in seats to justify the estimated $270 million spent on renovating Hayward Field into a mecca of sports seen today.
Besides a sweep of the Pac-12 last year, Oregon’s recent results haven’t been up to par. The program has had 22 combined indoor and outdoor national titles, and its last was from the 2021 mens’s team.
“I don’t know that anything is broken,” head coach Schumacher said at a press conference last August. “We want to continue to build off the rich tradition that Oregon has always had. This university, as far as track and field’s gone, has helped shape the sport itself for the last fifty years.”
It takes time for a new system and culture to sink into a program. In his 26 year career, 15 of which as the head coach of Bowerman Track Club, coaching 28 Olympians and winning USA Track and Field Coach of the Year in 2017, Schumacher has learned that staffing is critical.
“It begins with the staff and personnel that work with the athletes on a daily basis,” Schumacher said. “What they bring to the group and what they bring to the team. You can’t just have the right people on the bus, you have to have them sitting in the right seats.”
A new head coach’s arrival is typically like a hand grenade, blowing everything up for a clean slate. Schumacher kept working pieces in place by bringing back sprinting, relay and hurdling coach Curtis Taylor. “It was kind of an easy decision,” Schumacher said after looking at Taylor’s history and records set in his nine seasons with Oregon.
For distance and cross country, Schumacher brought heavy artillery with him from the Bowerman Track Club, Shalane Flanagan. The 2008 Olympic silver medalist and 2017 New York City Marathon winner has breathed fresh air into the deflating distance team. Under Flanagan, the men’s and women’s cross country teams finished 13 and 10 places higher than they did at the 2021 National Championship.
“We’re here to make them great athletes but most importantly great student athletes, helping them achieve whatever goals they have.” Flanagan said of the goals of the coaching staff: “We’re here to help create and build good people. Athletically, help them become the best possible athletes they can be.”
Brian Blutreich, who Schumacher has known for 25 years, was brought on to coach the throwers. “Big Blu,” as Schumacher affectionately refers to him, is the best throwing coach out there, according to Schumacher. When Blutreich moved from Arizona State to Oregon in August, two of his star pupils with proven results in major tournaments transferred as well: Jorinde van Klinken and Shelby Moran.
Reigning NCAA discus champion and shot put runner up, van Klinken declared to Oregon for her final year of eligibility. She set a collegiate record, Dutch national record and school record in her first shot put appearance as a Duck in February, throwing 19.57 meters. Moran finished fifth in hammer toss at the NCAAs last year, but stands at No. 3 in Oregon history with a throw of 66.6 meters at the Oregon Twilight on May 5.
Winning results aren’t everything, but they certainly correlate with captivating a community that used to care about track and field.
“There’s an existing community that I want to be able to reach out to,” Schumacher said. “Find ways to have them feel like they’re a part of everything we do here and part of our program, because that’s how Hayward Ffield was built.”
The World Championships showed the potential of what a refurbished and world class Hayward could be at full capacity. That is exactly what Schumacher wanted the event to do.
“It felt like we were finding our footing again in the sport here,” Schumacher said about the World Championships. “I’m hoping we can build off that energy. Some of that will be with the community and making sure that our fanbase is strong and that people want to come back and watch track and field.”
Things like the kid half lap with the Duck during Twilight or allowing the community to meet with athletes before the previews are great bonds, but difficult to solidify with only two home meets this season. The program will have to make up for it with a successful conference and national campaign.
It’s a symbiotic relationship: Improved results from Oregon athletes drive up attendance, igniting the magic of Hayward once again, and community support elevates the Ducks to achieve success on the track.
