The rivalry between Oregon and Washington remains strong in football, even as the Huskies trudge through a winless season. Various scrapes in men’s basketball have deepened the divide between the two schools.
And if the Pacific-10 Conference Championships of cross country on Oct. 31 served as any indication, this not-so-friendly rivalry has extended to the golf course, and might make its way to the track.
Coming in as the nation’s No. 1-ranked team in the preseason, the Oregon women were supplanted by Washington in the Oct. 7 version of the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association poll after the Huskies placed seven runners in the top nine spots at the Oct. 4 Tiger Invitational, hosted by Auburn. The Ducks were dropped to second, but retained one of the 12 allotted first-place votes. (Tuesday’s poll anointed Washington the unanimous top-ranked squad – Oregon remains in second.)
At the Pac-10s, Washington accomplished something unseen at the Conference Championships: a 15-point sweep with a first- through sixth-place finish for the top six Husky runners. (Cross country meets are scored with points awarded in order of how runners finish; the lowest score among the top five runners from each team wins. Fifteen is the lowest possible score.)
“(Washington) took the pace out really hard, and us being competitors, we didn’t want to let them get out in front,” senior Lindsey Scherf said after the race.
The clash of the nation’s top two women’s cross country teams turned into a blowout that left Oregon runners visibly frustrated. It also served as a critical point for a program on the rise.
Greg Metcalf, Washington’s track and field and cross country coach, was a two-time All-American distance runner for the Huskies in his collegiate tenure, from 1990-93. Metcalf was hired as an assistant coach in 1998 and became head coach in 2007. Through Metcalf’s affiliation as an assistant and head coach, the Huskies have made nine of 11 possible NCAA Championship meets.
In 2006, however, Washington was on the outside looking in, sending only two runners, sophomore Anita Campbell and junior Amy Lia, to the NCAAs. Lia finished 55th overall and Campbell finished 89th. The tide turned in 2007, as a young top seven of runners (one senior) helped propel the Huskies into the NCAA meet, after finishing tied for third in the Pac-10s and fourth at the NCAA West Regional meet. Then-sophomore Katie Follett and Campbell finished 15th and 16th, respectively, to lead the Huskies to an eighth-place team finish, the highest in school history.
Follett and Campbell earned All-American honors, the first time Washington had multiple All-Americans in one season.
Fast forward to Halloween afternoon, as freshman Kendra Schaaf, native of Craven, Saskatchewan, sprinted to the lead in the first 400 meters and never relinquished it, finishing with a course-record 19:24.05. Schaaf was the 2007 champion at the Canadian Junior Cross Country Championships and the 20th-place finisher at the 2008 World Junior Cross Country Championships in Scotland.
Sophomore Marie Lawrence, who finished 13th at the 2007 Pac-10s and finished second in three consecutive years in high school, came in second. Freshman Christine Babcock, a Beijing Olympic Trials qualifier in the 1,500m, took third place.
Campbell and Follett finished fourth and fifth, respectively, at the Pac-10s, and senior Amanda Miller finished sixth. Miller, a native of Wenatchee, Wash., also qualified for the Beijing Olympic Trials in the 1,500m.
“We have done a phenomenal job recruiting runners with great bodies and with right personalities for our team,” Metcalf said. “Our entire team gained a momentum from that.”
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