At last, it seems, Oregon track is back.
I, like many faithful Duck fans, was getting a little worried for a few years there.
The Ducks, situated in Tracktown, U.S.A., had put up dismal numbers at the Pacific-10 Conference and NCAA Championships for eight straight seasons, finishing no higher than 30th nationally and with no more than 10.5 points.
All of that is erased now, following Oregon’s 27-point, ninth-place finish at home for the NCAA Championships. The road back to the track and field elite hasn’t been easy.
When Bill Dellinger handed the program over to the current head coach, Martin Smith, following 25 years at the helm, the program was in bad shape. Dellinger had great success with local talent, mostly from Oregon and the West, but with programs such as Arkansas, Stanford and Southern California recruiting international talent, Oregon was getting left by the wayside.
In 1992, the year Oregon finished fifth at the NCAAs, 28 of the Ducks’ 33 points came from Pacific Northwest athletes Art Skipper, Tye Van Shoiack, Pat Haller, Bob Gray and Rick Mestler.
Arkansas, however, won that year and the next seven NCAA meets with overseas talent — African distance runners, Eastern European throwers and sprinters from the Caribbean. Many other teams followed suit and built up international-caliber teams while Oregon began to dwindle.
In 1993 and ’94, Oregon sent no runners to the NCAA meet. In 1995 it scored five points and placed 47th.

Many thought that it was Dellinger’s refusal to recruit significant international talent during this time that led to the program’s decline. In fact, two of the very few NCAA scorers in the late-’90s lull were Denmark’s Piotr Buckiarski and Britain’s Karl Keska.
Dellinger left in 1998 and handed the reins to Smith, who had two years similar to the past seven — sixth and seventh in the Pac-10 and 65th and 44th at the NCAAs.
That was before Smith’s first recruits became sophomores and juniors. Smith has dipped into the international pool of athletes, bringing in the school’s first Kenyan and Ethiopian runners — Simon Kimata and Michael Kasahun — as well as Argentinean decathlete Santiago Lorenzo. But they have been Smith’s only ventures outside U.S. borders, and for that matter, some of the only ventures outside Oregon.
One of the keys for Smith has been not missing out on blue-chip recruits from within the state of Oregon. This year’s 1,500-meter champion, Bryan Berryhill of Colorado State, was one of those blue-chips. The Central Point native received no interest from Dellinger when he graduated from Crater High School in 1996.
The same went for Tom Pappas when he graduated from Lane Community College that same year. In 1998, Pappas broke the collegiate decathlon record for Tennessee.
Smith doesn’t look to make the same mistakes, as he netted the nation’s top recruiting class last season, which included mostly Oregonians.
This year’s roster included 25 Oregonians, 11 others from the West Coast, four from west of the Mississippi River and three overseas athletes. Their ninth-place finish nationally proves that a team of local talent can work.
Eleven of Oregon’s 27 NCAA points this year came from Coos Bay native John Stiegeler, the national javelin champion, and Azalea native Billy Pappas, the younger brother of Tom, an All-American decathlete. Six more came from prized U.S. recruit Jason Hartmann.
With all the Ducks’ NCAA scorers, and many, many more, it looks as if Smith and the Ducks will be a national power with local talent for many years to come.