Like so many other people at the time, Marcus Dillon dismissed the hurricane warning that came in on Aug. 29, 2005, as yet another false alarm.
Dillon, a sprinter who transferred to Oregon last summer and is now in his first year of competition for the Ducks, was then a student-athlete at Butler Community College in El Dorado, Kan.
On that fateful day when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, Dillon was at home with his younger brother, his mother and his mother’s husband.
“My mom was cooking,” Dillon said, “She was cooking up a big thing of food, had food on the stove and everything. Then we turn on the news and its says we need to pack up and leave, so we thought it was a threat again because we had been dealing with these threats already and she was like, ‘We’re not going nowhere.’”
Dillon’s stepfather eventually managed to persuade Dillon’s mother to leave the house and drive to Mississippi in hopes of evading the hurricane, but Dillon and his younger brother chose to stay behind in New Orleans.
“I thought it was a threat too,” Dillon said.
But the two men soon realized that this time, the warnings were for real.
First, they lost service on all phones, and thus lost all contact with their mother. Then the elements picked up, and the mounting hurricane churned the wind into a frenzy. Dillon and his brother made their way to the attic and stayed up there for days.
“Me and my brother stayed in the house, dealing with the water and wind. People were yelling, some people walking out, knocking on the doors. This whole time, the water was actually rising and getting higher and higher until the damn cars were knocking into the houses. That was the crazy part.” Dillon said. “Then you see the alligators and shit. See them in the water and see some caskets floating because the graveyard wasn’t too far from where we lived. And I guess the caskets came up and you could see the alligators flipping the dead bodies.”
Dillon and his brother survived the hurricane and made their way to Caline, Texas, where they were eventually reunited with their mother and her husband.
But the reunion did not change the fact that their home was gone. They’d lost everything but the clothes off their backs and his mother’s set of pots that she’d piled into the car before fleeing from the doomed city.
“The house was done, everything was gone,” Dillon said. “Photos. My national ring, my high school rings. Everything.”
With his life in disarray, it was a full year before Dillon – a former junior Olympic sprinter and Louisiana state 5A champion in the 400m – finally resumed his track training.
He spent the next few months finishing up some course work at Butler Community College in Kansas. Then, a summer track club coach introduced Dillon to Oregon sprints coach Dan Steele and they began discussing the possibility of Dillon running for Oregon.
“I was supposed to make it here for the Pac-10s of last year,” Dillon said. “What they tell me is that I was the missing link of the 4X400m and that me being here would have been extra points they would have gained to win Pac-10s.”
In the spring following the hurricane, Dillon arrived in Eugene set to enroll in classes and compete for the Ducks.
Then he hit yet another roadblock: His credits from Butler did not transfer over in time for him to compete with the Ducks in the spring. Disappointed, but determined to make the most of the situation, Dillon spent a term at Lane Community College competing for the Lane track team without a scholarship.
“I started at Lane, running for them, not even in shape, but I was winning,” Dillon said. “And that’s how I got hurt: running damn near everything they would give me.”
Still, he shook off his hamstring injury in time to spend the summer fighting fires all over the Northwest. In a single month, Dillon made $6,000, all of which he gave to his mother and the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
In the fall, after more than three years of hopping from school to school to pursue his athletic pursuits, Dillon finally donned green and yellow for the first time and made his Duck debut at the University of Washington Invitational in January.
Since running a 48.05 400m that day, Dillon has become one of the Ducks’ most reliable sprinters.
At the Pepsi Team Invitational, Dillon ran the 400m in 47.11, a regional qualifying mark. He also helped the 4X100m relay team to a 40.47 first place finish – another regional qualifying standard.
But Dillon’s not satisfied with his performance so far. He thinks he has a lot more in him, and he’s out to prove it.
“Honestly, I feel that I’m still not in shape,” Dillon said. “I’m okay, but when you’re so used to running something bigger, you know when you’re not competing like you normally compete. It feels different.
“I feel like I’m still not ready. Physically I can be there, but mentally I don’t think I’m there yet. After not running for so long, I really think I’ve forgotten how to run certain events. I’ve got to start all over again.”
He can cite the numbers to prove it. In 2002, Dillon’s best time in the 400m was 46.79. At the moment, he’s running in the 47 range. But after having had to rebuild his life, Dillon is certain that he’ll be able to rebuild his athletic career in the same way.
“I have to have the patience and think I’m going to get there and tell myself that I’ll get there,” Dillon said. “Not running on that level like I’m supposed to, that’s what scares me most. But I know it’s going to come. I just have to keep working.”