Oregon head coach Martin Smith created the meet, and the Ducks did host it.
But as Stanford’s Gabe Jennings showed off his baton to a television camera after cruising to an eight-second win in the distance medley relay, the 4,041 in attendance were probably thinking the same thing — that Saturday’s Hayward Relays belonged to the Cardinal.
Oregon was successful in the field, winning the high jump, long jump and triple jump. However, with All-American senior Steve Fein sidelined by illness, the Ducks were without entrants in the 5,000 meters and steeplechase.
“Certainly not having Steve in the mix hurts our performance,” Smith said. “He’s sick right now and we couldn’t run him, so we have to go with what we’ve got.”
Which left the relays. Oregon finished a close second in the 4×100 and wrapped up the meet with its first track victory of the day in the 4×400.
However, it was Jennings in the 4×800, taking the baton with his team in fourth place. It was Jennings, surging up through the ranks to take the lead.
It was Stanford-led Jennings that stole the show.
“I was looking at the finish line before I even started — I was like, that’s where I’m gonna be,” said Jennings, pausing to hand water to his teammates. “We weren’t going for time, we were going to put on a show here and get excited.
“Right now we’re about competition. We’re about being mean out there when we need to be mean, but mean in a good way, mean in a positive way.”
Not to say the Ducks didn’t have their moments. Oregon’s three-second victory in the 4×400 was an emotional feat, fueled by the efforts of Jermaine Hanspard, Nat Johnson, Ross Krempley and Howard Moore.
“It feels great to finish the meet on a high note like that,” Johnson said. “We all ran pretty well. That’s about as good as I’ve felt all year. It was the first time I’ve run the second leg of a [4×400], but it felt awesome.”
Johnson was Oregon’s top finisher of the meet, also winning the long jump with a leap of 24 feet, 1/4 inches, just 1/2 an inch shy of his personal best.
Freshman Foluso Akinradewo won the triple jump with a mark of 48-7 1/2. Sophomore high jumper Jason Boness scored another NCAA provisional mark of 7-1 3/4 to win his event, but he failed to clear the bar at 7-3.
“I got the crowd into me, but [I] forgot my technique, pretty much,” Boness said. “I didn’t hit the positions that I needed to jump high. I still jumped high, but it wasn’t based on technique, it was based on energy I was getting.”
In the throws, freshman John Stiegeler finished second in the javelin with an eight-foot personal-best toss of 215-10. Sophomore John Bello upped his personal best in the discuss to 177-3 en route to a third-place finish, and freshman Adam Kriz also set a new best with a 185-6 hammer throw.