Saturday’s Oregon Invitational pitted a number of current Ducks against former ones in a variety of events. The highlight of the day was junior hurdler Eric Mitchum running against former teammate Brandon Holliday in the 400-meter hurdles.
Holliday finished his eligibility last season, ending his Oregon
career as a Pacific-10 Conference champion in the 400 hurdles. The Beaverton native continues to train in Eugene and now represents Team XO, a team of mainly post-collegiate athletes who train in Oregon.
At Saturday’s meet, Holliday won the 400-meter hurdle event, squeaking past Mitchum by
.78 seconds. Holliday finished at 51.47, while Mitchum crossed the finish line at 52.15. Mitchum said that despite being opponents, it was not at all different going up against his former teammate.
“It’s the same,” Mitchum said. “But you know, we still train
together, and he will always be my teammate.”
Rupp bounces back after falling in debut race
Galen Rupp made his Oregon debut on Saturday and finished fifth in the 5,000-meter event with a time of 13 minutes, 50.1 seconds. Midway through the race, Rupp fell to the track and had to quickly bounce back after slipping to 11th place. He said it was unfortunate timing in his first race as a Duck, but he’d rather have it occur now instead of later.
“It’s going to happen sometimes, and you can’t always expect to run a perfect race all the time,” Rupp said. “I’m just glad that it happened to me early in the season as opposed to the NCAAs or regionals where it really matters.”
Tight finish among Oregon runners in 400-meter event
The Ducks also placed well in the 400-meter event with three athletes finishing in the top four. Senior Kedar Inico won the event (46.56) by just a 10th of a second against teammate Matt Scherer (46.57). A.K. Ikwuakor placed fourth with a time of 47.59.
Inico said he and Scherer followed their coaches’ advice to push one another in the race.
“I went with the coaches’ plan to get out and stay with my teammate because he’s fast, too,” Inico said. “We were actually the two fastest competitors, so (if I) stay with him, we work each other.”
Scherer said the goal of the race was to get Inico a regional qualifying mark, which they
accomplished.
“And that’s what we did,” Scherer said. “We work together; I worked the first half of the race, and he worked the second.”
Oregon keeps up with Pac-10 opponents
The Ducks stayed ranked in the top 15, securing the No. 11 spot for the week of April 26, according to trackwire.com. Five other Pac-10 Conference opponents are ranked, four of them in the top six. Arizona is ranked No. 3, followed by
Stanford at No. 5, Southern California and Arizona State tied for
No. 6 and UCLA at No. 19.

[email protected]