Well, there’s always track season.
Last year, the pressure was on the Oregon men’s track and field team to finish the series of Pacific-10 Conference titles started by the football and men’s basketball teams.
This year, the track team is the only squad left with a chance to win a Pac-10 title.
But of any of Oregon’s major sports, the men’s track squad has perhaps the best chance to win that Pac-10 crown, and the Ducks could even compete for a national championship.
That’s what happens when you return two former NCAA champions to a team that finished second at Pac-10s in 2002. Decathlete Santiago Lorenzo and javelin thrower John Stiegeler, both individual national champions in 2001 who both redshirted last season with injuries, join 2002 Pac-10 champions Adam Kriz (hammer) and Brandon Holliday (400-meter hurdles), as well as 2002 Pac-10 runners-up Jason Hartmann (10,000) and Foluso Akinradewo (triple jump).
And then there’s the new talent. The biggest recruit was Jordan Kent, son of Oregon basketball head coach Ernie Kent. The younger Kent is a multi-event threat, as he won a total of eight Oregon 4A high school titles in the 100, 200, 400 and long jump. Travis Anderson, a Colorado high school champion in the 400, already holds the top Duck times in the 200 and 400 this season. Erik Heinonen, son of women’s head coach Tom Heinonen, was once the top-ranked high schooler in the 10,000 and should make an impact in the distance events.

Several Ducks will be in action this week at the Texas Relays at Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin, Texas. Lorenzo will compete in his first full decathlon of the season, starting today, and he will be joined in the event by fellow Ducks Gabe LeMay and Andy Young.
Thursday, more Oregon athletes will enter the fray as the Ducks’ 4×800 relay team will take on a deep, talented field. Holliday and Eric Mitchum will compete in the 400 hurdles, and Jason Slye will compete in the pole vaulting “B” section.
The meet is the first of four for the men before the Pac-10 Championships in Los Angeles May 17-18. After the Texas Relays, it’s all home cookin’ for the Ducks as they come back to Hayward Field for the Pepsi Team Invitational, the Oregon Invitational and the Oregon Twilight meets.
All those meets, including the Pac-10 Championships, lead up to the NCAA West Regionals in late May. In a year of change and rebirth, the NCAA West Regional is perhaps the most monolithic example of freshness.
In previous years, athletes attempted to hit marks that would either qualify them automatically or put them on a provisional list to make the NCAA Championships. Depending on how many athletes qualified automatically for each event, a certain amount of athletes (different for each event) were taken from the provisional list.
This year, however, that’s all changed. Athletes will attempt to qualify for regionals — where the qualifying marks will be much easier than the old NCAA automatic marks — and the top five finishers in each event will advance to the NCAA Championships. A selection committee will add 6-8 athletes to each event.
After the season, Oregon head coach Martin Smith will face the daunting task of merging two track programs into one. The Athletic Department announced in January that the programs will merge next season, with Smith as Director of Track and Field and Cross Country. The move was partly brought on by the announcement that Heinonen will retire at the end of this season.
Change is in the air, at Oregon and around the NCAA. But the Ducks are hoping that two things stay the same, at least. They hope Lorenzo and Stiegeler will return to form.
Then maybe the men could change Oregon’s Pac-10 title hopes.