All-American Jason Hartmann has been steady at his No. 1 position for the Ducks, and redshirt senior Adam Bergquist jumped up to finish second for the Ducks at Saturday’s Pacific-10 Conference Championships, but three other members of the Oregon squad have been running steady all season.
Sophomores John Lucas and Brett Holts and redshirt freshman Ryan Andrus finished out third, fourth and fifth place, respectively, for the Ducks, and the three have been consistent scorers for head coach Martin Smith this season.
“We feed off each other, and every race, somebody from the pack has had a great race,” Holts said. “One day it was John; one day it was Adam; and one day it could be me or Ryan. You never know. But somebody is going to have a good day and the rest of us just keep working together.”
The team’s pack running strategy and the runners’ compatible personalities aid in the success in the team, Holts said.
“We benefit from each other and learn from each other,” he said. “Chasing down everyone together — it’s more of an adrenaline rush.”
The group is steadily preparing for the Western Regional Championships on Nov. 10. Smith’s practice routine is the same as it has been since the first day of practice, and Lucas described the workouts as “business as usual.”
Running with a mission
Bergquist, a fifth-year senior and the captain of the Oregon team, has scored in only one other race, a “B” squad race, this season for the men’s cross country team. Last weekend at the conference championships he finished 11th overall and second on the Ducks’ squad.
In his last year of eligibility, Bergquist has yet to make it to the NCAA Championships. Many people thought last year’s squad should have received an invitation, but the Ducks were withheld from the race much to the disappointment of the runners.
“Adam’s whole career here he hasn’t been able to make it to the show, or nationals, and last year we were denied, so he is on a mission to get there because it’s his last chance,” Holts said.
Waiting for Regionals
After a performance at the Pac-10 Championships that the women’s team would like forget about, the Western Regional meet on Nov. 10 will provide the Ducks an opportunity to place a positive punctuation mark on the season.
Laura Harmon is off the antibiotics that she was taking for a kidney infection, which adversely affected her performance in the last two races. Everyone else, other than Tara Struyk, who has been out the entire season, is healthy.
With Regionals still more than a week away, the harriers have plenty of time to think about the Pac-10 race. Junior and top runner on the team Carrie Zografos had what head coach Tom Heinonen described as “an off day” and said that she knows that she can run a better race.
“It would be easy to blame our performance on the temperature,” said Heinonen, adding that he knows Washington State, whose runners also train in colder temperatures and weren’t used to the heat of the Arizona desert, beat the Oregon runners by a margin of 55 points.
