How far can the legs of Eric Logsdon and Ryan Andrus carry the Oregon men’s cross country team?
Who will step up for Marnie Mason’s women’s team, which has only four runners with collegiate cross-country experience?
These are just a few of the questions that both teams face this season.
Men’s head coach Martin Smith’s team finished 21st in the nation last year and welcomes back two exceptional seniors. Those two are Logsdon, an All-American the past two years, and Andrus, who barely missed All-American status at last season’s NCAA meet after earning the honor his sophomore year.
“Eric and Ryan are on another level,” Smith said. “One of our goals is to put them in a position to be All-American again and to help take them to a new level.”
After Logsdon and Andrus, the men’s team is limited in experience.
“The success of our team revolves around how quick and successful our four young athletes develop,” Smith said.
Those athletes are sophomores Kyle Alcorn, Patrick Werhane, Alec Wall and true freshman Chris Winter. Wall, who graduated from Grant High School in Portland, ran in three races for the Ducks in 2003 and set a personal best in the mile this spring with a 4:13.04 mark.
Winter, a native of North Vancouver, British Columbia, won the bronze medal at the World Junior Championships in the steeplechase.
“He’s a very accomplished high-school athlete,” Smith said.
Oregon women
The women’s team will have experience at the front of the pack, but will rely heavily on underclassmen to score points in the third, fourth and fifth positions.
Head coach Marnie Mason has just two returnees from last year’s squad: juniors Hariparkh Khalsa and Sara Schaaf.
Khalsa emerged as the Ducks third runner late in the season, highlighted by a top thirty-five finish at the Pacific-10 Conference meet. Schaaf, who ran for Mason at Klamath Union High School in Klamath Falls, ended the 2003 campaign by scoring for the Ducks in the west regionals.
Leading Mason’s squad, though, will be senior Laura Harmon. Harmon redshirted last year’s cross-country season in preparation for the 2004 track season. The decision paid off as Harmon shaved thirty-nine seconds off her 5,000-meter time and was an NCAA qualifier in the event.
“Even though she redshirted,
she had a great year of training,” Mason said.
Transfer Mandi Fitz-Gustafson is also expected to contribute to a Ducks team that finished fifth at the Pac-10 Championships last year. Fitz Gustafson ran cross country and the steeplechase for Arizona State, placing 39th at the 2002 Pac-10 Championships as a freshman.
Giving the Ducks depth will be six freshmen — Brianna Greg-Anderson, Heather Fitz-Gustafson, Kasy Hardwood, Meagan Kuntz, Katie Leary and Sarah Pearson.
“We’re an extremely young team,” Mason said. “We need the freshman to step up.”
This recruiting class is the first for the second-year coach, giving Mason a team with her stamp on it for the first time.
“This is a good core, a good start to a solid team and exciting things to come,” Mason said.
Both teams will play their second meet of the season in the Roy Griak Invitational in St. Paul, Minn., on Sept. 25.

Beau Eastes is a freelance reporter
for the Emerald.