Dennis Dixon wasn’t the only Oregon athlete to give up baseball this year.
Meet freshman jumper Vernell Warren, who turned down a partial scholarship to play ball at two-time defending national champion Oregon State and joined Oregon after competing in only five high school track meets. Like Dixon, he was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in the 2007 Major League Baseball amateur draft.
While Warren turned down the sport he loved and played since the age of five, it was with good reason.
The 5-foot-10-inch Portland native recorded a mark of 6 feet, 7 inches in his first-ever competition in the high jump and cleared 6-10 to win the Oregon Class 6A state championship last year.
“I was always wanted to do track throughout high school but they’re always the same season. Finally one day my senior year after baseball practice, the high jump pit was still out. I ended up going out there with one of my friends, messing around, and I ended up jumping 6-3 in regular shoes – the first time I ever did it. The track coach found out about it and said I had to run track.”
From that point, Warren competed in the meets while still playing baseball.
After the state meet, Oregon coaches approached him and offered a scholarship to join the Ducks. Feeling torn between the sports, one was his first love and the other he’d only participated in for a few weeks, Warren knew the decision would determine his future.
“It came down to the last couple days of the signing period,” he said.
He chose Oregon track for a variety reasons. He was, obviously, good at jumping after winning state, the history and atmosphere of the Oregon track team appealed to him immediately and he knew playing time in Corvallis would be hard to come by.
“There were a lot of incoming freshmen at Oregon State and that kind of steered me away. I didn’t know how much playing time I was going to get. For track, I’d be able to compete right away,” Warren said.
Warren has been competing this year but hasn’t reached 6-10 again. He said it’s part of the adjustments he’s had to make while learning the technical aspects of his event.
“You have to learn first before you can apply it to your natural ability,” Warren said. “I used to stutter-step, I didn’t arch my back enough, my planting of my take-off foot was wrong – basically everything.”
He’s been making progress, but Oregon associate head coach Dan Steele said Warren still has a ways to go. Although he won the state meet, they were concerned if Warren had already reached his peak.
“We had some meetings where we discussed the pros and cons of a kid that could be a flash in the pan, ‘Is he legit or is he not legit?’ And the decision was, ‘No, this is a kid who is a very good athlete and it will be our job to make sure that we can teach him and coach him to be consistently good at the collegiate level.’
“Technically, he still has a long way to go. He’s very inconsistent and there’s no surprise there. He’s doing some technical events that do take a while to develop, but he’s shown us enough really exciting things that we feel great about this kid. You can see what kind of an athlete he is and he’s just getting better and better.”
Warren’s also been long jumping as well and jumped over 24 feet during the indoor season. He said he’ll do both this weekend against UCLA, hoping to score points in what’s expected to be a contested meet.
“I like pressure being put on me. It makes me do better,” Warren said. “I like being the underdog too.”
As for playing baseball for the Ducks next year, Warren would like to but each sports’ schedule would conflict too often.
“If they were different seasons, easily,” he said.
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