When Sarah Pearson stepped on the Hayward Field track for her first home race as a Duck four seasons ago, the track and field program was in turmoil.
Martin Smith had just resigned as head coach a day before the outdoor season started and the direction of the program was up in the air.
Now, as Pearson prepares to step on the Hayward Field track for her final home race as a Duck, she can look back at her career and appreciate as much as anyone the changes that have occurred, both on and off the track.
She described that first year as one that couldn’t go much worse. “It was just kind of like banging our heads up against a wall,” she said. “Everyone was trying to do their best but not doing really well.”
Off the track wasn’t much better.
“The guys and girls were very separate,” she said. “We didn’t have a team entity at all.”
The arrival that summer of Vin Lananna as head coach changed all that, though. Pearson credits him with changing the dynamic and direction of the program.
“Our team is getting better and better and instead of going to meets and having no one know who we are, people across the nation are talking about Oregon, which is really exciting,” she said. “Everyone’s doing such amazing things, you’re like, ‘I can do that too!’”
Pearson, a home-schooled Eugene native who ran for South Eugene High School for three years, said that despite the uncertainly surrounding the 2005 season, she never considered transferring, saying she knew the situation could only get better.
“I took it as a positive thing,” she said. “I think if I had been on the guys’ side I might have just because they did have a good team but for the women … I knew it would be positive and so going somewhere else would be as much of a risk as just staying here and seeing what happened. And then when they brought (Lananna) in, it was like ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be good.’”
As someone who has lived in Eugene since before she turned one, Pearson knew and had been around Oregon track and Hayward Field most of her life. Lananna said that makes a difference in how she approaches being an Oregon runner.
“She appreciates what it means to be a member of a community that embraces her sport and respects her ambitions and hard work,” he said.
As a sophomore, Pearson helped the Ducks to a third-place finish at the Pacific-10 Conference cross country meet with an 18th-place finish. Then, despite never racing either distance prior to that season, she scored in the 10,000m at the Pac-10 meet and qualified for the West Region meet in the 5,000m, where she placed 14th.
The next year, she had her second-straight top-20 finish at the Pac-10 cross country meet, but an unusual injury kept her out of track season. After feeling pain off and on for a while, Pearson was finally diagnosed with a six-millimeter fracture on her femur right below where it connects to the pelvis. She said she looked up how other people got that injury and found that it was mostly “old ladies stepping off a hill” and that there was no data on people with that injury under 70 or 80. They never figured out what caused the injury, but Pearson said she’s pretty sure it was an overuse injury.
It kept her out until June, and she didn’t start doing normal workouts until September. That meant that she was still rounding into shape as cross country season started.
“For me, each race was better and I just climbed higher and higher,” she said.
She was the fifth finisher for the Ducks at the Pac-10, West Region and NCAA Championships as the women finished second to Stanford each time.
Despite the disappointment of coming so close, Pearson was happy with the progress the team made.
“It’s still something special,” she said. “It is kinda sad to have the shirts that say ‘men’s team champions, women runner-up,’ but it makes everyone more excited for next year.”
This track season has seen more success for Pearson, who has set personal bests in all three of her events, the 1,500m, the 5,000m and the 10,000m. She will run the 1,500m at the Oregon Twilight tonight before getting ready for the Pac-10 Championships next weekend, where she is a threat to score in multiple races.
“It just astounds me, because two years ago, I mean seventh or eighth was OK, but as far as doing something special, I never really thought that I could,” she said.
Lananna attributes that to the determination of a senior.
“She has really directed her focus and attention on to helping the team and she’s determined she wants to be good in her senior year,” he said.
As she leaves the program with it in better shape than it was when she arrived, Pearson sees the foundation being laid for long-term success.
“We’re getting good recruits every year and that’s what you need to sustain,” she said. “All the facilities and stuff and the Olympic Trials, it just builds and builds. I don’t think it’ll go down.”
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