The third home meet of Oregon’s outdoor track season again features a host of elite women’s college athletes today and Saturday. Similar to the Oregon Preview, unattached athletes, as well as collegiate athletes, are coming to Hayward Field for the Oregon Invitational.
Amber McGown almost became an unattached athlete, someone whose college eligibility expired and joined the real world. But former Columbia coach and current volunteer Oregon assistant Maurica Powell talked McGown away from a job in her native Canada.
The middle distance runner’s years of college eligibility at Cornell had ended and she started working as a coordinator of fund development for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.
McGown’s coach Lou Duesing and Powell started talking. By the end of August, McGown had investigated master’s degree programs and decided to use her fifth year of eligibility at Oregon. The extra year came because McGown missed her sophomore year with a stress fracture. The problem was, once an Ivy League athlete graduates, they can no longer compete in the conference. In order to use her fifth year, McGown needed to find another place to run.
“This is such a storied program,” McGown said of Oregon. “I couldn’t pass it up in the end.”
Cornell is located in up-state New York. Ithaca, where Cornell is situated, is small and less athletics-based, but has Eugene’s rain and cloudy weather, McGown said.
“Sometimes it’s hard to get mentally back into being a student, but the running’s been going so great that it’s making everything move along really well,” she said.
McGown smoothly integrated herself with Oregon’s cross country team in the fall, placing fourth on the team in the Pacific-10 Conference Championships. She qualified for the indoor national meet and beat the NCAA provisional time (4 minutes, 27.8 seconds) in the 1,500 at the Stanford Invitational in 4:21.30.
“I got more nervous for my first race at Hayward Field than I did for the national final because people know you and they are so excited about it,” McGown said.
Tactics and training took precedence in her first 800 in the Oregon Preview (first, 2:13.00) and McGown is looking forward to running her own race under the lights Friday night, she said.
“The atmosphere is different – all the people here,” McGown said. “I’m really excited to do a night race.”
Many of Oregon’s top women athletes, who made headlines in recent weeks, are set to compete beginning today as well.
Rebekah Noble took the spotlight with her 2:03.11 800-meter run two weeks ago – fourth best all-time in Oregon history. Noble’s mother and sister are coming to watch her likely run the 400 and possibly the 800, depending on weather and coach Vin Lananna’s input.
“Right now, it’s all about making sure there’s a good deal of variation in the events she does so she doesn’t get flat,” Lananna said.
Oregon’s all-time record books now list thrower Britney Henry at No. 1 in the hammer. She more than cleared her previous record of 208-7, set in the Oregon Preview, with a throw of 221-7 at the Mt. SAC Relays last week. She also reset the Pac-10 record, topping the old best of 219-5 set by UCLA’s Jessica Cosby in 2004.
“She’s coming along nicely,” Lananna said. “(With) 221 early, who knows where that will head.”
Henry is currently focusing on small technical changes.
“The more I define the movements, the farther the hammer is going to go,” she said.
The Pac-10 Conference honored Henry as its Outdoor Women’s Field Athlete of the Week.
Heptathlete Lauryn Jordan is sticking to the triple jump Saturday. This weekend is an opportunity for Jordan to rest coming off the Mt. SAC Relays and focus on an event her coach believes she can excel in, Jordan said.
But with only one event, is it easier? Harder?
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never done that.”
With 5,426 points at Mt. SAC, Jordan surpassed the NCAA provisional mark of 5,000 and said she is in line for the Pac-10 Championships.
Distance runner Dana Buchanan is returning to the 1,500 race today. She won the steeplechase two weeks ago, and although she is enjoying the event, Buchanan seeks a second personal record in her single other 1,500 appearance since Stanford three weeks ago.
“I can only hope that I do it again on Friday,” she said. Eugene-based runner and former Olympic athlete Marla Runyan will make an appearance in the 10,000 meters tonight for the first time since she gave birth to her 7-month-old daughter Anna Lee. She last ran in the Chicago Marathon in October 2004.

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