Samie Parker and Allan Amundson are fast. But to get from Portland’s PGE Park after a 1 p.m. football game Saturday to Hayward Field in Eugene for the start of a 5:05 p.m. relay race, they’d have to run about, oh, 110 miles in one hour.
They’re fast, but not that fast.
With football’s spring drills concluding Saturday with the Spring Game in Portland, Parker and Amundson, both under football scholarships, will have the chance to concentrate more on track in May.
“Hopefully (the football coaches) will let me devote more time to track,” said Parker, who finished fourth in the 60-meter dash at the NCAA Indoor Championships in March. “I want to go to the Pac-10s.”
Parker, in his third year of double-dipping in the spring, is Oregon’s fastest athlete — he has already established a Pac-10 Conference qualifying time in the 100-meter dash (a wind-aided 10.45) — but he doesn’t stop there.
“Samie will be the fastest collegiate football player in the country (in the fall),” said Steve Silvey, the sprints coach for the Oregon track team. “There’s no question — if Samie did track full-time, he would be at the national outdoor meet in June.”

Even at part-time, Parker may still advance to the NCAA Championships, if not in the 100-meter dash, perhaps with Amundson in the 4×100. The foursome composed of Amundson, as the lead, Micah Harris, Terry Ellis and Parker, the anchor, ran a 40.77-second relay in the Washington Dual at Hayward Field on April 13, just shy of an NCAA-provisional mark of 40.10.
That same day, after their events at the dual, Parker and Amundson headed across the Willamette River to the Moshofsky Center, where they participated in spring’s first football scrimmage. Amundson led the team with 11 carries (for 33 yards), while Parker had one catch.
“That was pretty cool, to do both sports in one day,” Parker said. “It was like Deion Sanders when he played in a football game and a World Series baseball game in the same day. It was good experience to have under my belt.”
Amundson, in his first year with the track program, said he’d been asked before to run with the track team, but never thought he was fast enough.
“I got faster last summer, so I felt like I could hang with the track guys this year,” said Amundson, who holds the football program’s record in the 20-yard shuttle (3.71).
Hanging in practice, though, has not been so easy for Amundson.
“The biggest challenge has been track practice itself. It’s tough,” Amundson said. “The kind of conditioning is completely different. We just ran and ran and ran. And the track coach even made it a little easier for me ’cause I wasn’t in great shape, but I was still dying.
“But I thought it really helped me get in shape for football. When I see everyone else getting winded, I still have something in me. It’s nice to know that all that hard work is paying off.”
Although their main goal is to improve speed endurance for football — Silvey said football players tend to slow down after 30 or 40 yards of sprinting — Parker and Amundson are still looking to be competitive while working with the track team.
“We haven’t been able to use them that much,” Silvey said. “It’s not like high school where you can just show up and be successful. You can’t expect to miss a month and the suddenly come back and kick butt.”
But that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
Silvey said the two football standouts will participate in the Jesse Owens Classic at Ohio State next weekend and in the Pac-10s after that.
For the football-minded Parker and Amundson, the track will always finish second to the green grass. But they’ll enjoy the race while they can.
“These kids will improve their chances of playing on Sunday if they improve their track credentials,” Silvey said.