Oregon showed up ready to run at Saturday’s Pacific-10 Conference Championships.
Senior Jason Hartmann (fourth, 23 minutes, 38 seconds) and redshirt sophomore Ryan Andrus (fifth, 23:43) were the only runners to break up Stanford’s top seven, as Oregon and Stanford split the top nine finishes.
“It was good for our team, to go against a talented field to help us see where we stand nationally,” Hartmann said.
Hartmann and Andrus became the first Duck pair since 1995 to take top-five finishes.
“Jason and I knew we needed to try and break up Stanford’s points in the front,” Andrus said. “This year, the team needed me to run up front, and I wasn’t afraid to push myself.”
Junior Brett Holts finished third for the Ducks (12th, 24:08), while redshirt junior John Lucas finished 17th overall (24:29) with his third consecutive top-20 finish. Junior Noel Paulson had his second-straight top-20 finish as he placed 18th. Redshirt sophomore Eric Logsdon (21st, 24:41) and redshirt freshman Will Viviani (46th, 25:23) rounded out the men’s finishers.
“I know not racing for five weeks wasn’t easy, but the guys ran well,” men’s head coach Martin Smith said.
On the women’s side, redshirt senior Carrie Zografos finished eighth, leading the Ducks to a fifth-place team finish.
Zografos finished 35th last year, and has led Oregon in six of her last seven races. Her eighth-place finish was the highest for a Duck since Marie Davis took fifth in 1998.
“I went out harder than before,” Zografos said. “The difference was that I ran a hard middle half.”
Junior Laura Harmon finished 19th overall, improving on her 48th and 35th place finishes from the past two years.
“At the halfway point, I started to feel really good, and I was able to feed off of a lot of the nearby runners,” said Harmon.
Junior Magdalena Sandoval (36th, 22:13) improved by one spot over her top-40 finish last year. Senior Erinn Gulbrandsen (40th, 22:22) and redshirt junior Eri Macdonald (44th, 22:36) rounded out the Duck scoring. Freshmen Nicole Feest (54th, 23:00) and Eleanor Gordon (58th, 23:13) closed out Oregon’s finishers.
Redshirt junior Alicia Snyder-Carlson did not race after she was injured in a fall in the opening 100 meters. She received a deep gash in her arm after being spiked by another runner.
“Overall, we didn’t beat the teams we needed to help our nationals case, but we competed well and showed much improvement over last year,” women’s head coach Tom Heinonen said.
For Heinonen, this was his last Pac-10 Cross Country Championship, as he has announced his retirement for the end of the 2003 track and field season.
Stanford won both races, and Cardinal runners won both individual titles. The Cardinal men are ranked first nationally, while their female counterparts are ranked second.
The Oregon squads have two weeks to rest and train before traveling to the Western Regional Championship on Nov. 16 at Stanford.
Mindi Rice is a freelance writer
for the Emerald.