A week after Oregon hosted its first dual meet at Hayward Field in years, the Ducks will play host to another new meet – the Oregon Relays.
The Oregon Relays is a combination of two track meets that have been held separately for many years – the XO Invitational, one of the largest high school meets in the country, and the Oregon Invitational, a collegiate and post-collegiate meet.
“One of the things we try to do, we sit down at the conclusion of each year and try to figure out what kinds of things we can do to think outside the box,” Oregon head coach Vin Lananna said. He hopes to create a large track meet on the West Coast to compete with other large invitationals throughout the country this same weekend such as the Penn Relays and Drake Relays, the site of this year’s NCAA Championships.
The result is a meet that will bring in “1,600 to 1,700 athletes between high schools and colleges,” Lananna said. “We really have a good smattering of schools coming from the West Coast.”
The first event will be the men’s high jump at 4 p.m. and the first running event will be the women’s 5,000m at 4:40 p.m.
Lananna said they organized the meet schedule so that many of the featured collegiate field events will take place between 4 and 6 p.m. and that there will be a distance carnival starting about 6:30 p.m., with almost all the distance events, including the Bill McChesney Memorial 5,000m, a staple of the Oregon Invitational.
The meet will then go from 10 a.m. to about 7 p.m. Saturday, including another high performance session starting at 4 p.m.
For the Oregon women, the meet is another chance to forge their own image, javelin thrower Rachel Yurkovich said.
“The women’s team is really trying to create this identity for ourselves and not be in the shadow of the guys,” she said. “Kinda just be ourselves and be known for our athleticism and the way we compete and not just be part of the guys team but our own team as well.”
Yurkovich, who has only competed twice so far this season, said the Relays will be her last meet before the Pacific-10 Conference Championships. She has a history of getting hurt late in the season, and is trying to stay healthy for the championship meets.
“I’m just excited to compete,” she said. “I’m doing a one-week-on, two-weeks-off kind of sequence throughout the season. I’m trying to get through the season without being hurt and that’s my biggest goal right now.”
Sprinter Keshia Baker will be busy, as she plans on running the 200m, the 400m, the 4x100m relay and the 4x400m relay. The goal for the weekend, she said, is to “practice running multiple events in one day to get me ready for the Pac-10s.”
On the men’s side, thrower Colin Veldman hopes to better his performance from last weekend’s personal-best throw during the dual meet against UCLA. Veldman, who threw the hammer 219 feet, six inches, hopes he and the Ducks can better their performances by competing against a larger number of athletes – believing that greater competition will put pressure on the Ducks to better their previous marks.
“It’s going to be a chance to have some good competition – throw with some amazing athletes,” Veldman said.
Veldman, who sat out the 2007 season with an injury, believes that the dual meet was only the starting point for him as he continues to progress while aiming for the Olympic Trials.
“I’m ready to throw farther than I have,” Veldman said. “It’s starting to come together.”
(Jacob May contributed to this report.)
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