The Oregon track team welcomes Washington, USC and Kansas State to Hayward Field tomorrow as the Ducks open their home dual meet season with the 18th-annual Pepsi Team Invitational.
“This is a good opportunity for us to practice being a championship-caliber team and going after as many points as we possibly can,” Director of Track and Field Vin Lananna said.
Lananna emphasized that the talent level of all four teams is so high that any team could easily take the title this weekend.
“It will come down to late in the meet,” Lananna said, “Any team could win. Last year it came down to one point. We lost the (men’s title) by one or two points.”
At last year’s Pepsi Team Invitational, Washington squeezed past Oregon to take first place with a winning score of 178.
This year, the Oregon men hope to exact revenge on the Huskies, and Oregon hopes to extend their 64-34 all-time record against Washington in regular-season scored competitions.
Oregon has already found some early season success.
At the Stanford Invitational last weekend, All-American junior Galen Rupp clocked 28:35.04 in the 10,000m, an NCAA automatic mark. Redshirt sophomore Shadrack Kiptoo-Biwott also managed a 29:00.52 in the same race.
The Ducks’ sprint corps has also been hard at work. At the Arizona State Invitational two weeks ago, junior Marcus Dillon put up a 21.43 performance in his 200m debut while sophomore hurdler Jared Huske registered a personal best 14.32 in the 110m hurdles.
In the field events, senior javelin thrower Ryan Brandel also set a new personal record when he made a 225-7 throw to move onto Oregon’s top-10 all-time list for the first time in his career.
“It’s still really early in the season, so we have not really talked about spectacular performances, but are aiming (for our athletes) to be at 100 percent of wherever (they) are at this time,” Lananna said. “That’s what we’d like to see.”
One of the young bright spots on the Duck men’s roster this season is freshman sprinter Ashton Eaton.
Eaton was recruited as a 400m runner and a long jumper, but the Oregon coaches convinced him to try the decathlon at the beginning of the season. Despite the fact that he had never done any field event besides the long jump before, Eaton agreed to take up the challenge.
“I have no idea how I got into (the decathlon),” Eaton said. “I was a sprinter and jumper in high school; I’d never thrown, never done hurdles, never pole-vaulted. But I love it, the variety.”
All his hard work has already brought dividends.
Eaton won the Jim Click Shootout decathlon in Arizona two weeks ago with a score of 6,977 points -which already surpasses the NCAA provisional standard of 6,900.
“Ashton has done a great job this year. The decathlon is a big learning curve because he essentially has to learn five of ten events,” Lananna said. “He has a long way to go, but I think he’s done a great job thus far.
“He’ll help us this weekend in both (4x400m and 4x100m) relays, and he’ll help us in the 100m and the long jump, and that’s where we need the points.”
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