By Jack Pfeifer
EUGENE, Ore. – It looked like Nicole Blood was going to win another Pacific-10 Conference championship in the 5,000 meters for the hometown Oregon Ducks, with the big crowd at Hayward Field yelling its approval. The
On an unusually warm Sunday afternoon, Blood had spent six laps working her way back to catch up with Laurynne Chetelat, Stanford’s outstanding freshman. Lap by lap, yard by yard, she regained contact, just as the bell was rung, and the thousands of Duck fans on hand roared, sensing that Blood, that spunky little New Yorker, would wait for the right moment and sprint past.
“I wasn’t sure what I had left in the tank after the 1,500,” Blood said. She had finished 4th in the women’s 15 90 minutes earlier. “But it was OK running the 5k a little tired. You gotta be tough out there.”
Stanford was looking for team points in the 5,000. At that stage, the Cardinal still had a chance to win the women’s meet.
“The race wasn’t that bad,” Blood said. Then she reconsidered. “Actually,” she said, “the last K was really hard. But I felt good once I got up there.”
With 150 to go, she took off, nearly colliding with Chetelat, who had run out of gas. But now there was new a problem. Another runner, barely in view at the bell, was coming up fast from the rear, though still 25 yards back. It was another Stanford Cardinal, Lauren Centrowitz.
A Centrowitz, of all people. It was Lauren’s younger brother, Matthew, who had run a spectacular final lap to win the men’s 1,500, several hours earlier. That one was for the home team; this time, the tables were turned.
“I know she’s a tough competitor,” Blood said of Centrowitz. “When she went by, I wasn’t too surprised.”
Blood, having made such an effort to catch Chetelat, didn’t have a response to a new challenger. Centrowitz ran 16:15 to win by a second, depriving Blood of her second title in the event.
“I thought Lauryn had it won,” Centrowitz said of her teammate, “but I never quit in the race. With about 300 to go, I realized I had a chance to win the race myself.”
The Oregon women went on to win the team championship, for the first time in 17 years, Combined with a dominating victory by the men’s team, it was a first-ever sweep of the Pac-10 titles by the Ducks, and also set up both teams as possible favorites in the NCAA championships. Those will be held four weeks from now at
That possibility was clearly on the minds of some of the Oregon athletes, even as they focused on the mission at hand.
Jamesha Youngblood, who won both horizontal jumps with lifetime bests, said, “Before the meet, we told each other, ‘We’re just gonna go out there. We’re gonna shock everybody, especially in the sprints and jumps.
“Today,” she said, “we put it down.”
One of those shocks came in the 400, where Oregon’s Keshia Baker upset Nicole Leach of 
UCLA and ran 51.74, one of the leading times in the nation. Leach passed up the 400 hurdles, where she is a past NCAA champion, to focus on the flat race instead.
That left the longer hurdles for the taking, and three Eastern-bred hurdlers were in contention. But it was not to be. Lorraine King, a senior from
Earlier on the sun-drenched afternoon, Krais and Muhammad placed in the 100 hurdles as well, along with yet another Queens native, Lindsay Rowe of UCLA. Rowe was 4th (13.57), Krais 5th (13.61) and Muhammad 8th (13.79). It was a seasonal best for Krais and lifetime best for Muhammad. The race was won by Kimyon Broom of
The
The loudest moment came in the men’s 1,500, where Oregon had three powerhouse entries – two members of last year’s Olympic team, Andrew Wheating and Galen Rupp, and the new kid on the block, the redshirt freshman Matthew Centrowitz.
Rupp, however, was doubling back from winning the 10,000 the night before, and Wheating was attempting an 8/15 double, never an easy thing in a meet of this calibre. For Centrowitz, it was his first conference final.
The pace went out at a walk (2:13.7 at 800), and with other stars in the race like Garrett and Elliott Heath of Stanford and Michael Coe of California, it promised to be a fast fnish.
“I knew I wasn’t going to blow that field away,” said Centrowitz, who at 19 still has the peach fuzz of a teenager. I knew there would be two or three guys right on my tail with 100 to go. I made sure I went hard, but I had another gear. I didn’t want to put everything out there.”
Centrowitz moved from the back of the pack all the way to the front around the next-to-last turn. When Rupp came on his shoulder, Centrowitz accelerated again, but Wheating – easy to spot because he is 6-foot-6 – was wavering. Garrett Heath, the reigning conference champion, was desperately trying to break up an
An hour later, Wheating was back for the 800, the event in which he made the Olympic team, but he was clearly spent. When Irek Sekretarski of USC took a 10-yard lead entering the final straight, with Wheating struggling in the pack, it looked over.
“That was a scary last 200,” Wheating said. “I won because of the crowd. I honestly don’t know if I could have finished as strong as I did without that crowd. They pushed me the last 50 meters.”
Sekretarski appeared to celebrate just as the pair reached the finish; he already had his right hand raised, his index finger pointing a “No. 1.” As a result, Wheating was the only one to lean. He won by .02.
“We all fed off each other,” said Blood, who was a star at Saratoga Springs before moving to California her senior year in high school. From there, she came north to Eugene for college. When I walked out on this track, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. We can be tops in the nation now."