The Oregon Ducks track and field program is the intercollegiate track and field team for the University of Oregon located in the U.S. state of Oregon. The team competes at the NCAA Division I level and was a member of the Pac-12 Conference until 2024 when they joined the Big Ten Conference. The team participates in indoor and outdoor track and field as well as cross country. Known as the Ducks, Oregon's first track and field team was fielded in 1895. The team holds its home meets at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. Jerry Schumacher is the current head coach and since the program's inception in 1895, there have only been eight permanent head coaches. The Ducks claim 33 NCAA National Championships among the three disciplines.
Due to its rich heritage, the home of the Ducks is popularly dubbed as Tracktown, USA. Four of the head coaches in Oregon's history have been inducted into the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame. Several people involved with the program have developed innovative coaching strategies and helped restructure amateur athletics. Alumni of the program have continued to the Olympics and professional ranks while some others have founded athletic corporations like Nike and SPARQ.
Oregon's track and field history has been documented in two major motion films Without Limits and Prefontaine as well as the books Bowerman and the Men of Oregon and Pre: The Story of America's Greatest Running Legend. Former coaches and alumni have also written a number of books on running instruction for both top end athletes and hobbyists.
History
Early history The first track team was established in 1895 with head coach Joseph Wetherbee. This coach remained for only one year and the following four coaches, W.O. Trine, J.C. Higgins, C.A. Redmond, and William Ray, also remained for extremely short durations. With such sporadic coaching changes, the Oregon track and field team struggled with inconsistencies, although the university did win six of seven meets in 1895.
Under Coach Bill Hayward
The modern era of Oregon track and field began in 1903. The Webfoots (as they were called at the time) lost a track meet to Albany College (now Lewis & Clark College). Oregon promptly asked Albany's coach, Bill Hayward, to come to Eugene as track coach for the following season. Hayward's career at Oregon was long and illustrious, lasting 44 years. His athletes included nine Olympians and produced five world records. By 1919, his standing at Oregon was such that when a new stadium was constructed for the football team, it was named Hayward Field for him. Two years later, a track was added and track meets were transferred there from nearby Kincaid Field.
Under Coach Bill Bowerman Bill Bowerman's involvement with Oregon dated to his student days in the 1930s. He initially played football when he arrived in Eugene. Coach Bill Hayward, who Bowerman credits with teaching him how to run, convinced Bowerman to run track. Bowerman graduated from Oregon in 1934 with a degree in business.
After his service in World War II, Bowerman was hired by Oregon to replace the retiring Hayward after John Warren's single year as interim head coach. Though Bowerman's title was head coach, he considered himself more of a teacher than a coach. He stressed schoolwork over athletics and urged his pupils to apply the values they learned participating in track and field to everyday life. During his time at Oregon, he brought four NCAA team championships to the university and coached 33 Olympians as well as 24 individual NCAA champions. He coached some of the world's best distance runners including Steve Prefontaine.
Bowerman retired from coaching in 1972. While at Oregon, he also coached the USA Track and Field team and helped bring the U.S. Olympic Trials to Hayward Field for the first time. In 2009, The Bowerman Award was created in coach Bowerman's name and administered by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. The award is given annually as the highest honor for the best collegiate track and field athlete of the year, one each for men and for women.
Steve Prefontaine
Steve Prefontaine arrived on campus in 1969 and immediately, head coach Bowerman and assistant coach Bill Dellinger had their hands full to rein in the rebellious new athlete. The bold running style of Prefontaine, front-running, was a strategy that altered the pace of the sport. At one point, Prefontaine held every American distance record above the 2,000 meters and was thought of by many to be one of the greatest American runners in history. Prefontaine had never lost a race longer than a mile during his collegiate career and won a total of seven NCAA championships in track and field and cross country. He raced in the 5000m at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, placing fourth in the race. He died in an automobile accident in Eugene in 1975, at the peak of his career.
His accomplishments were not confined to the track. He was deeply resentful toward the treatment given toward amateur athletes. He had frequently butted heads with the Amateur Athletic Union, calling the AAU a corrupt organization. His opinions played a major role in the passing of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, legislation providing legal protection to amateur athletes.
Prefontaine, coupled with Frank Shorter's success running the marathon, is often credited with playing a role in the running boom in America in the 1970s. His legacy lives on in two movies documenting his life, Without Limits and Prefontaine, as well as the Prefontaine Classic, an annual track meet held at Hayward Field in his honor.
Nike
Another one of Bowerman's pupils, Phil Knight, partnered with Bowerman and revolutionized the sport with the formation of the shoe company giant, Nike. Knight graduated from the University of Oregon in 1959University of Oregon Alumni Directory and went on to Stanford University for graduate school. There, he developed the idea to import Japanese running shoes to the American market. After earning his MBA from Stanford, he returned to the University of Oregon where he and Bowerman struck a handshake deal in 1964, each with a $500 investment into a company called Blue Ribbon Sports to import Japanese running shoes. In the late 1960s, Bowerman's pursuit of lighter shoes for his athletes led him to develop a sole by pouring rubber into his wife's waffle iron, inventing the modern running shoe. After Knight decided to rename the company Nike and develop its own shoes, Bowerman's invention became the prototype for the company. The shoe made its debut in the 1972 Olympic Trials at Hayward Field with Steve Prefontaine as one of the early endorsers. Although Bowerman retired from coaching in 1972, he remained on Nike's board until 1999. In that time, Nike exploded into a multibillion-dollar company.
Under Coaches Bill Dellinger and Tom Heinonen Like his predecessor, Bill Dellinger's involvement with the University of Oregon began before his coaching career. He lettered in track at the university, graduating in 1956 and won a Bronze medal in the 1964 Summer Olympics. After his athletic career, he joined Bowerman's staff in 1967 as an assistant coach where he helped coach Steve Prefontaine. He took over as head coach in 1973 after Bowerman's retirement. With Dellinger at the helm, Oregon's Cross Country team brought home four NCAA national championships and the track and field team brought home one NCAA national championship. He retired in 1998. The Bill Dellinger Invitational is an annual cross country race held by the University of Oregon in honor of the coach.
Hired as a physical education graduate student in 1975, Tom Heinonen, was promoted to the head coach for the women's cross country and track and field team in 1977. Prior to Heinonen, no other full-time head coach at Oregon had exclusively coached the women's disciplines. He was a strong advocate for women's sports and was a force in making the Oregon Twilight Meet a co-ed event. Women's cross country and track and field blossomed under Heinonen's leadership. He led the women's team to win its first three NCAA team championships and coached 14 NCAA individual champions. He produced 134 All-Americans and his athletes made 17 appearances in the Olympics. He retired in 2003, after which the University of Oregon Athletic Department decided to combine the men's and women's programs under one head coach.
Under Coach Vin Lananna
In 2005, Vin Lananna was hired to become the track and field head coach, replacing Martin Smith who resigned after the previous season. Lananna was already a decorated head coach from Stanford with five NCAA national championships under his belt. At Oregon, he led seven teams to win NCAA national championships, including the first indoor national championships in school history. He also attracted the Olympic Trials, the NCAA Track and Field Championships, and the USA Track and Field Championships to Eugene for multiple years.
Just prior to the 2012 season, Robert Johnson was promoted to the head coaching position as Lananna moved to an administrative position with the program.
Under Coach Robert Johnson Robert Johnson was Vin Lanana's first hire, originally to lead throws, hurdles, and sprints, then in 2009, was named the associate head coach for women's track. The University of Oregon was historically known for its rich tradition in distance running but had never been known for sprinting. Robert Johnson drastically transformed this during his tenure.
By 2011, the year before Johnson took over as head coach, every women's sprint school record for distances still actively run, for both outdoor and indoor track and field, had been broken. The women's indoor program won its first NCAA title in 2010 and by 2017, had won seven of the previous eight indoor national championships. In the 2017 indoor national championship, the sprinters excelled as the women's program set a record for points scored at 84, exceeding the previous record set by Texas by 13 points. The sprinters were so dominant that despite Deajah Stevens's lane violation in the 200m prelims erasing a collegiate record time run in the final, the points accrued from Oregon women's sprinters alone would have been only two points shy of runner up Georgia's entire points total.
Several months later, the Oregon's women's program entered the NCAA Outdoor National Championship meet as favorites to win the title. Despite losing a key runner to injury, a disqualification in the 4 × 100 m, and adversity during the meet, the Oregon women's team was able to edge out the Georgia Bulldogs's strong field events team in the final 4 × 400 m event. Since the women's team won the cross country championship and the indoor championship in the same academic year, the outdoor title gave the women's team a triple crown, the first time any NCAA women's track and field team has accomplished this feat.
In 2021, allegations surfaced of body shaming within the program, resulting in unhealthy disorders among several athletes. Johnson defended the use of certain technologies such as DEXA scans, that monitor bone density and body fat, saying they take human bias out of the equation. In 2022, a few weeks before the World Athletics Championships, held at Hayward Field, it was announced that the University of Oregon would not renew Johnson's contract, but there were no specific reasons given for doing so. Not long after, the university announced the hire of the Bowerman Track Club coach, Jerry Schumacher, as the next head coach.
Under Jerry Schumacher