Track on the way back at Oregon State

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, Sep 20, 2010, Updated 14.2 hours ago 

Olympic champion high jumper Dick Fosbury, one of Oregon State's track and field legends, has been joined by others in a fundraising effort to bring back the sport for the Beavers.

TONY DUFFY / GETTY IMAGES

On Friday night, as dozens of Beaver track and field alums gathered for a celebration on the club level at Reser Stadium, I became a believer.

There was a lot of good feeling in the room as a couple of hundred friends of OSU track and field were given the official word that ground will be broken next June for construction of a new track, thanks to about $3.5 million in fundraising efforts.

“With the gifts and commitments, we’re very close to completing phase one,” said Doug Oxsen, development director for the OSU athletic department who has overseen the project.

Oregon State still needs to raise another $8 million to $9 million to cover endowment of the men’s program, to finish the track stadium and to build a cross-country course. That’s a lot of money in any economy, especially in this one.

“But it’s going to happen,” said Dick Fosbury, one of America’s greatest Olympians and the chairman of the committee to bring back men’s track. “We’re having very good success. If we can continue to work at this rate, we can establish an endowment by 2014. We’ll keep plugging away at this — building this up so it’s sustainable.”

Fosbury — inventor of the “Fosbury Flop,” the 1968 Olympic high jump champion and currently president of the World Olympians Association — was in the house along with notables who competed for the Beavers from the 1950s until the sport was dropped in 1988.

“We’re covering a lot of eras,” said Kelly Sullivan, coach of the women’s cross country and distance-running program that was reinstated in 2004.

Now there will be a new era, thanks to the work of a few who have taken the bull by the horns. People such as Fosbury, Sullivan, ex-Beaver track men Brian Glanville, Doug Crooks, John Radetich and Butch Lumby and other committee members. People such as Berny Wagner, the ex-Oregon State coach who drew a standing ovation when introduced Friday night.

And people such as Jim Whyte, a businessman who donated 1.8 million shares of stock that could be worth more than $3 million when cashed.

Whyte, a native of Vancouver, British Columbia, likes to tell the story about how he was headed to enroll at the University of Oregon the summer before his freshman year.

“I didn’t know Eugene from Corvallis,” Whyte said Friday night. “I took the wrong turn and wound up at the admissions office at Oregon State.”

Whyte walked on, ran the quartermile for Wagner and found it a life-changing experience. Now he is glad to be taking a lead role toward bringing the sport back at his alma mater.

“It completes the athletic department,” Whyte said. “You can’t have that without track.”

Whyte is who Fosbury had in mind when he said, “You need a couple of people to step up in a big way. And then people start to believe in the dream, and latch on, too.”

The University of Oregon’s track and field tradition is legendary, but Oregon State was right there at one time. During six years that spanned the coaching eras of Sam Bell and Wagner, the Beavers won seven of 12 men’s dual meets against the Ducks. There were 19 Olympians representing the Orange and Black, 33 NCAA champions and countless All-Americans.

When OSU dropped track and field for budgetary and Title IX purposes, “I was furious,” said John Ball, a sprinter under Bell in the 1960s. “I had teammates who wanted to give their diploma back they were so disgusted.”

For nearly two decades, OSU administrators turned a deaf ear to those lobbying for the return of track and field. Athletic Director Bob De Carolis was the first to pay more than lip service and, ultimately, gave the go-ahead to the fundraising project.

During the Reser get-together, Whyte told the crowd he would match dollar for dollar any contributions raised on that night. Moments later, De Carolis stepped to the podium and, in an ad-lib moment, said he wanted to get the ball rolling with a $15,000 donation from the “athletic director’s contingency fund.”

Classy move.

“I didn’t know Bobby D was going to do that,” Oxsen said. “Nobody did.”

Mike Riley was also on hand, lending his support to the movement as he has by allowing his football players to run track. Riley has lost recruits to schools that have track and field and are OK with football players competing in both sports.

“I’m really glad track is coming back,” Riley told the group.

Oxsen, a self-described track and field junkie who played basketball at OSU in the 1970s, has been the conduit between the athletic department and those in the bring-back-track movement.

“I’ve loved working on this project,” Oxsen said. “To meet the former track athletes and work them through their feelings of alienation to ... getting the eye on the prize and making this happen, it’s rewarding.”

Sullivan goes back to the day three years ago when Oregon State held a reunion in conjunction with hosting the Pac-10 women’s cross-country championships.

“Bob announced the green light for fundraising ... but people just didn’t believe it,” Sullivan said. “It sounded like a pipedream. With people’s experience with track being eliminated, they weren’t going to trust any administrator, and a lot of them didn’t know me personally. There wasn’t anyone walking in and handing us $20 million for the program.”

There still isn’t. But there are people such as Whyte, and an anonymous donor of about $1 million, and hundreds of others who have given $20 and $100 and $500.

Reinstitution of men’s track — as well as the fleshing out of the women’s program from just distance running to all events — could be a gradual process.

Last spring, a handful of football players returned to the track, and high jumper Jordan Bishop gave the Beavers their first All-American since steeplechaser Karl Van Calcar in 1988.

Pretty soon, there will be a track for men and women to run on, and the renewal of a Civil War rivalry with the Ducks.

“A few years ago, even diehard Beavers wouldn’t have thought this could have happened again,” Fosbury said. “To see the energy people are putting into this project ... well, I’m stoked.”

Foz isn’t the only one.