After a bonechilling Thursday and a cool Friday, Saturday's Track and Field Championships at Hayward opened under sunny skies and a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner rumored to be sung by some of the members of the Oregon track team that would have made the Back Street Boys envious. It was a great and fitting start on this Memorial Day Weekend with great marks galore for a meet that would finish up early as a threatening electrical storm moving into the area made officials think it prudent to wrap things up ahead of schedule rather than send the kids racing around a wet track with stubby little electrical rods known as 'batons.'  The Grant boys 1600M team would close the ceremonies with the 5th best time in history and a winning time of 3:18:35. Thankfully nobody ended up playing Lee Trevino during the race.

Moving through the admiring crowd with chic glasses and one of the most drop dead gorgous beards I've ever laid eyes on, Vin Lananna almost seemed like he was running for office. Cries of "Hey Vinny! and "Vin...Vin" as race officals and those in the crowd were constantly waving at the Duck Track Coach as if he was a rock star and they were his groupies. Man, I can honestly say I never saw a show of adoration anything near that close when dour Martin Smith was here. It was a signal the new regime has the popular vote.  Lananna has an aire that is almost 'godfatheresque' and he may need all that and more as he'll be a key figure in overseeing the success that is the "Hayward Experience." Already there are the whispers in the crowd that "Vin" will ascend to the Duck A.D. job when Patrick Kilkenny is ready to descend and become just another "Big Fish Donor." Long live "Vinny the Beard."

If Lananna was indeed in attendance, I sure hope it was to court a few athletes that look more than a shoo-in to make the Duck roster and grab some NCAA points down the road. I went into the meet really liking Taylor Wallace of Henley and after this meet,  I'm convinced she's one of the top runners in the nation with still a tremendous upside. On Thursday she's the only runner to go under 10:00 in the 3000 and Saturday she ran a 4:33 to easily win the 1500. Again without anyone pushing her.  It was also 10 seconds faster than the more tighly contested 5A and 6A races. Oh, and her speed is okay as well since she anchored the 1600M Relay and was pulling away from the runner-up down the stretch.

If Jerry Glanville had been in attendance to watch recruit Cory McCaffrey, someone may have wanted to put adult diapers, black of course, on him to give him a glimpse of what a stud they landed. In winning the Boys 4A 100M, he looks bigger, faster and stronger than ever.  For an encore, he anchored the Sisters 1600M Relay that won with room to spare. I predict he'll be one of those players that will be singled out and Bellotti and Riley will be asked why they didn't offer 'full ride.'  

King Solomon Mines: He came over with the Pineapple Express during the 60's and went to Willamette U. He took a job out of college at Marshfield and became a coach. Now, if you ask someone from Coos County why they produce so many great vaulters they look at you like some imbecile and say proudly 'Why Stan Solomon!" It is clear that Stan is one of their treasures. "Its funny but when I was younger I thought I'd always be moving several times but you know, once I got down there, I never wanted to leave, said Solomon who still has a slight Hawaiian pigeon lilt in his voice. "My wife and I have 25 acres with a beautiful view that looks down on pastures toward the Coos River. We love it there. I had three opportunities to leave but it was never a hard decision to stay"

     While most track affienciando's know full well about Oregon City's Rick Baggett and his vaulting resume that includes Tommy Skipper and Ben Cogdill to name just a few, Solomon has an impressive list of credentials as well. When he first came to Marshfield he had a couple of kids named Fran Auer and Steve Prefontaine.  Over the years he developed a fascination with pole vaulting and began to focus on teaching it. He began to attend some of the clinics Baggett would sponsor and singles out the one with Vitaly Petrov, who was Segey Bubka's coach. "It's really quite simple, always stay behind the pole. So many jumpers get in trouble by not doing this but when you stay behind the pole it will always work out." He must be doing something right. In 1982, Joe Bailey gave him his first champion and in 1999 and 2000 the record setting Trevor Woods gave him two more for Marshfield. Last year, he had two state champions. At this meet over the weekend, he had four more win. In the 4A for North Bend, the brother-sister combo of Lane and Brooke Davison took golds and in the 5A, Greg Eckes and Moriah Roberge made it a Marshfield Winners Sweep. Roberge also becomes the third sister to win the vault after her two sisters won, Muriel in 2005 and Celina in 2002. 

     I've always been impressed watching the Coos Bay area vaulters. So many vaulters seem in a hurry to get out of the bend and over the bar but Stan's kids always make it look like a ballet in getting into and out of the bend to over the bar in a fluid motion that looks slower than other kids. Stan will be taking time off to battle some health issues but his kids gave him a wonderful "Get Well Soon and Hurry Back" gift this weekend, and it will be nice to see him in that purple jacket and big smile down at the bottom of the East Grandstand. And a steady procession of kids looking in his direction for some more coaching. 

Elliott Jantzer was oh so close of pulling off the odd trifecta of winning the 3000M, the 1500M and the 400M. I've never seen a kid double in a 400/3K so I found myself rooting for the junior from Phoenix to pull it off. On Thursday he won the 3K with a best time of 8:38 and on Saturday got things going by winning the 1500 with a 3:58 before coming back 40 minutes later for the trifecta. He fell short by finishing third with a 49.7 and then moving his team from 7th to 5th in the 1600M Relay. Not a bad three days work. He was beaten in the 400M by Birthday Boy Danny Staats from Henley who won the high jump at 6'9 and  then ran from the podium to win the 400M in a time of 49.01 not more than five minutes later.

Henleys track program is scary good. They don't have any water down there so we can cross that off, ('must be the water) and for years they pump out great tracksters.  I'm not sure if they wouldn't have won the 'team title' had the boys and girls teams been combined between the three classifications. Wallace and Staat's alone combined for plenty of points.

One of the best races of the day was the 6A Boys 1500. This time around, Nathan Mathabane would make sure he finished what he started. The Lincoln junior would lead almost wire to wire and deny Franklin's Bryce Burgess and Central Catholic's Taylor Morgan to get into the race with him as he kept a 2 to 3 meter lead on them for most the race until he stretched it to five yards at the finish. When asked if he was going to change tactics from the previous day when he lost the lead to Lake Oswego's Elijah Greer, he said "I've always run from the front. I really don't know any other way to race." On Saturday, the warmer weather appeared to help a tight hamstring and he ran smart tacticially. Plus his sister had flown in from Princeton to watch and he figured he'd better show her that championships are in th bloodlines. He would win in 3:53.28 and coupled with his 1:51.88 800M, put up a pretty heady couple of times.  

Watching the Worthen girls and Crouser boys, it is obvious that two 'royal families' exist for Oregon Track and Field exist. Leah and Ali Worthen's mom, Fran Worthen (Auer) started the whole shebang with nine state titles for Marshfield in the early 70's and the girls have added a pile more. As for the Crouser boys, they too will dump a treasure chest full of medals that should easily eclipse what their folks put up in the 70's and 80's. Sam and Ryan are just the tip of the iceberg as it looks like the Crouser pipeline will begin pumping plenty of Crouse Crude from the fields of the Crouser Compound over the next decade.