Bowerman and the Men of Oregon by Kenny Moore

Author:Kenny Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2006-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

Enter, Prefontaine

AFTER MEXICO, BOWERMAN HUNG HIS SERAPE AND SOMBRERO ON A NAIL AND thought about how to make the best use of the next four years. The first entry on his list read, “Get more help at UO.” Bowerman had had dozens of graduate assistants over the years, but never a fully paid position. He thought perhaps the time was right to remedy that condition.

By 1967, Leo Harris had amassed two million dollars in athletic department surpluses. Portland donor Tom Autzen chipped in another million, and that year the university built Autzen Stadium, solely for football, across the Willamette from the campus. Harris then retired, resentful that the stadium didn’t bear his name despite his having labored for it since the 1947 day he’d taken the athletic director job. Hayward Field was now exclusively Bowerman’s for track and field.

The new AD was football coach Len Casanova, a little easier touch than Harris had been. Bill won from Casanova a living wage for an assistant’s position. “Bob Newland is the one I’d like to have had,” Bill would say, “but hell, he was paid twice as much being North Eugene vice principal as I could offer.”

Bowerman thought Newland was probably a better track coach than he was. “Of the records that my kids established at Medford,” Bill once said, “and they were pretty damn good records, all of them were broken while Bob coached there, all except one, and that was Ray Johnson, the high school quarter-miler of the decade. Ray ran 47.8 and if that had been an Olympic year he might have been Olympic champion. Or if I had been smart enough to put him in the mile, he’d probably have been the first person in the world under four minutes.”

Bowerman finally hired Bill Dellinger away from Lane Community College. “Bill was good in the running events. When he was at Thurston High, he’d tell his boys that when you get really fit, running’s easy, running’s like brushing your teeth,” Bowerman said. “Of course that wasn’t training. Training is like having your teeth cleaned an hour a day.”

Dellinger would be the first of Bill’s assistants to work directly with runners of distance. In the fall of 1968 Dellinger’s assignment was significant, because entering his senior year at Marshfield High in Coos Bay was one Steven Roland Prefontaine.

That spring, as a junior, Pre, as we came to call him, had set the state two-mile record of 9:01.3. Bowerman, who’d coached Marshfield coach Walt McClure in the 880, had arranged for Arne Kvalheim and Roscoe Divine to drive down and take a ten-mile training run with Pre. “I had just beaten Lindgren with my 8:33 national record,” recalled Kvalheim, “and Roscoe was in 3:57 shape, and this kid took us out on the beach and kept saying, ‘Am I going too fast for you? Can you keep up?’”

They not only could, they felt like leaving him standing, but reined themselves in for the sake of their mission. Later they would learn that Pre was bursting with a cockiness that had been long suppressed.

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