Oregon Preview & Other Tales of Spring Break 2011

Trafton B.

March 21, 2011 - 12:07 PM

Friday afternoon at precisely 2:30 PM I finally put a close on the winter quarter and immediately felt the sweet relief of spring break cleanse my weary mind. Earlier today I finally got around to counting up the total amount of pages I'd written throughout the term and the total came out to be 75,000 words in just a shade under 200 single-spaced pages. Not too shabby, and it's no wonder why my fingers hurt from typing last Friday afternoon.

Anyways, rather than discuss the toils of my past two and half months, let's discuss the prospects of the next seven days. My roommates and my Spring Break began at Hayward Field with the Oregon Preview.

Saturday was a gorgeous sunny day with scattered showers and one minor bout of hail. All Ducks were in full form with wins in several events, including Eric Hersey in the ment's 110- and 400-meter hurdles, Lauryn Newson in women's 200-meters, and a swept of all four men's and women's relays.

Kevin, Bob, Natalie and I spent most of our afternoon at the hammer field, where we watched our friends Jordan Stray and Cam Norris finish 1st and 3rd in the Men's Hammer Throw.

Jordan, or "J-Nasty" as we refer to him affectionately, had an impressively consistent day. All of his throws landed within a range of two meters and he won the event with a final throw of 214 feet, just a few feet short of his personal best. Cam has a great day too, finishing in third with a final throw of 168 feet and 11 inches, but he admitted that it wasn't quite the performance he was hoping for. Either way, it was a great start to track season.

Yesterday afternoon Bob and I met up with Cam and another friend/hammer thrower, Sarah Holt, to watch the Women's Softball game against Utah State. Sarah is originally from the United Kingdom - she's training in Eugene for the year - so this was a good opportunity to teach her the fundamental rules of American baseball and softball. She had a great team to watch, too, as the #15 Ducks beat the Aggies 12-3 on their way to winning all four games of their back-to-back doubleheader weekend.

The real story of the day, however, was that Cam and I were selected for one of the games mid-inning promotions. We had to race miniature remote-controlled monster trucks behind the backstop, and the winner gets a prize package and two tickets to next Sunday's Monster Jam at Matthew Knight Arena. After an arduous race of peel-outs and poor RC racing skills, I beat Cam in a photo finish. It's a good thing we made a pact saying the winner would take loser to the Monster Jam, so we tried to have as much fun with the race as possible.

It's been a great start to Spring Break 2011, and it's only about to get better. Tomorrow afternoon, the guys and I drive over to the coast to meet up with our friends in Waldport, Oregon. We rented a house for a few nights, and I'm sure I'll have plenty to report back to you next weekend. It's probably going to be a lot like last Spring Break, except we're trading out the sunshine and snowfall for overcast skies and scattered showers. Why is it that my friends and I insist on having these nontraditional Spring Breaks? Aren't most college kids heading to Cancun or Hawaii? Aww, who cares, it's going to be a blast.

The picture above shows Jordan posing next to his new poster at Hayward Field. Photo courtesty of Natalie Rombach.