U of Oregon XC fans and prognisticators

I did not realize Julian went to U of Oregon. I thought he was a U of Portland Pilot.

TIM Julian went to Oregon...PETE Julian went to Portland. Tim's last x-c season was actually '94. Portland won the region that year, led by Pete, over Washington in 2nd, and the Ducks were 3rd and got the at-large. Washington 8th at NCAA's, UP 12th on a terrible day for them, the Ducks 16th. Tim Julian was indeed on that '93 x-c team I believe, think I have pictures from regionals with him in it? I was at Washington then. That UO team...Keska, Cantwell, Hollister, Dimoff, Humble, Julian? UP team was GREAT...Julian, Arndt, Steidl, Solof, Gilbert, Loesel, Lambert...Washington team pretty good with Simon Baines, Grote, Alexander, Barajaz, Hughes, Wyman and either Pavach or Hunter depending on the meet after a frat "incident" at Hayward Field.

Grote

Matt Davis' 5th place finish at NCAA's was one of the more remarkable X-C running performances out there. He was injured most of the year and couldn't run. He had zero base. He was running on total guts.

I thought he was lucky to get to the starting line at regionals and nationals and he gets freaking 5th on fumes. Amazing. He could've been Oregon's all-time greatest runner -- yes, better than McChesney and Pre -- had he not had so many injuries.

Three former Ashland Grizzlies mentioned in one post. That's an impressive showing.

pics of matt davis

Scroll down to page 2 and 3 of this link for the photos.

Thanks I remembered after I asked he was that beast from Mead? Or I should say one of the many many many beasts that came and come from mead?! What do they feed them in the lunch room? I have heard more legends about this guy and his showing up for meets with two bandaged legs and what not. Kiser Sose of the track and cc world. What a beast he looks huge.

Harbor will be in the mix....

You are all forgetting Keith Laverty, he's a sleeper, lemme tell you...

Said this before and will say it again...think I'd rather have fought Tyson in his prime than an angry Matt Davis, and thats not to say that Matt wasn't a nice guy. He was. We had totally figured Davis was done that season and if he did show up he would be somewhat ineffective. The 9th at regionals was surprising, especially since I thought he seemed to be limping and suffering noticeably...then 5th at NCAA's...wow. Real tough.

Also interesting...Nick Rogers on that team. He was somewhat of a surprise just being on their squad, in the top 5...usually 3rd or 4th guy or so. Ran solid, but not amazing. Seemed to be the Shawn Bradley of NCAA x-c...very tall. Might have been around 18th at regional and 80s or 90s at NCAA's. At that time that seemed great for him. No real indication at that time that he'd run sub-28 and 13:19 or whatever. Wow.

Grote

November 27, 1996

INJURY CAN'T KEEP DAVIS FROM SHINING

Author: John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review

Edition: SPOKANE

Section: SPORTS

Page: C1

Index Terms:

PROFILECOLUMN

Estimated printed pages: 3

Article Text:

You can't win a national championship in football until New Year's Day, but you sure can lose it in September. A lousy June can cost you the Triple Crown. Michael Jordan's latest ring is just more jewelry; the 72 games the Bulls won in the regular season are history.

As often as not in sports, it's the body of work that counts.

Aside from those times when it's simply whether the body works.

In the long run - and that is Matt Davis' specialty, after all - the substance of his season was going to boil down to a single afternoon, a feet-don't-fail-me-now arrangement. This is sort of the deal in cross country, anyway. That injury intervened only narrowed the vision and upped the stakes - and made his accomplishment that much more remarkable.

Matt Davis finished fifth in Monday's NCAA cross country championships in Tucson - the highest place for a Spokane runner since Gerry Lindgren won the race 27 years ago. Now a junior at the University of Oregon, Davis was the second American across the finish line and led the Ducks to a third-place finish, their best showing of the '90s. The last Duck to place higher than Davis: Alberto Salazar in 1979.

This is all terrific stuff for the resume - and doesn't even include the asterisk: two months ago, Davis' season was pronounced dead with a stress fracture of the right femur.

``To be honest, I had no idea how I'd hold up,'' said Davis. ``I knew I was going to run as hard as I could, but when you've only raced once all season, it's hard to know how good your best will be.''

We should be getting the idea by now.

Davis didn't win every race he entered when he was a student at Mead High School, but damn near - and since moving on to Oregon he'd been 31st and 15th in his first two NCAA cross country meets. When he came up limping in September, it seemed the timetable would be pushed back a year.

But Davis had his own plans, and his own reasons.

``One, I wanted to run with Karl Keska - this was his fifth year and I wanted to have one last season with him,'' said Davis said. ``And secondly, I just wanted to run with this team. There's a chemistry here that's hard to describe, but these guys never let you down and I didn't want to let them down.''

Those guys include three former Mead teammates Rob Aubrey, Greg James and Davis' younger brother Micah. Only James ran in Tucson - he was 57th - as the other two fell victim to what Davis called ``sort of a Catch-22.

``We have nine guys on the team, but only seven can run and we switched guys in and out of different meets. When it came down to the district meet, Rob and Micah sat out - and every guy who ran wound up being all-district. It wasn't like coach (Bill) Dellinger could pull any guys out who hadn't run well and run the others at nationals. What he did do was fly them down for the race anyway. They warmed up with us and helped us and talked to us, and they're as much a part of it as anyone. But it was a pretty stressful situation.''

For Davis, the stress was a little different. After restricting his workouts to the pool for three weeks, he tried running on his injured leg too soon and had to take another 10 days off before resuming training in November. Then he had to pass muster for Dellinger in two workouts just before districts to get his chance.

``If they hadn't gone to Bill's design,'' Davis said, ``I would have redshirted.''

Didn't that seem like the prudent option anyway?

``You have to take the risk,'' he insisted. ``Really, the only race that matters is the NCAA meet. And it was worth it. I was 10 spots better than I was last year after missing basically the whole season. It gives me a lot of inspiration to train hard this winter. I really feel like I can run with those guys now.''

In Tucson, he mostly ran them down. He brought up the rear of the top 25 after two miles of the 10,000-meter race, moved up into the first 10 two miles later and then ``started to fade a little bit.

``I just thought, `You've got to have faith - you can finish this race,''' he said, ``and suddenly those guys I thought I was going to lose to, I wound up passing them and a few more. You tend to forget that other guys may be feeling as bad as you are.''

The ones he couldn't catch were three Kenyans - the winner, Godfrey Siamusiye of Arkansas, and Jonah Kiptarus and Cleophas Boor of Nebraska - and Stanford's Greg Jimmerson. Among those he did was Pac-10 champ Mebrahtom Keflezighi of UCLA.

His motivation, however, wasn't taking aim at the big names.

``Really, it meant so much to have Rob and Micah out there yelling,'' Davis said. ``I could catch onto that and push even harder. And Greg, a mile runner out there going 10,000 meters as hard as he could, means a lot to me. It makes me dig in that much deeper. I don't think you can put a worth on having friends like that with you.''

Whether it's for one race, or for the body of work.

Caption:

Matt Davis credits teammates for success. File/Associated Press Color Photo

Memo:

You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

Copyright (c) 1996 The Spokesman-Review

Record Number: 9612020224

tell me more about matt davis. what were his PRs? what injuries caused him to ultimately quit? did he finish his eligibility? what events did he run on the track?

This link is from the 1999 Ducks T&F Season List.

knew fax wrote:

tell me more about matt davis. what were his PRs? what injuries caused him to ultimately quit? did he finish his eligibility? what events did he run on the track?

Unfortunately Matt's P.R.s are pretty silly in comparison to what he would have run with even 3 healthy college years. Put it this way in the years where Nick Rogers was on fire (13:18 & 27:55, olympic and world championship track and cross teams) Matt moved back to Eugene to give running one last go. This is after a few years off, which were preceded by the spottiest college training career I've ever heard of. In a month Davis was hanging with Nick in his toughest workouts.

Grote, here's a story about Matt's toughness. In 9th grade Micah & I watched Matt hit an ice covered jump and land straight on his shoulder. The landing was ice as well and he dislocated his arm and broke it just below the socket. Even with his big (late 80's) puffy snowboard jacket we could see his shoulder was way to low when he sat up. He got up, grabbed his snowboard and walked into the first aid. He ran the following middleschool track season having to use one arm. His other arm had to hold onto the chest of his jersey and not swing. Changed his form completely.

Or how about 7 months prior to that when Matt broke his leg getting launched off a ski chair lift (chair and all) at a running camp in the mountains. They ran to the mountain top, chair lifted down, and the chair lift lost control and started launching people off as it rounded the corner at the bottom. Matt launched 30 feet and the broken leg made him miss our 9th grade (middle school) cross season. Still, just after our season we ran an all comers meet at the state meet course. Matt had been running about a month, and ran a time that would have put him top 5 on Mead's varsity that day. They were state champs and top 5 in the country.

The list goes on. Rexing respects Matt Davis.

Rob

raubrey wrote:

In 9th grade Micah & I watched Matt hit an ice covered jump and land straight on his shoulder. The landing was ice as well and he dislocated his arm and broke it just below the socket. Even with his big (late 80's) puffy snowboard jacket we could see his shoulder was way to low when he sat up.

Rob

Wow, I knew Davis was tough, but running ice covered steeple barriers, with frozen water pits is quite amazing. I realize that the cold of Spokane's winter would necessitate the use of the puffy jacket. I didn't realize Matt had taken up the steeplechase so early in his career.

;)

ha, I forgot to mention that we were snowboarding.

pre841 wrote:

raubrey wrote:

In 9th grade Micah & I watched Matt hit an ice covered jump and land straight on his shoulder. The landing was ice as well and he dislocated his arm and broke it just below the socket. Even with his big (late 80's) puffy snowboard jacket we could see his shoulder was way to low when he sat up.

Rob

Wow, I knew Davis was tough, but running ice covered steeple barriers, with frozen water pits is quite amazing. I realize that the cold of Spokane's winter would necessitate the use of the puffy jacket. I didn't realize Matt had taken up the steeplechase so early in his career.

;)

No, just messing. You did mention it, but as I started to read the first part all I could picture was a group of freshmen Mead runners screwing around doing the SC during winter.

I've had some athletes over the years that I wouldn't have put something like that past them (at least attempting). Skiing/snowboarding and basketball are the two greatest causes of out of season injuries for my track kids. I guess I'm glad to see that I'm not alone.

Wisconsin will make Peking duck out of Oregon.

That was a great story written by John Blanchette on Matt Davis. That 5th-place finish is just amazing. If healthy, I think he could've won it, or won two NCAA titles. Yeah, he was that good.

No disrespect to Nick Rodgers, but Matt Davis has way more talent than Nick, and Nick turned out to be a pretty darn good runner. I'll always think "what if" with Matt Davis.

What's he doing now?