sidelines
Emerald sports magazine
Wednesday, May 9, 1984
Oregon track coach Tom Heinonen builds a
Phot
By STEVE TURCOTTE
FOR YEARS. THE OREGON
women's track and field program
lived under the long shadow of
the wildly successful Duck
men’s team and its mentor. Bill
Bowerman.
But ever since head women's
coach Tom Heinonen arrived on
The scene, things have,changed
— and they have all been for the
better.
tnstead of playing the
proverbial second fiddle to the
men, Heinonens women are
marching to the beat of their
own drum.
And for Heinonen. success
has bred success.
Since taking the reins almost
eight years ago. Heinonen has
guided the women's track
program out of the shadows of
the men s program and thrust it
into the national spotlight. In
Heinonen s first year, the Ducks
were 24th at nationals. Last year,
his team was fifth.
“We have grown with the
times,” says Heinonen. “We
have built on the tradition of
Oregon men’s track and have
gone from there.'
When Heinonen first arrived at
I DYNASTY I
uregon, he was a graduate
assistant coach receiving little
pay for his long hours. In 1977.
the women's track and cross
country programs received a
. shot in the arm wjien Heinonen
was named as a full-time coach.
It allowed him to spend more
time concentrating on what he
does best — coaching.
■That was a giant
breakthrough, just being paid
full time.” admits Heinonen.
“Being paid $14,000 a year —
that was top of the line stuff.
Being a full-time coach gave me
time to contact people and make
some phone calls and assemble
a team.”
When Heinonen took over the
program, he was assuming
command of a'track program
that had not only been
consistently trounced at the
regional level, but had also done
little or nothing on the national
level.
He quickly changed all that.
' The team was just a glorified
PE program jn those days,”
Heinonen says. "They were not
able to offer any scholarships
and had little information on
people in state as well as out of
state.-'
Heinonen was able to offer
some scholarship money his
first season, although it was
nothing outstanding. The money
was soon to become more
significant in the following
years.
"The first year we had any
money we recruited Melanie
Batiste and Debbie Adams (two
sprinters)," says Heinonen. “The
following year we had more
money and we got the best
recruiting class in the country in
our first real attempt at
recruiting."
In becoming a national track
and field giant, Heinonen points
out that recruiting is first and
foremost on a coach’s list of
priorities.-I(f you can't recruit the
top quality athletes out of high
school, you can't put together a
top flight college team.
Recruiting is one area where
Heinonen has had little
difficulty. Sure, he has lost a few
prize athletes he would have
liked to have seen in an Oregon
uniform, but more times than
not, he has landed quality high
school athletes time and again.
In some cases, recruiting can
be an easy process. Like in the
case of freshman Janell
Thorsland, it didn’t take much
convincing for her to come to
Eugene.
"Ever since I was little I
always had a goal to come to
school here,” Thorsland says.
"We used to come here for all
comers meets and I would love
the track.”
But in other cases, Heinonen
has had to do a good selling job.
And it's an easy thing to do
when he has a top-ranked
program to back him up. It's
hard for high school athletes to
not notice that the Ducks have
been one of the nation's top
ranked dual meet teams for six
years and a perennial contender
in the NCAA championships.
“The reputation for track and
field was excellent and I liked
that,” says Cam Talton, a
freshman sprinter who was
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