For the love of all sports.

Byline: Bob Clark The Register-Guard

There simply aren't athletes like Karen Meats anymore.

At the peak of her athletic career, she not only went from playing fast-pitch softball at the highest level in the summers to field hockey in the fall and volleyball in the winters, but she spent spring afternoons during her college years at Oregon simultaneously practicing for softball as well as track and field.

`I can remember taking my turn at bat and running down to the other end of the field to the long jump pit and taking my jumps, and then running back and taking some fly balls,' Meats said.

Yes, it was a different era. Instead of the specialization of today's athletes, whether male or female, Meats did everything, and well enough that she earned our selection as the finest female all-around athlete ever to come out of this area.

As we did in selecting the area's top male athletes, we based our selection on what an athlete did beyond high school, while limiting our candidates to those who attended high school roughly within The Register-Guard circulation boundaries. Meats was a 1964 graduate of South Eugene High School, and graduated from Oregon in 1968.

In nominating Meats for the university's athletic hall of fame, Becky Sisley described her as `way ahead of her times.' In addition to being in the UO hall of fame, Meats was also inducted into the Oregon Softball Association Hall of Fame in 1990.

Certainly, there were other candidates to consider for their abilities in more than one sport. Mary Brorby excelled in both softball and volleyball. Sally Harmon won a national title in the javelin for Oregon, and contributed in volleyball. Several others were standouts in one sport, and participated in another.

Then there was Meats. As a softball player, she earned all-American honors while playing for the McCulloch Chain Saw team that twice won regional ASA titles and advanced to national tournaments. In volleyball, she was a key player on teams that won regional championships in U.S. Volleyball Association competition. She was the leading scorer on field hockey teams at Oregon, and was the first player from the Northwest invited to a prestigious camp that was often the precursor to being selected for national teams.

She also played basketball at Oregon and competed in track and field, where she excelled in the javelin while running and jumping as well.

`We didn't have the (seven-event) heptathlon, but that would have been a good event for me,' Meats said.

In singling out Meats for her variety of activities, an attempt was made to not overlook individuals for their accomplishments in a single sport. For the purposes of the listing in the accompanying chart, the sports considered were confined to those officially recognized by the Oregon School Activities Association, which doesn't demean the accomplishments of gymnasts or rowers or skiers, but simply provides a limit on what's possibly going to be disputed anyway. (For that opportunity, go to www.registerguard.com where comments are being solicited.)

Among our choices were athletes who didn't have the opportunity to compete for their high schools.

That was certainly the case for Nancy Welborn, who as a student at South Eugene High School did her pitching for the McCulloch Chain Saw team in Eugene, long before fast-pitch softball was played by high schools. Similarly, Cathy Gaughan won Oregon Amateur and Pacific Northwest Amateur titles in the summer after her senior year at St. Francis High School - the predecessor to Marist - a few years before the OSAA sponsored girls golf championships.

Margaret Johnson Bailes did run track for Churchill High School and set records that have stood the challenges of four decades. During those same years, she also won an AAU national title in the 100 - before her sophomore year - and was on the '68 Olympic team in the first months of her senior year.

If those athletes aren't household names in the community that spawned their athletic careers, they have certainly been recognized elsewhere. Gaughan was inducted into Arizona State's athletic hall of fame, in the same group with a baseball player named Barry Bonds. Welborn, with national and international success, is in the national hall of fame for softball. Bailes is in this state's hall of fame and was inducted in another in the Bay Area in a class that had some more familiar names: major-leaguer Dusty Baker, NFL standout Dick Bass, Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills and tennis player Rosie Casals.

Famed company, and yet, Bailes wasn't without competition in this selection.

Marshfield graduate and current track and field coach Fran (Auer) Worthen won a national title at 220 yards in 1974 and on three occasions ran times faster than the listed record for the event. She, too, might have been an Olympian except she retired from competition in 1975.

Other sports offered challengers aplenty for this process.

A notable aspect of the accomplishments of Meats was not only the variety of activities but her longevity in competition, which she credits to her appreciation for sports.

`When my generation played, we played because we truly loved the sport,' Meats said. `There was no benefit to playing except for the love of the sport. Today's athletes, I don't think they love it as much as we did.'

Once a teacher and coach herself, the 61-year-old Meats is now employed by the city of Eugene, working in its recreational athletics program. She still plays `a little co-ed softball' along with competitive volleyball and runs five miles daily.

Her first competitive sport was softball, spurred by watching her father's team play in the era when men's fast-pitch was widely played.

She joined a summer program before entering high school, and at South Eugene expanded into her wider array of activities.

Her fast-pitch softball coach, the late Jack Moore, pushed his players into volleyball to maintain winter conditioning. Now all but erased by the rise of soccer and volleyball's move from winter to fall, field hockey then was perhaps the primary outlet for high school competitors in the fall.

`It's image is a bunch of women hitting each other with sticks, but it's very much a game of finesse, of dignity, of protocol,' Meats said. `Field hockey is a sport like no other.'

Yet, Meats wouldn't call it her favorite, nor would she give the nod to another. The wonder is, what might she have accomplished in any of those sports if she had specialized, or had camps and the year-round training opportunities that have changed athletics so dramatically.

`I think I may have improved my skills and maybe my confidence,' Meats said. `I also feel I would have lost so much by not participating in the other sports.

`I absolutely adored (the variety) and if I could change to being an athlete in today's world, I would not. I would much rather do it the way I did it, for one reason: I learned something from every coach I had, and I learned something from every sport I had.'

WHO CAN TOP THIS?

The best female all-around athlete from this area, based on accomplishments after high school, would be Karen Meats, a 1964 graduate of South Eugene and 1968 graduate of the UO.

Field hockey: Played center forward and led UO team in scoring; played on club team after college and selected a Northwest all-star.

Softball: All-American for ASA team and member of state's softball hall of fame; considered best player on UO teams as well.

Volleyball: Named to the all-regional team in U.S. Volleyball Association competition; helped team to six regional championships.

Others: Competed at UO in basketball for two seasons and track and field for four seasons; also played No. 1 singles for UO in badminton event.