Meet was best of something old and new.

Byline: Ron Bellamy/The Register-Guard

It was everything you'd want in a track and field meet.

It had drama, it had emotion, it had effort, it had history.

You had reason to be there for the very first running event in the Pac-10 Track and Field Championships at Hayward Field on Sunday, as Oregon's Jordan Kent ran down Southern California on the anchor leg of the 4x100-meter relay and 7,060 fans roared as one.

You had reason to stay to the very end, a Trojan edging Kent on the final leg of the 4x400, Trojans first, Ducks second, the meet in doubt until then.

It was a bittersweet day for the Oregon men's team, which finished with 133 1/2 points, 21 1/2 more than projected in the form chart.

But the Trojans, projected to score 130, scored 140 for the meet, 106 on Sunday.

The Ducks didn't lose it, the Trojans simply won it, and perhaps the ultimate winner, on this day, was the sport in Eugene.

If you came to this track meet Sunday - as part of the largest crowd here for the conference meet since 1982, when the Ducks drew 8,308 just two years after Hayward Field hosted its third straight Olympic Trials - you'll come to another.

If you didn't, well, you missed something.

Missed the incredible electricity of that Oregon win in the 4x100, missed the third straight Pac-10 victory in the 110-meter hurdles by Eric Mitchum, missed Matt Scherer's dominant performance in the 400 meters, his arms raised aloft as he crossed the finish line.

Missed two more wins by the remarkable Robert Cheseret of Arizona, who captured the 1,500 and the 5,000 to cap his college career with eight Pac-10 titles in distance races, a record.

You missed Oregon's Rebekah Noble winning the 800, missed UCLA's Chelsea Johnson setting an NCAA record in the pole vault and missed Arizona State holding off Stanford to win the women's meet with - imagine this - distance runners.

And on the men's side, it came down to that last event, the Ducks trailing USC by 4 1/2 points, needing to win the long relay and have the Trojans finish fourth, whereupon the Ducks would have won the meet by half a point. Drama.

"It was a great, supportive crowd," said Vin Lananna, the Oregon director of track and field. "They were here to the end, we kept them glued to their seat. That's what college track and field is all about. I think they were treated to a phenomenal show. A couple of years from now, probably people won't remember the score, but they'll remember this great experience, and it was something very special."

The efforts were special, all day, and the Oregon men were a disappointed group afterward.

"It hurts," said senior A.K. Ikwuakor, third in the 110 hurdles, fifth in the 400 hurdles and the third leg on Oregon's 4x400.

"It hurts a lot, senior year, at home, finishing second. ... It's a heart-breaker. But it wasn't for lack of effort from anybody. USC, it came down to the wire. We both wanted it. But they came out with it at the end. None of it was lack of effort. Everybody fought and scratched for those points.

`So I congratulate USC. Because we came with our best game today, and they got the best of us today."

The UO men scored in darn near every event. They scored more points than they'd ever scored in a Pac-8 or Pac-10 meet at Hayward Field; only once have they scored more, and that was last year, when they won with 152. They've now been second, first, second, first and second over the last five seasons.

In any other Oregon sport, that would be a dynasty.

And Lananna said that, at one point during the meet, his first Pac-10 meet as the Oregon coach, he was standing in the clerk's circle and reflecting on "the opportunity to inherit probably the greatest position in the United States in the sport of track and field. ...

"Nothing could be more exciting than being the person responsible for University of Oregon track and field. It's an awesome responsibility. ... You're in a position to make unprecedented success and something really special happen for the sport of track and field.

"You look at those athletes today, and watch their competitive performances, and score is just a part of it. Their effort was fabulous across the board."

So was the weekend here. Under Lananna's direction, Oregon invited former Oregon track and field athletes for a lively and successful reunion Saturday night, attended by almost 500. "Many of them felt like this was one of the first times they've been invited back as part of some official group, and it was so exciting that we're going to try to do it on an annual basis," Lananna said.

Under Lananna's direction, Oregon honored the Pac-10's "coaching legends," on Sunday, doing so with the nostalgic voice of Hayward Field, Wendy Ray, who introduced coaches like Sam Bell, Bob Larsen, John Chaplin, Payton Jordan and, for the longest, loudest ovation, former Oregon men's coach Bill Dellinger.

It was a day that conjured days of old. It was a day that made you look forward to days to come.

CAPTION(S):

Robert Cheseret acknowledges the crowd on a day in which he won the 1,500 and 5,000.