Several eras departing with Heinonen.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

Last Saturday, at the South Eugene High School track to watch my 13-year-old son compete in an age-group meet, I was genuinely surprised to see Tom Heinonen walking briskly up the homestretch, obviously on official business of some sort.

"Busman's holiday," the longtime Oregon women's track and field coach said as he headed to organize heats in the bantam 100 meters.

He'd come to watch his daughter Liisa run earlier that day, realized that the meet organizers could use some help and pitched in, just as he'd jump to sweep water off the track during a rainy meet at Hayward Field, just as he's run the older kids' long jump at all-comers meets for years, just as there was never a radio show too early in the morning for Heinonen to show up to talk about his sport, his team and his school.

Several eras are ending, as Heinonen retires after 27 seasons at Oregon, formally after the NCAA track and field championships that begin today in Sacramento.

And one of them, perhaps, is that era in which college track coaches were there to grow the sport, first and foremost, in big ways and little ways, an era that Tom Heinonen exemplified perfectly.

Because it's not that way anymore. College track and field is about winning, not that Heinonen didn't win plenty during his tenure, including a national title.

In that, track and field has simply moved closer to the other big-time college sports. Nobody expects the football coach to grow the sport, to teach it to little kids and sell it to gray-haired fans. You'll never again see an Oregon head track coach working the long jump pit at a kids' all-comers meet, nor should you expect him to.

What matters more are the final Pac-10 standings. No Oregon football coach anymore would be safe after consecutive finishes of fifth, fifth, fifth, ninth, eighth, sixth and seventh, which is where the Oregon women's track team has finished in the last seven Pac-10 meets in a nine-team league.

In that situation, the head football coach would be gone and with him all the assistants, no matter how beloved, replaced by a new regime.

One of the sad things about Heinonen's pending retirement - and there are several sad things - is that he isn't leaving with his team on top, that he wasn't thrown into the steeplechase pit after winning the title in his last Pac-10 meet, because his teams won that meet twice since its inception in 1987, the only team other than UCLA and USC (once) to do so, and finished second six times.

The recent Heinonen teams don't reflect the run of his career, but the Ducks are paying for bad luck, recruiting mistakes and stiffer competition, and it's a long road back.

In that, the Ducks could have the right guy for the very tough job, the thoroughly modern coach, Martin Smith, a relentless worker who is driven to succeed and who won't lose sight of the goal, not for a minute.

For now, it's still very difficult to picture the Oregon women's program without Heinonen and assistant coaches Mark Stream and Sally Harmon, whose jobs weren't merged into the new era.

Harmon, an Oregon grad who might yet take her alma mater to court, said she feels like she's being kicked out of the family.

I'll miss them. Miss their decency, class and enthusiasm. Most of all, I'll miss Tom Heinonen, a lot. When I was a first-time college track writer in 1986, Heinonen guided me through my first form chart.

I'm going to miss the intense competitiveness that seethed under that polite exterior, miss the most articulate quote-producer in the Cas Center, miss his modest embarrassment when then-Stanford coach Brooks Johnson, exulting about Heinonen's success in cross country, labeled him "Mr. November."

I'm going to miss seeing Heinonen do whatever needed to be done to stage a track meet, whether for the NCAA Championships at Hayward Field, or for a bunch of kids on a long, hot day at a high school track, the personification of an era in which the nurturing of the sport itself was no less important than winning titles.