These Ducks taking flight, not heading south.

Byline: Ron Bellamy The Register-Guard

The story of the fall in Oregon sports has been the rise - of cross country, and soccer, and most dramatically, of volleyball.

If they were stocks, you'd buy now, the way you wish you'd have invested early in Nike, or Starbucks, or Apple computers.

Thursday night, 843 watched the Oregon volleyball team sweep Washington State, rolling in the second and third games as Oregon basketball center Ray Schafer bounced and yelled in the middle of a mini-Pit Crew.

One day, coach Jim Moore can envision crowds of 3,000 and 4,000, and larger.

"I want to make our revenue matter," he said, a thought no less ambitious than getting this long-suffering program to the NCAA Tournament in this, his second year, and it seems that he will. "I want to generate enough revenue so that it matters to the department. ...

"Everybody who comes goes `Wow, this is great,' and they have fun while they're here. We just have to get more and more people, and it will happen. We just have to keep winning."

But it's the fact that Oregon has started winning in volleyball that is so amazing and impressive, almost beyond words. The program that hadn't had a winning season since 1990; that had won just three Pac-10 volleyball matches in the last five years; that was the doormat in the conference that had produced the last five national champions.

"When Jim took over, he was 6 feet under, buried, and there was no light," said Renee' Mack Baumgartner, Oregon's senior associate athletic director. "To have him turn this around so quickly is just an amazing accomplishment."

In Moore's second season, the Ducks are 17-4 overall, 7-4 in the Pac-10, ranked No. 24 in the nation and hosting No. 4 Washington tonight not in dread but with excitement - heck, Moore admitted he'd been talking much more about the Huskies than the Cougars in practice this week.

Thursday, the Ducks submitted a bid to host first- and second-round matches in the NCAA Tournament, the sites awarded to the top 16 seeds in the nation. Ambitious, indeed, and after tonight's match with Washington, the defending national champions, the Ducks still have No. 2 Stanford, and No. 13 California, and No. 6 Southern California, and No. 5 UCLA dead ahead.

Yet the Ducks have the look of the real deal. Their four losses have been to teams ranked seventh or better. Moore, who has won anyplace he's coached, compares this team favorably to his 1993 team at Northern Michigan, which featured his wife, UO assistant coach Stacy Metro, and won the Division II national championship.

"It's difficult talking to my wife about this, because she was involved in some of those teams, but this, if it's not the best, it's the second-best team I've ever coached, and it's maybe the most fun group of people I've ever been around," he said.

"The '93 team was an unbelievable team. This one is really close. They're not as physically dominating as that team was, but that's what makes us really good. ... They're just a great team."

What a great autumn it's been for the Ducks overall, though the final stories haven't been written yet.

Even allowing for the relatively recent arrival of soccer, it's been a long time since Oregon's enjoyed such across-the-board success in the fall. You'd have to go back to 1989 for a comparable year - that was the last time the volleyball team was in the NCAA Tournament, while the men's cross country team finished second in the NCAA meet, and the Oregon football team reached and won the Independence Bowl, its first bowl appearance in 26 years.

Beyond volleyball, Oregon's fall scoreboard reads thusly:

Soccer: 10-6-2 overall, 4-1-2 in the Pac-10, in third place in the Pac-10, hosting No. 3 UCLA tonight and finishing with Southern California here Sunday afternoon before waiting for the NCAA to announce its 64-team field at noon Monday.

The Ducks have set school records in overall wins and Pac-10 wins, have clinched their first winning season ever, and can't finish worse than fifth in the Pac-10. Figure they need another win this weekend, though the league has sent at least five teams to the tournament in each of the last six seasons.

Under second-year head coach Tara Erickson, eight of the 11 starters are freshmen and sophomores.

Cross country: The Oregon men won the Pac-10 title last weekend, in their second year under one of the most prominent distance coaches in the nation, former Stanford mentor Vin Lananna. Only one senior scored for the Ducks, who got a victory from sophomore Galen Rupp and have a roster laden with freshmen and sophomores.

Football: The Ducks are 6-2 overall going into Saturday's game with Washington; remarkably, after losing a senior quarterback, a senior running back, a senior wide receiver, two senior cornerbacks and two of the best defensive linemen in school history, there's been little talk about this being a rebuilding year, but the fact is that these Ducks should be better next year.

As should cross country and soccer and, yes, volleyball, with an outstanding freshman in Sonja Newcombe - one of those players who seems to make everyone else better - and redshirting junior transfer Gorana Maricic.

"The future's so bright in all of those programs," Baumgartner said. "They're going to be competing for championships. ... In the Pac-10, it's very competitive. If you're competitive in our conference, you'll be competitive nationally."

For Oregon volleyball, it's been forever since the Ducks were competitive anywhere, and Moore won't let the Ducks forget where they've been, even as their stock soars into blue-chip territory.