Veteran Coaches Neil Nelson And Shannon Fisher Lead Bruins To Winning Combinations And Co-Ed Team Championship at Oregon Relays For Fourth Straight Year

By Lori Shontz Special to DyeStat

RESULTS/VIDEOS

EUGENE - There’s no secret formula, not really. There’s no fancy spreadsheet, not exactly.

But somehow, Wilson (Long Beach) CA shows up at the Oregon Relays every year with exactly the right mix of athletes to dominate the relay events and, therefore, the co-ed team competition at Hayward Field.

The Bruins did it again this weekend, scoring a record 169 points, nine more than the previous record, which they set a year ago, and 69 points ahead of runner-up Niwot CO. They won the school’s fourth consecutive co-ed championship at the Oregon Relays, which was exactly what they showed up at Hayward Field to do.

“We have a legacy here to upkeep,” said Jayda Cigar-Dingle, who was part of two winning relays on Saturday. “We come down here knowing that.”

The girls won the 4x400 by more than 14 seconds, the 1,600-meter SMR by more than two seconds, the 4x200 by more than three seconds, and both the 4x100 and the 800-meter SMR by about .30 seconds.

The boys won the 4x400 by nine seconds, the 4x200 by .30 and the 800-meter SMR by nearly a second. The boys 800-meter SMR team joked that their coaches have it all in their heads; they just manifest the winning combinations.

It’s not quite that simple, but coaches Neil Nelson and Shannon Fisher, who have been coaching together for about 25 years and have known each other since high school. They have a system.

Fisher has the philosophy – that each relay leg has a personality, and that’s the best way to figure out who runs where.

“Of course, you’ve got to be able to run,” Fisher said, laughing. “You can’t just have a personality. But whether it’s a first leg or anchor, to me, there’s a certain mindset.”

A brief primer on the Fisher philosophy:

The lead-off runner is “the gritty person that’s consistently the smart one,” someone who isn’t going to false start.

The second leg is “the one that’s going to eat up the track.”

The third leg “is going to go out and get whoever’s in front of them – you can tell by how he or she carries around, how she runs in practice.”

And the anchor leg is the “cool operator, the ones that are gonna get the stick and they want to run through the finish line first,” Fisher said. “They’ve already got their hands up; they know what hands-up (celebration) thing they’re going to do.”

Nelson works on the entries; in the case of the Oregon Relays, that’s eight weeks before. “On the computer entries, I try to read his mind,” Nelson said. “Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes we’ll fight.”

Both coaches laughed.

It isn’t just picking the right athlete for the right relay leg, of course. Nelson said their coaching philosophy is perhaps different than some of the newer generation of coaches; they put a strong focus on conditioning, longer workouts to start, then moving down to the sprints.

“We run a lot,” he said. “We feel like our kids are in shape.”

Added Fisher: “A lot of kids just want to come out and jump on the track and race. But we start with the fitness.”

Wilson (Long Beach)  has about 100 girls and 100 boys on the track team; the team brought 35 athletes to the Oregon Relays, 20 girls and 15 boys.

Three girls won individual titles. Clara Adams won the 400 in 55.18, Saniah Varnado won the 300 hurdles in a personal best 41.71, the fourth-fastest time in the U.S. this season, and Shirayah Lewis-Williams won a thrilling High Voltage 800 in a season-best 2:10.01.

“It’s really all about years and all your strength you’ve put together over the years, all the practice and all your training,” Lewis-Williams said. “It was all heart and just what I had left in my body to finish.”