Jessica Hull Keeps Stepping Up For Oregon

By Mark Wang for DyeStat

Jessica Hull never thought she would travel so far from home to attend college. 

And once at Oregon, she never thought she would rise up to become a team leader. 

But the reigning NCAA Division 1 outdoor champion in the 1,500 meters seems to keep going above and beyond where she thought she would. 

Hull will begin her title defense Thursday at the West Preliminary meet in Sacramento, Calif. 

She said this week she isn’t feeling any undue pressure. 

“If anything, I’ve put the pressure on myself and it’s been really good because everyone around me, both (women’s distance coach) Helen (Lehman-Winters) and coach (Robert) Johnson, and everyone that knows me really well has sort of told me that the only pressure you’re going to feel is from you, internally.”

Hull is one of 30 women from Oregon who will be competing this weekend for berths to compete June 5-8 at the NCAA Division 1 Outdoor Championships in Austin, Texas.  

Over four years, and one coaching change, she has come into a leadership role. 

But to start with, Hull wasn’t sure about leaving her native Australia. 

“I was going to stay at home when I first graduated high school,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I could move to the States and be that far away from home.”

Hull eventually decided to look into a couple of interested schools in the U.S. and she was taken with the crowds and atmosphere at Hayward Field in Eugene. 

“It was unreal,” Hull said. “The crowd. It was truly like Tracktown, USA, which I think I appreciate even more now having been here for four years.”

After winning the NCAA 1,500-meter final last June in the last meet at historic Hayward Field, Hull endured a big change when coach Maurica Powell left Oregon to become the Director of Track and Field and Cross Country at the University of Washington. 

A couple of the team’s leaders left the program to follow Powell. 

Hull stayed to see the rebuilding, or reloading, of the distance program under Lehman-Winters, who guided the San Francisco women to a runner-up finish in 2017 at the Division 1 national cross country championships, before deciding to leave the Dons’ program after 15 seasons to accept the vacant coaching position in Eugene.

“I didn’t think I would ever really have to be in a leadership role,” Hull said. “A couple of the girls like Lilli (Burdon) and Katie (Rainsberger) were strong leaders and they were natural leaders. I was kind of very happy to just be one that’s herded along. But then when we started to build the team for cross country, and you start to see the transfers coming in and the freshmen coming in, and you realize there wasn’t much returning, I had to step up, and I’m proud of the way I did.”

Hull’s success as a runner also continued. 

Last fall, she placed in the top three of every cross country race she competed in, including a third-place finish at the NCAA Championships in Madison, Wis.

Hull led the Ducks to third place at the NCAA Indoor Championships in March with an individual title in the 3,000 meters and an anchor leg on the back-to-back champion distance medley relay, which she led off the year before. 

Hull looks back on her time in Eugene and sees tremendous growth as a person and as an athlete. 

“(I’ve been) learning to race in multiple ways, and learning how to train so I have the toolbox to race in multiple ways,” she said. “I would go to the well in every session and be like ‘I have to run faster around every single rep than I did before,’ and now I understand the importance of the process and the day to day and the consistency over the week, and then the month.

“And as a person I feel like I’ve grown up. You don’t really realize it until you reflect on it all and start to look at the student I’ve become, and how organized I am in my general day-to-day life.”

Hull’s outdoor season includes a victory in the 1,500 at the Payton Jordan Invitational, where she defeated Karissa Schweizer, a first-year pro with the Bowerman Track Club, and a second straight Pac-12 Conference title. 

Hull is also on the watchlist for the Bowerman Award.  

“It’s good stuff to get absorbed in because you do have to kind of use it as (motivation), but at the same time you are very much, especially through the month of April, head down working really, really hard (so you can) pop back up in May ready for conference and regionals.”

Hull is on track to graduate in June. She’ll earn her degree in Human Physiology, with a minor in Psychology, a week after the NCAA Championships. She plans to return for more Psychology courses in the fall and will complete her eligibility on the track in 2019.

She is glad she chose to stay at Oregon last summer.   

“What it means to be a Duck has grown on me since I was a freshman,” Hull said. “I couldn’t visualize anything else and I was proud of everything I’ve accomplished so far as a Duck, and it just felt right to stay here and continue.”