On track to start

On your mark. Get set. Go.

Actually, go Wednesday — and Thursday, Friday and Saturday — to Hayward Field on the University of Oregon campus if you want to see the best collegiate track and field athletes in the nation.

Tickets are still available all four days for the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, although you better hurry if you want to be there on the final day, Saturday, as the UO’s men’s and women’s teams try for something that’s never happened before, especially on their own soil — national titles in the same year.

As of late Monday, about 1,800 tickets were still available for Wednesday’s session, about 1,400 for Thursday, about 700 for Friday and only about 350 for Saturday, UO Athletic Department spokesman Greg Walker said.

This is the 10th time in school history — and the first time in nine years — that the UO will welcome the NCAA track and field championships since first hosting the men’s meet in 1962.

It’s the Final Four of track and field, you know. The College World Series of track and field. The BCS title game of track and field. And the signs were all around Monday that many of the athletes, about 1,000 of them, have already arrived.

A pack of Mississippi State athletes, dressed in the school’s maroon and white colors, could be seen walking down East 15th Avenue. Auburn University athletes, in orange and blue, could be seen walking down Agate Street behind Hayward Field’s east grandstand. And a young man, with the word “distance” on the back and “Brown University” on the front of his black T-shirt, could be seen running west on East 11th Avenue.

Go west, young man. That’s where Track Town USA is.

“Other than the obvious, to cheer on the UO teams, it’s going to be an absolutely fantastic event,” said UO director of track and field Vin Lananna when asked Monday why folks might want to snap up the remaining tickets. It’s a chance to see “some of the greatest athletes in the world,” Lananna added.

Athletes such as the UO’s Ashton Eaton, who set the world record in the men’s indoor heptathlon earlier this year and who is the decathlon favorite and long jump participant in this week’s meet.

The national meet is also a chance for the struggling local economy to visualize some dollar signs.

“We’re full for the week,” said Jody Hall, general manager of the Hilton Eugene, the area’s largest hotel with 269 rooms. In fact, the hotel for this week has been booked up for four or five months, Hall said. Most of the rooms have been taken by athletes and coaches, he said. “They’re all over the place.”

Most or all of the Valley River Inn’s 257 rooms are also claimed, and The Holiday Inn in Springfield, the area’s third largest hotel with 153 rooms, is also booked, general manager Colleen Arruda said Monday.

Nine years ago, when the UO hosted the 2001 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, total attendance at Hayward Field for the four days was 20,162, about 5,000 fans a day.

“We’re going to blow that out of the water,” said the UO’s Walker.

About 5,500 all-session passes have been sold, Walker said. With about 1,000 seats added at Hayward Field’s southwest turn, there’s room for about 12,000 fans a day. With most of the tickets sold, that should give the UO a good shot at breaking the NCAA record for the championship meet, set in 2008 at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, Iowa, when 41,187 came through the gates over four days.

The UO should at least surpass the 35,124 in attendance at the 1984 NCAA meet at Hayward over four days, even if crowds will pale in comparison to the 160,000-plus fans who attended the 2008 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials here, made possible by extra seating provided for that eight-day event.

But this meet will have something the Olympic Trials did not. Something never before seen at Hayward Field. Waffles.

And we’re not talking about the soles of some athlete’s shoes. We’re talking actual waffles, the kind made with batter.

“We were looking for a vernacular food for Hayward Field,” said Eric Brandt, the UO’s director of food and hospitality services, of the $7 strawberry waffles that will be served during the meet from a stand in Hayward Field’s southeast corner.

The Kentucky Derby has its mint juleps, and Wimbledon has its strawberries and cream, Brandt said. So, what else would Hayward Field have but a breakfast favorite made on waffle irons — the same appliance with which legendary UO track coach Bill Bowerman made some of the first Nike track shoes?