I will try to make this short and sweet.

No offense to UCLA javelin thrower but this dual meet wasn’t exactly a big competition. There were 4 javelin thrower in the meet, 1 UCLA guy and 3 Oregon guys. We were ready to sweep the competition. Being as the competition wasn’t that great (UCLAs best throw was 194’…. And today he threw 188’) this was just a meet to go out throw once and get the Win. We were training through the meet and getting ready for Oregon Relays next week.

We were supposed to lose to UCLA by 1 point. It was really disappointing because all of us javelin throwers knew that we were doing ALL that we could. I mean were planned on sweeping the javelin and scoring 9 points for the team, we can’t get any better than that! So it’s kind of a bummer that we couldn’t help the team out any more and pick up a couple extra points for winning by a whole lot or something.

I was probably more warmed up for this meet than I have ever been, I don’t like excessive warm ups. But we had so much time. It was weird; normally you are always pressed for time. While we were warming up the Long Jump was going on, UCLAs big long jumper just had a great jump at 25’2.5” and I was like great we need to win this meet, which means we can't give up positions like that. I was kind of worried, but not to fear super man came wearing green and yellow. Ashton Eaton on the very next jump excited the crowd by jumping 25’8” he just killed it! I was pumped and ready to go. It seems like ever meet I get and adrenaline rush from someone on my team, and competition like that gets me going!

The big goals in my head were to take first, sweep the javelin event, take the meet record (234’) and this is where it’s kind of rude but I hope if he ever reads this he finds it as a compliment…. But Corey White is an amazing javelin thrower. I always hear how he is a great guy, and he’s a stud javelin thrower don’t get me wrong, if you can throw within 20 feet of Corey White then I am impressed, but Corey and I are both in the PAC 10! He’s what I have to shoot for every meet! He threw at the Mt Sac Relays the day before and threw 241’ and took 3^rd place, my next goal was to throw further than he did at my meet. It doesn’t matter if we are both throwing in the same meet or a thousand miles away it’s always a competition between us. I want the best for him; I hope that we can be teammates on the USA team together, so there is no bad blood between us, but it will always be very competitive. Last and final goal was to throw better than the winner of the Mt Sac Relays, he threw 247’. Even though this meet was a practice meet I still had goals of things I wanted to accomplish.

The Javelin started, Alex opened up with a very respectable 70.05m javelin throw (229’10”) and I opened with 250’ it was definitely good enough to walk away from the competition with a win, but my legs were SOOOO far off, that it was just depressing. I accomplished all my meet goals but there was just something that we (my coach and I) didn’t like about the throw. I needed to learn something out of this meet. My legs were slow and my steps were off, I don’t know what happened with my legs, but it was bad. I wanted to do one more, hopefully it would have better legs, and a better throw would follow.

 I took a pass on my next throw, with normally 10-14 athletes in a javelin flight and we only had 4 this meet, it was a little too much throwing, one after the other, so I gave myself some rest and took a pass on my second throw, 3^rd round came up and I just wanted to get a little more acceleration on my throw, better footwork and see what happened. The throw was better, 257’2” close to 80m, I was very pleased with the distance. It’s hard to get ecstatic about a throw if it’s not a PR, but I was happy inside. My coach and I were still not pleased with my leg work, we wanted 1 more throw. I was totally fine with taking one more throw.

Normally in my early throws I don’t want the slow clap, it’s just too much pressure and adrenaline in early throws to be asking for it. But later in the meet on a last throw, you are tired and have really nothing to get you going, so I asked the crowd to help me out and give me the clap. I was really disappointed with my last throw (it only went about 241-242ft) but we pulled the plug and stopped throwing.  I was very happy with my series of throws, it’s what we said we wanted to do, we wanted to throw some decent marks in between my old PR and my new PR, when we get consistent at that then we will have a good chance at PRing again.

there couldnt have been a better topper than coming into the final event (4X400) and Oregon and UCLA being tied up. i was so impressed with all our athletes stepping it up. it was the best meet i have ever seen in my life, and if you dont think this dual meet was exciting then i dont know what to tell you. it was better than any of the Oregon Basketball games this year thats for sure. we will keep on trying to put on a show for everyone in Eugene, a lot more home meets to come!

As for now, we need to get ready for next week (Oregon relays). It’s going to be a lot of fun. Last year I was in the B section but took 3^rd overall in the A section. This year I hope to win it. I never count anyone out; I never consider anything an easy win.