Out of Portland

Photo by Cortney White

Straight Outta Portland

Words Jeff Merrill

In the week that the WNBA announced Portland will have a franchise, for the first time since 2001, Portland is bereft of a professional track team. Earlier this week, Sarah Lorge Butler broke the news that the Nike Union Athletics Club coached by Pete Julian will move to Colorado.

The UAC was the last of the Nike groups that called Portland home. The Nike Oregon Project ran from 2001 to 2019. The Project ended with cases of mistreatment of athletes by coach Alberto Salazar. The Bowerman Track Club Pro group excelled in Portland from 2013 to 2022. Famously, Jerry Schumacher was brought to Oregon to assist in coaching duties with Salazar in 2008. Back then, the ORPJT wore the green and yellow of the Oregon Track Club uniforms- the Eugene-based godfather of pro groups. When a rift developed between Salazar and Schumacher, separate groups emerged, both training on the Nike Headquarters campus in Beaverton. Eventually, Salazar’s athletes would wear the black uniforms with phantom logo, and Schumacher’s pro group would attach themselves to the preexisting sub-elite and youth club run out of Nike, then called the Bowerman Athletic Club. In the merger, the club changed its name to the Bowerman Track Club and donned the red lightning.

During the mid-2010’s, the running-crazed state of Oregon had 3 world class pro clubs, the aforementioned Nike sponsored Oregon Track Club in Eugene rounding out the trio.

The Portland-based groups thrived, living near and training on the Nike campus, with access to workout facilities, the Michael Johnson track, the Nike footwear and product teams, and marketing teams all within jogging distance. The benefits of having professional clubs close to product teams and as a part of company culture can’t be overstated, and for a sport whose athletes have to be thinking about what is next, it provided them with the ability to network and find what life after sport might look like, if they still wanted to be involved with sport. Many alums of the Portland-based groups stayed in the area and infused the company with their knowledge. Athletes like Matt Tegenkamp, Jonathan Riley, Treniere Mosier, Elliott Heath, Mike Donnelly, Bret Schoolmeister, Andrew Bumbalough, and I’m sure I’m missing some… They created a pipeline of employees who lived the experience, and kept them in the community to strengthen the imprint of the sport.

The Portland Track Festival grew from a middle school meet to one of the most talent-rich events in the United States due to a need for more racing opportunities that didn’t require athletes to travel. It also allowed the teams to showcase their abilities against top out of town talent in front of a home crowd. A crowd that is star-studded with former pros.

The wealth of talent in the city is why Andy Wheating and I started the talk-show Tracklandia. The old saying goes: “You couldn’t have the Tonight Show in Iowa.” With dozens of the world’s best calling Oregon home, guests abounded.

One of the big hairy questions in track and field is how exactly to generate a fanbase. Is it a question of geography? Is it driven by the persona and talent of a single athlete? Is it possible to develop a real rooting interest that goes beyond nationality in global championships, or do people just like seeing great performances no matter who achieves them?  Or do they at all?

Former USATF President and Nike Marketing Exec, Craig Masback once said that they created the USA vs the World program at Penn Relays because fans were not likely to cheer for brands alone.

During the 2010’s, Vin Lananna was able to create a groundswell of community support in Eugene for the University of Oregon track team and the OTC. Fans in the stands roared the loudest for athletes who wore the ‘O’ and flashed the symbol above their heads with their thumbs and fingertips brought together.

In Portland, the merger of Schumacher’s pros with an existing club team with hundreds of members created a real rooting interest. The marketing success of the Bowerman Track Club in this time period hasn’t been matched, and I believe the international fame wouldn’t have been reached without a strong tie to the community locally. The location and local fanbase help shape the lore. Who are the Yankees without New York? People see the love and are drawn to it.

The tricky thing with distance running is that athletes are spending more and more of their time at altitude. In the United States, in Boulder, Flagstaff, Park City and Albuquerque. There are now handfuls of clubs of varying levels in all of these locations. But they will never race there. Meaningful racing doesn’t take place at altitude. These places, although lovely, tend to be small. Flagstaff is a town of 77,000 people. Boulder has a population of 108,000.

Track and Field has a difficult time carving out space for itself in the big cities like LA and New York, but it can get a foothold in the mid-tier cities, especially ones with a running bent, like Portland, whose metro area boasts 2.2 million people.

The thing that die-hards, meet directors and potential sponsors lament in American track and field is crowd size at any given meet. It is a constant discussion, even during the Olympic Trials. It is a barometer of the health of the sport. In the same way that a strong local fanbase begets a larger broader fanbase, packed stands will absolutely create a better viewing experience for the broadcast. If you turn on a sporting event and the stands are empty, the natural inference is that it isn’t worth watching. If we see that an event means something to others, we’re going to believe it’s important, and we’re probably going to take interest in the outcome, even if only to see how the people in the stands react.

The Bowerman Track Club and Union Athletics Club would go to altitude for long stints, but were based in Portland. Before the Bowerman Track Club moved to Eugene, it was the standard in the sport of a team representing a city of a significant size. It is not uncommon to see people in Portland grocery stores wearing BTC t-shirts, and for people who look like athletes wearing BTC gear to be stopped and asked if they are members of the team.

The Portland Timbers began as a ragtag club team competing in various leagues for several decades before joining the MLS in 2009. The fanbase is amongst the rowdiest in the country and the city is now known as Soccer City, USA. There is a deep and devoted love for teams that represent cities, and the culture of the teams is crafted largely by the fans, who create art and songs from their love of their team. The culture builds on itself. The emotion seen in the stands at a MLS or WNBA, NFL or NBA game is unmatched in track outside of East African and Caribbean fans whose athletes win medals in the Olympics.

It is possible to cultivate that kind of fandom, but it takes a dedicated approach in the community year-round.

Eugene no longer has a pro contingent of the Oregon Track Club, and the Bowerman Track Club, carved apart, is not what it once was, and Portland no longer has a team.

In the digital age of online communities and followers, it still means something to be grounded. To have institutions based in geography, where people can show up in person and celebrate something they and their neighbors collectively love, almost in a religious way, putting arms around each other, screaming in joy and groaning in defeat. It is uniting.

In the sport’s industry center, a city where Nike, Adidas, On Running, Hoka, and Under Armour all have headquarters or offices, and running is an integral part of the tapestry, the teams have all left for mountain towns. Beautiful destinations that will provide stunning backdrops for social media posts and thin air for fitness. I think the ceiling of the sport is higher than that.