by Rich Gonzalez
BEAVERTON -- Brie Felnagle produced the expected, yet no one knew it would be so painful. Kenny Klotz produced the unexpected, yet no one knew he would make it look so easy. And Oregon produced the impossible, just when it seemed everything looked so bleak. In what was yet another classic showdown on the Nike World Headquarters campus, 160 of the finest runners from the Pacific Northwest waged battle for bragging rights, with Oregon producing a shocking upset at Border Clash VI, with an ultimate rendering perhaps coming in two weeks at the inaugural Nike Team Nationals in Portland.
This year's affair, playing out under cool and ideal racing conditions before a fervent audience, saw a pair of frontrunners set out on torrid opening-kilometer paces. In the end, however, the chase packs closed in and a new leader emerged to claim the individual title.
In the girls' race, it was three-time Border Clash qualifier Holli Dieu that took the field out quickly through the 4,400-meter Nike campus layout, opening a 30-meter gap before the race had reached the kilometer mark. Dieu, perhaps not as household a name as others assembled here due to her competing for a small-enrollment school (Coquille HS) was able to held the lead through to the halfway point, before a sickness-weakened Felnagle made her move to claim the front position entering the final mile. Felnagle, who reportedly was suffering from the effects of the flu, closed strongly along the final mile, however, to win by a dominating 20-second margin over Dieu, 16:29-16:49. Oregon stuffed the finish chute with 5 of the first 8 placers to win, 93-117, in a unique scoring format where each team's first 10 runners are scored.
The boys' race saw Oregonian Jeff McDonald bolt hard soon after the boom of the start cannon sounded, overtaking Washington star Laef Barnes just over a minute into the race. It was learned from one source in mid-race that McDonald, clearly not among the favorites, had vowed to take out the opening mile in 4:30. Well, after gapping the rest of the field by some 30 meters about a half-mile into the race, McDonald started to come back to the field. A tight-angle video shot beamed in from the helicopter feed overhead showed McDonald struggled just past 1000 meters, with several moving into the picture from there.
By the race's halfway point, it was Klotz, Barnes and Oregon's David Morgan that began trading the lead positions several times, with each one's attempt to make a break being covered by the other two. As the leaders steered back toward the main field and the finish line, it appeared that Barnes -- courting 4:09 mile speed in track despite being sidelined with a stress fracture for much of the summer -- might be able to close in from his third-place position and gap of about 20 meters. with 650 meters left, Barnes zoomed by Morgan and had Klotz positioned in the crosshairs. But as they curled around the final turn and dashed for the finish chute, an amazingly smooth Klotz (who was a major upset winner at the Oregon state meet two weeks ago) held off a straining Barnes to win by less than a stride as both were credited in times of 14:02 and change.
The teams alternated through each of the first nine placings in the chute, with Oregon's head-on matchup triumphs and a subsequent 1-3-5-7-9 order helping key its 103-109 victory. The Oregon sweep (boys and girls race scores are then combined to determine a grand champion) snapped a four-year winning skein by Washington in a year when Washington was heavily favored to continue its dominance within the Northwest region.
To be continued at NTN in Portland in two weeks!
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