Track and Field
- Title:
- Assistant Coach
* Click the camera icon at the top right side to see a photo gallery of Marnie Mason.
Returning for her second season as a Duck assistant coach, Marnie Mason has quickly set about returning the Oregon women's distance program to its former national and conference glory.
In her second cross country season last fall, she captained a new-look squad that featured one of the West Coast's top recruiting classes - comprised of six freshmen and a junior transfer. Laura Harmon capped the season with All-America honors in her NCAA debut (31st) after she took Pacific-10 First-Team (fourth) honors - Oregon's highest placings in each race since 1998 and 1997, respetively (ninth/second). As a team, the youthful Ducks finished seventh against the ?Conference of Champions’ ? only 11 points shy of their third straight top-five finish ? and eighth in the West Regional.
In her collegiate debut season in 2003-04, she coaxed a scaled-back UO team to repeat fifth in the Pac-10 Cross Country Championships, and then followed with an eighth-place regional finish. Individually, Magdalena Sandoval earned an NCAA cross country invite after top-10 Pac-10 (fifth) and West Regional (ninth) finishes, then indoors followed with an NCAA indoor invite in the 5,000 after she joined the Ducks' all-time top-10 list (eighth, 16:04.40) with a 39-second personal best. On the outdoor oval, Laura Harmon nabbed an NCAA invite in the 5,000 after a third-place regional finish and 13-second PR (16:33.17), and former prep pupil Sara Schaaf placed fifth in the Pac-10 800 and lowered her personal best in the West Regional prelims (2:07.89).
Before she joined the Ducks, she was well-known for her three-year tenure as assistant track and head cross country coach at Klamath Union in Klamath Falls, Ore., from the fall of 1998 through spring of 2001. During that span, she coached five 4A state individual champions - Liz Lindgren (cross country '00), Ian Dobson (cross country '99), Jacob Gomez (3,000, '01), Sara Schaaf (800, '01, 400 '00) and Evan Garich (800, '00), with Dobson the third-place finisher in the 1999 Footlocker National Cross Country Championships as a senior.
Her squads also claimed five, top-10 state cross country finishes, and she was honored as the 1999 Oregon Boys Cross Country Coach of the Year after her team won the state title and was ranked fifth nationally. She also also guided squads to top-10 efforts in 2000 (boy's, 3rd; girl's, 7th) and1998 (boy's, 2nd, and girl's, 5th).
Among her numerous Klamath Union pupils now competing in college, she coached current Pac-10 student-athletes at Arizona State (Liz Lindgren), Oregon (redshirt junior Sara Schaaf) and Stanford (Ian Dobson, Jacob Gomez and Lauren Jesperson).
Afterwards, she enjoyed a two-year stint at North Medford High School, where she quickly rebuilt the girl's and boy's distance programs - highlighted by a 12th-place state finish in the 2002 girl's state meet.
A 1985 Klamath Union prep graduate herself, she won the 1985 4A state 3,000 title as a senior, and the 1983 state cross country title as a junior. At the national level, the prep track All-American also claimed the 1985 Foot Locker West Regional prep cross country title (17:07) with the fifth-fastest time ever on the Woodward Park course in Fresno, then took eighth in the Footlocker Championships final later that season.
After high school, she competed three seasons for BYU. As a freshman in 1985 she ran on the Cougars' ninth-place NCAA squad, and placed 19th for the regional victors, before injuries and illness cut her sophomore and junior seasons short. Her senior year, she transferred to Southern Oregon and graduated with a bachelor's degree in social science and a special education teaching certificate. After graduation, she served as a special education teacher and track coach in Klamath Falls at Pelican Elementary School in 1993-94, and Roosevelt Elementary School in 1994-95. She also taught special education at Klamath Union and is certified as a teacher for grades K-12.
"The University of Oregon, Eugene and Hayward Field deserve to have a great program," Mason said, "and it's been a lifelong dream to be here. Looking back I made a mistake not coming here when I was recruited as an athlete - this is a truly inspirational place. I've known Martin for five to six years as he's recruited my athletes, and he knows me. I'm very competitive and very honest, and I'm going to love recruiting and keeping the best Oregon athletes in-state."
