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QuickTake:
Dan West takes his role seriously at the OSAA Cross-Country State meet. He keeps the chute clear, so every runner gets a chance to cross the line at full speed.
Of all the feats of endurance at the high school cross-country championships on Nov. 8 at Lane Community College, perhaps the most impressive was by a 70-year-old wearing a fluorescent volunteer’s vest instead of a racing number.
Dan West of Eugene turned in a stellar athletic performance — standing just after the finish line on the Lane track and quickly picking up the runners who collapsed and getting them out of the way of the incoming traffic.
It’s easier said than done. The finish line across the track is narrow, and sometimes 15 or more runners are crossing the line during a 10-second period. If any of those runners fall to the track in exhaustion, they can block others from finishing.
Or a prone runner could get stepped on by other athletes, wearing spikes, who are finishing their races.
So when a runner goes down, West springs into action.
He rushes in, grabs the runner under the arms, stands him or her up, and hands the athlete off to two additional volunteers, one on each side, who hustle the athlete off the track.
West is strong and agile, and watching him in action is oddly mesmerizing.
“I’m zoned in,” West said. “It seems kind of crazy, I know, but the chute has to keep moving, or else it can back up and then people can’t finish. If somebody goes down and they just lie there as other kids are coming in, there could be some pretty big pileups.”
Hundreds of high school athletes — in nine races — crossed the finish line on Saturday. West stood there all day and helped clear the chute.
It’s a job he’s had for nearly 25 years. No one else wants the role.
“You just have to be aggressive and quickly get them up,” West said. “It’s best for them to get up and walk and not just lay on the ground. So there’s a technique to it. Just kind of run in and get them by the armpits and stand them up and walk them off.”
At the state meet, a lot more runners go down than they do at a regular-season running event. Rough guess? Five per race.
“They’ve run harder than they’ve ever run before,” West said.
Sometimes West looks down the track and sees a runner wobbling on the way to the finish line. “You can see their eyes starting to roll back as they’re finishing,” he said. “So you know you’ve got one that’s going to go down.”
Even if the runners don’t fall down, West doesn’t allow them to bend over just past the finish line.
“Move, move, move,” West yelled to the runners on Saturday, waving his arms in circles, like a football referee signaling to keep the clock running, and pushing some on the back to keep them shuffling forward out of the area. “Keep walking, keep walking. Good job. Keep walking.”
He’s not exactly warm and fuzzy about it. But he sees clearing the finish chute as a responsibility to the other runners still out on the course.
Conservatively, West picked up 45 runners over the course of a nearly six-hour day. (Reminder: He’s 70. Luckily for him, most distance runners are lean.)
West is the pole vault coach at Lane, which hosts the state meet.
Does he prefer pole vault to distance running?
“Absolutely,” West said. “There is drama, but you’re not picking them up.”
