Lindsey Scherf running for Oregon

Scarsdale’s Scherf is now a Duck

By Jack Pfeifer

SPRINGFIELD, Ore. – It’s been a long journey for Lindsey Scherf, the young woman who started running in Scarsdale when she was a 5th-grader. Now, at 22 and a Harvard graduate, she’s a member of the top-ranked cross country team in the country.

She affirmed that on Saturday by finishing as the No. 5 scorer for the Oregon Ducks at the 3rd Dellinger Invitational. Bill Dellinger, the meet’s namesake and a native of Springfield -- the lumber-town blue-collar alternative to its ritzier neighbor across the interstate, Eugene – was on hand for the occasion, dodging the occasional rain squalls on a typical October morning in the Willamette Valley.

(Actually, the Oregon Ducks were the top-ranked team in the country last Saturday, but not now. Their rivals across the Columbia River, the Washington Huskies, displaced them in this week’s national poll, becoming No. 1; Oregon slipped to 2nd. The UW convincingly received 11 of the 12 first-place votes in voting conducted by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. All of the rankings can be viewed on their website www.ustfccca.com.)

For Scherf, it was her first race in an Oregon uniform, and pretty much her first race in any uniform in several years because of a recurring problem with her feet that turned into surgery, and because of an unpleasant misunderstanding with the WADA drug police in Australia, where she spent part of her undergraduate years.

In spite of everything, Scherf wanted to continue running. “I had extra eligibility,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to do, so I spoke to my former coach at Harvard, Coach Hagerty. He knew Coach Lananna from his days in the Ivy League, and that’s when Oregon became a possibility.”

Frank Hagerty coached at Harvard the same time Vin Lananna, now the coach at Oregon, was coaching at Dartmouth.

“So I came out here in May,” Scherf said, “for a visit. I had never been to Eugene before, and I fell in love with it.”

Armed with her degree in psychology, she headed west. “I had tickets to the Trials anyway,” she said, “so I just put my little border collie in the car and drove out here in June.” She’s been in Eugene ever since. On Saturday she went to the front right away, running aggressively. In time she fell back to 9th, an excellent debut on a team loaded with talent.

The winner was the sophomore Alex Kosinski, who finished a few feet ahead of another graduate-student transfer, Melissa Grelli. Grelli was a Big East champion last year at Georgetown. The Ducks’ #3 finisher was Nicole Blood, now a junior and, like Scherf, a New Yorker. Blood was 4th, behind Catherine White, the Arkansas sophomore from Virginia, and ahead of Penn State’s talented steeplechaser, Bridget Franek.

Oregon, runnersup to Stanford in the 2008 Nationals, defeated Arkansas handily, 23-60. The Oregon men, defending national champions and the nation’s top-ranked team, had a close battle with their neighbors to the north, the University of Portland, 49-56, with Alabama close behind at 62.

Oregon ran without its ace, Galen Rupp, who is expected to return for conference the end of the month. In his absence, the Ducks’ top finisher was the surprising freshman, Luke Puskedra, from Salt Lake City. He finished 3rd behind two Portland Pilots, David Kinsella and Alfred Kipchumba. “He’s a monstrous talent,” Kinsella, a senior, said of his freshman Kenyan teammate. “He’s very quiet and a lot of stuff is new to him,” Kinsella told Doug Binder of The Oregonian.

In the new national rankings, Portland moved up 3 places, to 4th; Alabama slipped one spot to 6th.

Puskedra ran 4:06/8:47 as a prep last spring. In 9th place was Matthew Centrowitz, the Maryland native. Centrowitz ran unattached because he may be redshirted to save eligibility for later. He would have been the #4 scorer for Oregon on Saturday had he been counted.

His teammate Scherf, running her first serious race in nearly two years, has had her fill of redshirt status. “I had a problem with my foot,” she said. “They told me to wear a boot, and I gave it a go, but my foot didn’t heal. After a while, it was just hurting me all the time.”

It was eventually determined, after many doctor visits, that Scherf had an extra bone in both of her feet, and her training was causing stress on her 5th metatarsal and splitting the tendon in her foot. “I finally had surgery on my right foot in February of this year at Children’s Hospital in Boston,” she said. She resumed training in the summer. The extra bone in her left foot “is still partially occified,” she said, but surgery there has not been necessary.

Scherf had begun her college career at Harvard with rapid improvement, although she had been excellent in high school as well. She broke 6 minutes in the mile in 5th grade, so the following year, while a student at Scarsdale Middle School, she began running distance races for the Harlem Striders Track Club. She ran for Scarsdale HS in 9th and 10th grades but ran only for the Westchester Track Club her remaining two years of high school, while attending Scarsdale Alternative School.

At Harvard, she quickly doubled her training regimen from 40 miles a week to 80, and it paid off. Scherf set the American Junior record for 10,000 meters at the 2005 Heps championships at Columbia, running 32:51.20, and finished 4th in the NCAA 10k a month later. That December she ran 15:42.81 indoors in the 5k, and in her sophomore season she was Heps 5k and 10k champion. But her NCAA finishes fell back, as her feet became more troublesome.

In 2007 Scherf took her junior year abroad, taking classes at the University of Queensland in Australia. As a diversion, she decided to run the Gold Coast Marathon that July, at which point she had a series of misadventures involving international drug rules because of her use of a medication for exercise-induced asthma. Lawyers got involved, international phone calls were made, appeals and threats ensued, and finally the IAAF imposed a one-year suspension – it expired last month – for Scherf’s reluctance to take a drug test.

Scherf’s full explanation of her dilemma can be found on her website www.lindseyscherf.org.

Other Weekend News

Oklahoma State, the nation’s No. 2-ranked men’s team, won its own meet, the 72nd annual Cowboy Jamboree, before a crowd of 10,000 people in Stillwater, Okla., on Saturday. Freshman phenom German Fernandez finished 3rd, leading a 3-4-5 cluster for the Cowboys of Ryan Vail and David Chirchir. They finished behind Daniel Kirwa, the reigning Div. II champion from Harding (23:57), and David McNeill, the Aussie who attends Northern Arizona (24:02) and who was 10 seconds up on Fernandez, the national high school Athlete of the Year in 2008.

OSU (38) outscored Northern Arizona (88), Indiana (98) and Abilene Christian (102). Northern Arizona won the women’s meet over OSU, 61-118.

The top-ranked women’s squad, Washington, left the Northwest for the weekend and won the Auburn Invitational instead, scoring 19 points in the Mel Rosen Orange Race. The Huskies’ coach, Greg Metcalf, and the coach of runnerup Oregon State, Kelly Sullivan, had both been assistant coaches under Rosen before he retired at Auburn. The UW had a 1-2-3 sweep by freshmen Kendra Schaaf and Christine Babcock and sophomore Marie Lawrence.

Host Auburn won the men’s meet, with a 1-2-3 sweep by Kenyans Elkanah Kibet and Felix Kiboiywo and Ethiopian Girma Mechesoo.

The Wisconsin men and West Virginia women won the 35th annual Paul Short Invitational in Bethlehem, Pa. It was the first big win for the Badgers’ new head coach, Mick Byrne, whose Iona Gaels, now coached by Ric Santos, finished 4th (190), behind Wisconsin (52), Syracuse (90) and Villanova (173). Wisconsin is ranked 5th in this week’s poll, while Iona fell back to 7th.

The men’s individual winner was Samuel Chelanga, who runs for Liberty after transferring a year ago from Fairleigh Dickinson. Liberty’s Josh McDougal was the NCAA champion in 2008. Josh’s brother Jordan finished 10th at Lehigh. Chelanga ran 23:05 for 8k, 38 seconds ahead of runnerup Andrew Ledwith of Iona.

The West Virginia women (47), led by Canadian Marie-Louise Asselin, finished ahead of Villanova (78), Baylor (94), Wisconsin (105), Syracuse (150) and Tennessee (198). Asselin set a course record, finishing well ahead of Shippensburg frosh Neely Spence, Lindsay Carson of Guelph and Erin Bedell of Baylor. Villanova was paced by senior Frances Koons (7th) and Croatian newcomer Bogdana Mimic. Tennessee’s Sarah Bowman was 11th, followed by New Yorkers Maegan Krifchin of Syracuse (19th), Callie Hogan of Villanova (30th) and fellow Volunteer Brittany Sheffey (33rd).

West Virginia is the nation’s 7th-ranked team in this week’s poll, while Villanova, which had been unranked, moved all the way up to 13th.

Brie Felnagle of North Carolina finished 1st at Notre Dame over a bigtime field that included Susan Kuijken of Florida State, Alex Becker of Tulsa, Lillian Badaru of Texas Tech, Nicole Edwards of Michigan, Silje Fjortoft of SMU and Lesley van Miert, a summer transfer from Northern Arizona to FSU. Fla. State (88) won the meet over Princeton (124), Michigan (136) and surprising Stony Brook (156). (pic by www.wingedfootfotos.com)

The ‘Noles are ranked 3rd in the country, behind the two Northwest schools, while Princeton stands 5th and Stony Brook 12th. Coach Andy Ronan’s Stony Brook Seawolves, located on Long Island, are led by New Zealander Holly Van Dalen. They’re currently the top-ranked team in the Northeast Region.

The Seminoles also won the men’s meet. In the individual race, Samuel Kosgei of Lamar upset Shadrack Songok (Texas A&M) by 1 second. Michael Maag of Princeton finished 8th. The nation’s 2nd-ranked Div. II team, Calvin, was upset by 7th-ranked North Central and No. 4 Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

(pic by www.wingedfootfotos.com)

On its home course in Canton, N.Y., St. Lawrence swept the Liberty League championships. It was the men’s 19th consecutive league championship, the women’s 8th.

Colorado swept its own Rocky Mountain Shootout in Boulder, defeating Div. II powerhouse Adams State. The Buffs’ No. 2 men’s runner is senior Chris Pannone, who prepped at Hunterdon Central (N.J.).

The Virginia men (19) won at George Mason, easily handling Columbia (50) and Maryland (65). The Cavaliers, ranked 12th nationally, are coached by Jason Vigilante, who moved to Charlottesville over the summer after a successful stint as the distance coach at Texas.

For complete College cross country news see X-Country X-Press wmurphy25@aol.com