If you're looking for the historic essence of track and field in the state of Oregon, you'll find it rising from the gumbo of an old mill site 35 miles up the McKenzie River from Eugene-Springfield, where white water and mountains are backdrop to a dream.

Thirty-five miles. That's how far it is from tiny McKenzie High School in Blue River to the nearest track, on the east edge of Springfield, the blue-collar town next door to its University-oriented neighbor, Eugene.

Jeff Sherman, a product of Eugene's enthusiasm for running which blossomed in the 60s and 70s, has taught and coached track/cross country at McKenzie schools in unincorporated Blue River (population 883) since 1979. His three sons have run – or are currently running – for the high school; his daughter runs for the middle school program. With a high school enrollment of just 80 students, the middle-school feeder program has been a boon for a team facing schools with five times as many students. The McKenzie School District's single building houses all grades, K-12.

Sherman carefully documents each team's year and gives every athlete a scrapbook highlighting the season. Photos of kids straining to beat their competitors, splashing through muddy courses, cross-country runners putting the shot, athletes goofing around after a meet. But never a home track meet. (And seldom on a regulation all-weather track – no one in their conference has one.)

The McKenzie kids have been a fixture at any meet offering them a chance to compete at Hayward Field, the legendary University of Oregon track stadium in Eugene. They always run the annual Middle School Mile in the Twilight Meet. They always run the summer series of all-comers' meets. Their cross-country teams, utilizing a web of old logging roads and stunning hiking trails, are among the best in the state at the smallest school level, and won the boys' state title in 2004.

Earlier, Sherman worked quietly with Rosboro, a local logging company, to develop a three-lap, five-kilometer cross-country course on an island in the McKenzie River, less than a mile down the road from the high school. That course, built entirely through donated materials and labor (with an estimated $60,000 value), is no longer available. The team has returned to an abandoned course first used 27 years ago, at the base of Blue River Dam.

Come track season, the runners, along with the sprinters, hurdlers and field eventers, are forced onto paved roads for speed workouts and relay-handoff practice, to the high school gym and fields for their technical training. To a 35-mile drive to train at a real track facility.

Sherman and the Blue River community have dreamed of a community track for years, and this may be the year their dreams are realized.

Organizing themselves in 2003 as the McKenzie Community Track and Field nonprofit corporation, Sherman's group successfully approached lumber man (and racehorse owner) Aaron Jones to donate 12.87 acres of the old Blue River Mill Pond site for a track, just a quarter mile east of the high school. With the recent addition of a $50,000 grant from Nike's Bowerman Track Renovation program, McKenzie CTF has pulled together more than $430,000 in gifts-in-kind, grants and cash contributions.

Proceeds from the annual 50-kilometer McKenzie River Trail Run in September go to the project. McKenzie students have raised more than $5,000. Alums have added close to $8,000. Most of the handful of businesses in the area have contributed, as have the local ranger station, The Corps of Engineers and a variety of businesses in Lane County.

The property has been leveled and cleared, and base rock for the track laid — an oval surfacing where millponds and Wigwam burners once stood. Sherman says the group is still working to raise the $135,000 needed to complete the track facility. Future plans include two youth soccer fields for community use — and a fence to keep out the elk.

"Our fundraising has largely been word-of-mouth, personal contacts and grant applications," says Sherman. "We want to get the first phase completed this year, to finish the track and be able to use it. So we're trying to get the word out to a larger community and invite them to come see what a tiny community is doing, and maybe give us a hand."

Sherman's group and the Bowerman renovation program both envision the completed track, with its proximity to McKenzie River trails, as an attractive site for athletes training for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials—Track and Field (eugene08.com), and for visitors to the Trials.

For more information about the McKenzie track project, send us an email or call Sherman at (541) 822-3451. Checks can be made out to MCTF and mailed to MCTF, 1574 Coburg Road, #870, Eugene, Oregon 97401-4802.