Martin Smith Era Begins Saturday

NORMAN, Okla. As Bob Stoops and the OU football team kick off their seventh season together Saturday, Sept. 3, the Martin Smith era begins, and, hopefully, the parallels between the two programs won't end with one coinciding season opener.

Six years ago Stoops inherited a program rich in tradition and superiority that had seen anything but in the decade before his tenure. Miraculously, he turned a team that had 12 wins in the three years prior to his arrival into a powerhouse that earned the national championship in his second season at the helm.

Entering 2005, Smith has a similar task at hand: craft the OU cross country/track and field program into the best in the conference and contend for national superiority.

Smith had done just that Oregon, where he produced nine NCAA top-20 team finishes and coached individuals who claimed 48 All-America honors and 17 Pac-10 titles in men's track and field alone. In cross country, the Oregon men finished in the top six at the national championships three times and had 10 All-Americans under his tenure.

But as the Ducks' program was growing under Smith, the Sooners' prominence was fading.

Between 1995 and 2000 the Sooner men collected 62 All-America certificates, averaging more than 10 a year. In the last three years, however, only 11 were garnered and five of those were by DaBryan Blanton, who turned professional after his junior season.

During the same period, the women earned 16 All-America honors. In the last three years six have been issued. They all went to one athlete Laverne Jones.

In 1996, the final year of the Big Eight Conference, the Sooner men were second during the indoor season and fourth during the outdoor with 12 combined individual conference champions. The women finished sixth in both seasons.

Last season, the men placed fifth during at indoor Big 12 Championships and 10th during the outdoor season with just two individual conference champions Blanton and Aldwyn Sappleton, whose athletics eligibility has also expired. The women placed 11th in indoor and dead last in outdoor.

While there are no fairy-tale expectations of immediate success, the Sooners returned to campus in August under not only different leadership, but a different atmosphere.

For the first time in its history the OU cross country program has a head coach who has won a national championship in the sport. Smith has coached four teams two men's squads at Wisconsin (1985 and 1988) and two women's sqauds at Virginia (1981 and 1982) to national titles.

With his background, Smith was undeterred to shake things up upon his arrival in Norman.

This year's cross country teams will sacrifice a slight improvement on the 2004 season for greater expectations down the road.

The two top returnees on the men's Jason Coleman and Tyler Schmiedeberg and women's Jessica Eldridge and Catherine Odell squads will redshirt this season to adjust to the new training system and preserve a year of eligibility.

The absence of Eldridge and Odell will be especially significant to the women's team. Eldridge, who qualified for the national cross country championships during both her freshman and sophomore seasons, would have contended for the Big 12 title. Odell improved tremendously during her sophomore campaigns and qualified in the 1500 for the NCAA National Championships.

That leaves junior Nicola Maye, as the top returning female and senior Blake Culp as the top returning male.

The Sooner men are supported by the return of veterans Salah Hussein and Jason Penland as well as the services of redshirt freshman Donald Gies, a 2005 U.S. Junior National steeplechase qualifier.

The Sooner women must rely on an inexperienced squad that includes three true freshmen Brooke Edsall, Ashley Williams and Katy Wilmoth but will have the leadership of juniors Andrea Bonner and Aja Clark, who ran her first season of Division I cross country last year.

Edsall was a four-time cross country state champion at class-A Lomega (Okla.) High School and also won five state titles on the track. Williams won two cross country state championships at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock, Ark., and set the indoor 3200-meter state high school record.

Although the adjustment period and learning curve has taken a steep rise, the new-look Sooners are anxious and eager to start the next phase in Oklahoma Athletics history.

The Golden Hurricane Cross Country Festival takes place at Mohawk Park in Tulsa, Okla., The men's four-mile race begins at 8 a.m. and is followed by the women's two-mile run.

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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