“No Regrets About Leaving Oregon” Chad Hall Announces
While his former teammates at Oregon burn up indoor tracks all over the country, Chad Hall says he is right on pace for an Olympic career.
As the Oregon men’s team heads into the 2009 NCAA Indoor Championships as favorites this weekend, former Duck Chad Hall will be watching via the internet from his dorm room at UC-Riverside. Hall transferred from U of O last year and – despite having mixed results since – claims to have “no regrets” about the move.
“My brother had a tough college career and still made it,” Hall said. “So I thought the best way to follow in his footsteps would be to unnecessarily handicap my own college career. The way I look at it, I’m right on track to be America’s next distance hope.”
Hall’s brother Ryan is arguably America’s greatest distance hope at the moment, but struggled in his years at Stanford, even taking a semester off sophomore year. After three years of ups and downs Ryan came back to surprise the field in the 5000m at the NCAA Outdoor Championships outrunning numerous current American standouts as well as eventual Olympic Bronze Medalist Nick Willis.
“In four years people won’t remember that I cried when I didn’t break 14 minutes last year,” Chad said. “I’ll be just like Ryan. I’ll be married, living in Mammoth with my own GodTube.com channel and blog for Flotrack International – doesn’t get much better than that.”
Whereas U of O was a pressure cooker for underclassmen, Hall says UC-Riverside is much more laid back and because of that he gets along with teammates much better. “My teammates here were not blue chip recruits, which is an amazing benefit. Whenever I have a bad day I just take Jose or Raul out for a 12 miler and destroy them. At Oregon I couldn’t do that.”
Even UC-Riverside head coach Irv Ray noted that the parallels between the Hall brothers are remarkably similar. “They both have what I call ‘Championship Attitudes’ which means whenever I write a workout, I just assume they change it and do more. Last fall I gave Chad 4 x mile at 4:30 on the track. I couldn’t attend practice because it overlapped with my daily buzz cut. I later found out he did seven of them with the first six at 4:25 and the last one in 5:30. I immediately knew that he would have a really shitty end to his cross country season, but maybe in three years he would be able to break 13:30.”
As Ray surmised, Hall went from finishing 20th at Pre-Nationals to finishing 11th in the Big West, a conference known primarily for its busty, smoking hot dumb undergraduate broads. While his former teammates were celebrating their second straight NCAA Team Championship, Chad was finishing his sociology term paper titled: “Lost Boy of Big Bear: The Ostracizing Effects of Moving from a Homogenous Rural Ski-Town to a College Setting.” Due to lack of proper research, Hall received a C+ on the paper. “Professor said I needed a case status to support my thesis. I thought my own personal story was enough. Lesson learned.”
Slowed by injury, Hall sat out this indoor season and watched his former teammates rewrite the Oregon record books. Despite the apparent foolhardy decision, a philosophical Hall remained satisfied with his decision. “I have no regrets. My former teammates can have all their photos, records and trophies. The beauty of running is that once you take away the individual and team glory, it’s just you and the road. And that’s what it is for me now. I don’t run for the accolades or personal bests at the moment. Someday I will.”