The Mighty Oregon Podcast

From the bottom to the top. That’s a good way to describe Oregon women’s soccer coach Graeme Abel’s career path. Abel played soccer at small schools in his first foray into American life and his move was a culture shock. Bye-bye big city. Hello rural Kentucky. Abel wound his way around the country as an assistant coach at Nevada, Washington State, and Oklahoma before securing the goalkeepers’ coach position with the U.S. Women’s National Team. His success with stars like Hope Solo helped project him into premiere coaching circles, and when Oregon came calling, it was too much for him to turn down. A boy from Liverpool is now the head women’s soccer coach in one of the nation’s best collegiate athletic departments and has helped the U.S. Women’s National Team to two World Cups and tremendous international success. But in the beginning, it took a leap of faith.

Eugene Omoroyi has lived quite a life. Emigrating from Nigeria to Canada as a young boy, he has seen his share of obstacles. Although he lived a Canadian life outside of his home, inside it was Nigerian language, Nigerian customs, and an appreciation for the sacrifices his family has made for him. After playing soccer growing up, Omoruyi came around to the sport of basketball late in high school and found his way to the United States. After spending three years at Rutgers, he transferred to Oregon in 2019 and has been a major force in the Ducks’ second consecutive Pac 12 regular season title this season. Omoruyi has big aspirations. He’d like to play in the NBA and succeed at the highest level. But more importantly, he wants to give back to those who have helped him get to where he is today.

The Canadian Larry Bird. Duck women’s basketball great Bev Smith was an early pioneer of the women’s game, and people in her native country knew all about her skills on the court. At 6′1″, Smith was playing center for her high school team, but she knew she had to develop a different skillset for her to advance her athletic career. Her skill development took her to the University of Oregon, where she became the school’s first All-American in women’s basketball, and her success with the Ducks took her around the world to play, where she represented the Canadian national team in two Summer Olympic games and played professionally in Europe for 15 years. After coaching her alma mater for eight seasons and serving as an assistant on the Canadian National Team, Smith is now using her worldly basketball knowledge to help the youth of Eugene understand the life lessons and positivity that come from playing sports. 

For Oregon volleyball star Brooke Nuneviller, volleyball is an integral part to her family life. Her father and brother played competitively. And her mom was a star player at the collegiate level and spent time coaching in Division I volleyball. Her family’s influence has shaped her into a leader on the court and there’s not too many things she hasn’t accomplished on it. After a complicated recruiting process, Nuneviller found herself in Eugene as a freshman with a very talented and veteran team. A team that reached the Elite Eight and knocked off a perennial power, Minnesota, on its home court to get there. But adversity struck on the floor as a sophomore a year ago. Losses and injuries last season have vaulted Nuneviller into one of the best all-around players in the nation this year. And more importantly for her team, she has emerged as a vocal leader for the Ducks in their run to the postseason. Nuneviller has truly lived a life of volleyball, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Quarterbacks are, more often than not, the face of a team. And when you’re talking about Akili Smith—who helped launch Oregon into the stratosphere of the college football elite—it’s quite a legacy … one that established a quarterback-producing powerhouse. But legacies are complicated, and to know Smith’s is to understand the tough love he got from a father who didn’t want his son to make the same mistakes that sent him to prison. The multi-sport star took advantage of those lessons, turning them into a brief baseball career and a football scholarship to Oregon. You could argue that his decision to play football was the precursor to the new era of high-octane offenses. He threw 30 touchdowns in only 11 starts for the Ducks, and was named the 1998 Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Year. That led to being picked third overall by Cincinnati in the 1999 NFL Draft and an NFL career that lasted only four years, one many to be one of the NFL’s biggest busts. And though there was plenty of blame to go around for his lack of success, Smith has accepted it and come to grips with his legacy.

For former Duck standout David Peterson, there has always been one constant throughout his life to help him through good times and bad. The game of baseball. All of the hours of playing and practicing turned into an All-American career with the Ducks, which included semifinalist nods for national player of the year awards. He was so good, he once struck out 20 Mississippi State batters in a single night’s work on the mound—something only three players in major league history have done. Drafted with the 20th pick in the first round by the New York Mets in the 2017 Major League Baseball draft, Peterson was on his way to reaching the show. And in 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, he got the call. What was once an escape from reality is now a reality he lives every day. The life of a big leaguer.

For Oregon softball standout Haley Cruse, is she as authentic as she seems on social media? For someone with over 20 million likes on Tik-Tok, she has a lot of eyeballs watching her every move. How did she achieve such social media stardom? Cruse, now in her fifth year with the Ducks, has seen her career go from one roller coaster to another. In her freshman and sophomore seasons, the Ducks go to the College World Series. A coaching change in her junior season sparks a mass exodus with some of her teammates that required a total rebuild with new coaches and players. And of course, her senior season, which started 22-2, was erased because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But through adversity comes strength and endurance, and Cruse has learned a lot. And in the process, she has built a personal brand that she started and built at Oregon, and will continue to grow when she departs Eugene. But how will that look? She’s still trying to figure that out.

How would you like to be Devon Allen? If you laid out a 110-meter hurdle setup, you could count on one hand the people on the planet Earth that are faster than you. That’s it. But there is more to Allen than the track. And when he was deciding on a college choice, he was going to make sure that he was going to find a place where he could diversify his athletic experience. Success followed Allen throughout his Oregon career, where he won the 2014 and 2016 110-meter hurdle NCAA outdoor championships and on the gridiron in 2014, he was widely considered the fastest man in college football and led the team in touchdown catches. After a major injury on the football field, he fought back to excel on the track and he set off on a magical spring of 2016. The 2016 NCAA Champion in the 110-meter hurdles and the winner of the Olympic Trials, which cemented his spot for the U.S. National Team at the summer Olympics in Rio. Throughout all of this, Allen never really had a doubt. Allen’s confidence, despite his setbacks, is inspiring, and we’re all looking forward to what he does next.   

Joey Harrington. Captain comeback. Oregon fans will forever have his late-game heroics embedded in their memories and his career vaulted the Ducks into the national conversation for football success. It always seemed if he was born for those moments. Born and raised in Portland, Harrington’s dad played quarterback with the Ducks. His grandfather played at the University of Portland. He truly is an Oregon son. And when he got his opportunity to take the field, the Oregon native showed that he belonged. And that Oregon son did some mighty things on the football field. He finished his college career with a 25-3 record. He was a Heisman finalist. He had a 10-story billboard in New York City. And in late-game situations, he was nearly unstoppable. He amassed an 11-2 record in which the Ducks trailed or were tied in the fourth quarter.

He was drafted in the NFL with the third pick by the Detroit Lions in the 2001 NFL Draft and put together a six-year career. But the success that he encountered on the field in Eugene did not follow him to Detroit. Many have called his NFL career one of the biggest busts in history.

What was really behind the wins and success? And what happened when football success disappeared? 

It’s been over 20 years since Oregon men’s golf coach Casey Martin was at the heart of one of golf’s biggest controversies. Martin wanted to play golf at the highest levels and needed a golf cart to do so because of a disability. The Professional Golf Association had other ideas and challenged Martin in a case that eventually reached the Supreme Court. The biggest names in professional golf were against him. But all Martin wanted was a shot to compete, and he would’ve gladly traded a cart for a healthy leg and to just be a normal golfer. It’s been a long time since his media exposure for challenging the PGA Tour and bringing the American Disabilities Act into the sports world. Instead of a sports pioneer, most Duck fans identify Martin as the leader of their men’s golf program, a program that won a national championship on the course he grew up on, the Eugene Country Club, in 2016.

Martin has been through it all and seen a lot, but he would have preferred to just be one of the guys, carrying his bag and hiking around the golf course. But sometimes, life just doesn’t work out that way.