The Eugene Saturday Market returns for its 55th season
Lundquist’s Center for Entrepreneurship and the Oregon Innovation Challenge supports student entrepreneurs at UO with their startup businesses
Lundquist’s Center for Entrepreneurship has helped students with a passion for entrepreneurship bring their business ideas to life.
The Center for Entrepreneurship has developed the Oregon Innovation Challenge, which offers students and faculty workshops, mentorship and funding opportunities for their business ideas. The OIC program runs from January to April.
Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship
Jeff Sorensen said that the OIC offers entrepreneurs up to $10,000 for their business ideas. He said the funding for the Center and the OIC has come from gifts and donations from the last year and a half, including a $10 million gift from the estate of Gerry and Marilyn Cameron.
One way that the Center provides support for student entrepreneurs is through workshops that are hosted on Sunday mornings.
According to Sorensen, the workshops vary in purpose, but the Center has hosted groups who are coming together to meet fellow entrepreneurs and has also hosted students who are coming to the Center for the first time with initial business ideas.
Mentorship sessions are also a way for students to get further support for their entrepreneurial ideas.
“Three teams will sit around a table with a few mentors for an hour and each team will get to talk for 15 minutes about what they’re working through,” Sorensen said. “Everyone will kind of workshop [the idea] with them and help them think through things.”
Senior and Founder of KPB Designs
Karly Bierma is a current member of the Center for Entrepreneurship, OIC and the Entrepreneurship Club.
Bierma has created her own business, KPB Designs, where she sells her artwork on stickers, greeting cards, apparel and other gift items.
“I was 17 and I had been selling my artwork originals in coffee shops, farmers markets and stuff like that, but I wanted a way to share my artwork to a wider audience,” Bierma said.
“I also wanted to figure out a way to scale that as a business because I loved the business aspect along with creating artwork.”
According to Bierma, within the first year of
starting business with a sales representative, she had 150 accounts with retail stores, and she now has 450 accounts.
“I love what I do and I’m excited to take it after I graduate,” Bierma said. “But I think with starting this business younger, there was this gap to where I had mentors who were a lot older than me.”
According to Bierma, her mother and father own their own respective businesses, but she did not have someone her age to resonate with. Coming to UO changed that for her.
“When we got back on campus sophomore year [post-COVID-19], that was really when we started to see the need for an entrepreneurship group on campus,” Bierma said. “Fall of my sophomore year, I came together with two of my friends and we relaunched the Entrepreneurship Club.”
According to Bierma, when Sorensen came to UO in her junior year, that is when the center grew into the OIC and a new energy was brought to the entrepreneurial audience.
“[The Center] provided me with, above all, a community, and I’ve met a lot of my closest friends within that group,” Bierma said. “I’ve also had continued encouragement to pursue my passion as a job because I think there’s an overarching pressure to go corporate, especially after going into a university setting.”
According to Sorensen, he and the Center are working to make students confident in themselves as entrepreneurs.
“There’s so much potential,” Sorensen said. “The super exciting [ideas] are when you’re getting people starting to think of themselves as entrepreneurs who maybe previously wouldn’t have.”
Voting opens today for the ASUO spring elections, and will continue until April 8. at 9 a.m.
Theta Chi’s interim suspension was due to at least two alleged drugging incidents at the fraternity on or around Jan. 19 and Feb. 2, according to records obtained by the Daily Emerald.
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OPINION: Our culture of football obsession is out of control
Recently on a flight to Eugene, I had the displeasure of sharing a gate and flight with the wrestling team of another Oregon college.
I was minding my own business, trying to read a book in a field of cauliflower ears, but they were so loud it was impossible. They were behaving like animals: all over the floor, draped over other people’s seats, spilling drinks, eating the biggest burgers I’ve ever seen, manspreading (a phrase I don’t tend to use but there’s really no other way to describe it) and complaining about having “so much homework” when they had to write a concert review and finish a reading quiz.
I couldn’t have come up with better satire if I tried. One of them kept saying, “When I gotta eat, I gotta eat,” and the coach had his shoes off the entire time.
At the end of the flight, the pilot announced that the team had just won some championship or event, and almost everyone on the plane broke into a round of applause. I know “and then everyone clapped” is a common marker of a completely fabricated story, but I swear to you that it actually happened.
Coming off a bout of irritation at the Super Bowl, I was especially annoyed. Hearing Travis Kelce belt out “Viva Las Vegas” like a drunken frat boy at the long overdue end of a night didn’t exactly inspire feelings of goodwill. These are the people most deserving of our positive attention and highest salaries?
At UO, this obsession with athletes manifests in — you guessed it — football. From the moment I set foot on campus as a freshman, and even in the months before, I was inundated with football information. Everything from the players’ names, the bowl games they had been to and stats about their athletic ability went in one ear and out the other.
I’ve warmed up slightly to the idea of watching football games occasionally on TV, but I ruin it for myself when I think about how much money people spend on the whole thing. During his time playing for the Ducks, Bo Nix was one of the top earners in college football, and recently, the NFL salary cap was set at $255.4 million. We like to talk about “eating the rich” when they’re CEOs who spend too much time online, but what about athletes?
Our football team brings in a ton of money and the UO Athletics Department pays for itself. Looking at the athlete scooters and backpacks, it’s easy to get annoyed by the specialness of it all, but at least it doesn’t cost me anything. The athlete tutoring center, on the other hand, is not funded the same way. I’m not saying I need a special tutoring building for myself, but it would be nice if the favoritism wasn’t so blatant — or present at all, for that matter.
Because I’m making an effort not to be so doom and gloom all the time, even though it’s kind of
BY SADIE TRESNIT • DESIGNED BY GABRIELA MARTINEZmy job, I looked into the exciting non-sports opportunities for students on campus. Did you know UO students are doing a million cool things? The UO chamber choir competes (and wins!) at the international level.
“It’s literally like if our football team competed in football Olympics,” club member Zoe Pouliot said. “And we win our competitions.”
Elsewhere on campus, student creativity is flourishing without the heavy promotion the football team receives. After asking around on social media, I heard from a variety of students about the clubs and activities that make them passionate.
The Pocket Playhouse is an entirely student-run theater organization that hosts several events every term, including live performances.
The UO Bioethics Society encourages conversations on the ethics around advancements in the field of biology. According to member Lauren Grover, the group recently discussed de-extinction, the process of bringing back extinct species.
Eugene’s Forbidden Fruit is a “Rocky Horror” shadow cast ensemble behind multiple performances per year and provides a place for
queer students to bond and explore their identities in bold ways.
The Grove Garden, a community garden on campus, allows students to tend to a plot and grow their own food.
Musical ensembles, other than the marching band, are usually overlooked. UO’s mock trial team often travels to compete. Do entire planes regularly give them a round of applause?
I have nothing against individual athletes, but I’m frustrated by the campus- and country-wide, culture of sports worship. All of the above groups and their achievements are worthy of recognition and promotion but they still get brushed to the side. Why do sports seem to matter so much more than everything else? It’s time to reject our athletics obsession and pay attention to the rest of campus culture.
Ever since passing Measure 110 in 2020, Oregon has been viewed as a state-wide “experiment” of drug decriminalization. Portland’s drug and homelessness crises are constantly criticized in national media, so it’s no surprise that Oregon decided to recriminalize illicit drugs via House Bill 4002. This is viewed as a failure by the drug decriminalization movement, but in the context of the fentanyl crisis, altering Measure 110 could be the strongest decision.
Let’s start with a little background on Measure 110. Measure 110 passed in 2020 with 58% support from Oregon voters, and entailed two major shifts in the state’s approach to illicit drug use.
Most controversially, it decriminalized personal illicit drug possession by reducing the penalty from a criminal misdemeanor to a Class E violation. Those charged with such violations have the choice between paying a $100 fine or completing a health assessment via phone.
Secondly, Measure 110 combined marijuana sales revenue and the anticipated savings from the cost of enforcing criminal drug possession penalties to fund a broad drug treatment and recovery grant program titled the Behavioral Health Resource Network.
As a concept, Measure 110 sounds ideal from a humanistic standpoint; addiction needs to be treated as a health disorder rather than a crime. Illicit drug users deserve access to treatment instead of being sent to prison, where drugs are rampant and few recovery resources are available.
But when it comes to implementation, the measure falls short. As reported by OPB, “...police have handed out more than 7,000 citations, but as of December, only a few hundred people had called the hotline to get assessed for a substance use disorder. And even fewer accessed treatment through the citation system.”
With the health assessment failing to live up to expectations, the price tag on its operation is especially alarming. Oregon paid Health Resources in Action over $800,000 in initial start-up costs for the hotline and continues to pay $130,000 for monthly operating costs.
In regards to funding treatment and recovery programs, the rollout of resources has not been fast or abundant enough to account for the massive influence of fentanyl. From the Oregon Health Authority’s report on “Funding and Delivery of Measure 110 Substance Use Disorder Services,” Oregon plans on giving over $400 million to grantees in the BHRN.
This component of Measure 110 has proven to be
relatively effective.
As explained in the same OHA report, “Despite challenges, providers are delivering accessible services to highly vulnerable people … BHRN providers have increased spending and clients over time, but the first year of reporting showed limiting spending and services amid difficulty hiring staff and other challenges, raising risks that some of Oregon’s 42 networks may not provide all required services.”
Now comes HB 4002, which maintains the expanded funding of treatment and recovery services without the ineffectiveness of Measure 110’s citation system.
The main difference between the two approaches is that HB 4002 will treat personal possession of illicit drugs as a misdemeanor crime punishable with either a 180-day jail sentence or, if law enforcement chooses, a direct trip to treatment.
If an illicit drug user goes to court for their possession charges, they can also request probation and complete a treatment program to have their charges dismissed.
Additionally, HB 4002 introduces policies that make it easier for those suffering from opioid use disorder to access withdrawal medications. As a further attempt to curtail Oregon’s opioid epidemic, it simplifies the process for prosecutors to seek steep punishments for drug dealers as well.
As Oregon’s fentanyl crisis continues to worsen, policy adjustments are essential to save lives and to return our cities to what they once were: relatively safe.
“My friends used to feel safe riding the MAX [the Portland light rail system], but
they don’t anymore,” Portland metro native and first-year UO student Allison Buturla said. “People smoke fentanyl in the bus shelters and on the MAX. Public drug use is a huge problem.”
Despite its promise, there are valid concerns about HB 4002. With drugs recriminalized, some worry about racial disparities in arrests, especially when law enforcement makes the initial decision of whether to jail the user or send them directly to treatment.
Oregon’s drug epidemic is deeply complicated, and there are no perfect solutions to an issue so widespread. However, as a service to Oregonians, including those suffering from opioid use disorder, it’s essential to make difficult decisions in hopes of improving as many lives as possible. Hopefully, HB 4002 can play this role more effectively than its predecessor.
The oldest open air crafts market in the country will return to Eugene on April 6
BY JOSH BERK • DESIGNED BY RYAN EHRHARTEugene Saturday Market will be entering its 55th season on Saturday, April 6. The history of the oldest open air crafts market in the country begins on “the butterfly lot” in the Eugene Town Square, where it debuted in 1970.
“It wasn’t an ideal space for Saturday Market, but it was the only thing that the county would let us use at the time,” Diane McWhorter, a Saturday Market vendor and board secretary, said.
McWhorter taught herself how to screen 50 years ago through books at the library. Her first screen printed products were t-shirts, but she has since stopped selling tees at the saturday market. She now sells hats and tote bags.
Eugene Saturday Market moved on from the butterfly lot after the 1982 season, which has since been demolished to make space for the new Town Square. It now occupies the East and West lot of Hitching Post Square — better known as the Park Blocks.
The move occurred after the market closed in November of that season, just six months after an arsonist set fire to the butterfly lot.
“That following week, everybody kind of joined together and started pitching in to see if we would not have to miss any markets,” McWhorter said. “We showed up and since I painted signs, I thought, well, I’ll just paint a lot of new signs.”
McWhorter started selling at the market in 1976, just six years after the market’s inaugural season. In 1995, McWhorter took a 12-year break from Eugene Saturday Market to remodel her home. She remained an active member at the time selling at the Holiday Market. A former sign painter, she said she became a screen printer for t-shirts when they were “not really a fashion item.”
“This is a membership-based organization. A lot of the work that’s done is all volunteer work, so these people that have been here since the seventies are very vital to how we run today,” Sonia Ostendorf, the market’s membership coordinator, said.
Ostendorf grew up going to farmers’ markets with her parents and started working at the Eugene Saturday Market info booth in 2019. She said out of the roughly 300 active members, there are around ten that have been around since the 1970s. Many of the older members take breaks or move on from the market while others get drawn back.
“A lot of people will travel the world and say, ‘I’ve never had such an amazing selling experience anywhere else. This is something truly unique,’” Ostendorf said. “I’m always happy when somebody grows up and grows out of us because it just opens the door for more people to come in.”
Shannon Lee-Hutson, a former board chair, has been a vendor since 2016, selling jewelry under her business iQueen Creations. In 2022 she took over as interim general manager before coming back to take on the full position for the 2023 season. Her personal philosophy is making the market as smooth as possible for the vendors and customers.
“The vendors come in on Saturday, they come in fairly early. They bring all their things for that day. They have to unpack and unload. So by the time they get here, I want it to be like magic,” she said. “Last year during the construction, it was very difficult because that magic was tarnished a bit.”
Vendors, organizers and customers alike are all looking forward to a construction-free Saturday market.
Lee-Hutson has several plans for the current market and future ones. One plan coming to fruition this season is bringing back the much-missed fork
program in 2024. The program offers customers reusable silverware that can be deposited in return boxes around the Park Blocks. It will be returning for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, which made the safety risks of this program too high.
There are three options available to vendors at the Saturday Market: 4x4 stalls, 8x8s and strolling. Longtime members get more of a choice for their stall, while new members get the last pick of the litter.
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and that truthfully is what applies to booths. I will have one person come up to me and I’ll offer them a booth, they’ll say, ‘That’s the worst booth in the world,’” Ostendorf said. “And the next person will come up and say, ‘That’s my favorite booth, I can’t wait.’ So there’s a lot of feng shui that goes along with it.”
Members pay an annual fee of $60. 4x4 stalls go for $8 a day and 10% of the day’s sales and an 8x8 is $15 a day and 10% of sales.
Many of the market’s members and employees have been attending the market since childhood. While nostalgia might be a driving force for many people’s interest, the community is what seems to bring people back.
“I’ve been shopping at Saturday market with my family since I was in middle school, so it was really fun to kind of see the behind the scenes of how the market is put together,” marketing
manager Renee Thompson said.
Thompson is entering her third year working for the Saturday Market. She started as its marketing assistant before moving her way up.
“We have a really nice mix of what I like to call emerging artists and established artists,” Thompson said. Two of the artists that represent this dichotomy well are McWhorter and Dara Robertson.
Dara Robertson was a hairstylist in Bend, Ore., for 25 years before moving to Eugene. She joined the Eugene Saturday Market during its 2023 season and operates under the name Fringe Art Collective with her husband and child.
“Growing up in the high desert over in Bend, I always thought that I had a black thumb and I couldn’t really keep plants alive,” Robertson said. “But it was just that I’d lived in the wrong city. So coming here, plants and I have become way better friends.”
Robertson makes around forty types of different paper flowers. Recently she started making figurines out of clay to hold the bouquets she creates.
“I hand cut each one and assemble them with wire and glue,” Roberston said. “I put them in little microscopic glass vases and the entire bouquet is less than three inches tall when it’s done.”
theReneeThompson,headofmarketingfor portrait.EugeneSaturdayMarket,standsfora (AlyssaGarcia/Emerald)
Through its 55 seasons the Eugene Saturday Market has remained artist-oriented and antimass production. Every vendor at the market has to go through an approval process from the standards committee to ensure their products are entirely selfmade and original. Artists must also be present during the market.
“You’re not allowed to hole away in your studio and pay someone to run your booth. It’s very much a more intimate endeavor,” Thompson said. Of course, many artists will have family members help them out when business gets busy.
Promoting artist originality and evolving the standards committee has been difficult for the market employees to work around in the digital age — especially with AI art.
“How do we adjust to AI art? We don’t,” Lee-Hutson said. “We have said, ‘Sorry, at this time we can’t do AI art because we don’t have enough information to create a standard.’”said.
She said recently, someone failed the approval process because they were using a non-original design
for their crafts. Once they modified their products to be based on their own designs, they were allowed to start selling again.
“It could have been terrible,” Lee-Hutson said. “And yet, here she was, inspired now to do new things.”
While the market is dedicated to the artists, the artists are equally dedicated to showing up rain or shine, an unofficial motto of the market.
“I think it’s really very interesting to see the spirit of human artistry,” Thompson said. “And making sure that we don’t lose out on those arts that have been existent in our society for hundreds if not thousands of years.”
McWhorter has a custom bike trailer made by Eugene brand Human Powered Machines that she uses to carry her art to the market every Saturday.
“I’ve been using that since 2009 and I just feel like, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do it, but I’m certainly gonna do it as long as I can,” McWhorter said.
In past years, vendors would have an additional opportunity to sell on the East block on Tuesdays. Now they more or less plug holes for the farmers’ market without taking up a whole park block. Lee-Hutson says the plan is to open the East block back up spring 2025 for Tuesday markets.
Eugene Saturday Market will reopen April 6 and run through Nov. 2. This year’s return should be exciting for community members from all backgrounds.
Since the spring of 2007, runners from around the globe have laced up their sneakers and poised themselves at the starting line offor the Eugene Marathon. For 17 years, the half- and full- marathons have allowed visitors and locals alike to step back in time, traversing routes once run by incredible athletes.
While tackling double-digit mileage may be daunting, Big Timber Running Club incentivizes its runners to push themselves out of their comfort zones and take on distances they never thought possible through high-quality training and a sense of community.
When Rachel Robinson, a runner, physical therapist and current Ph.D. student at UO’s Bowerman Sports Science Center, relocated from Ohio to Eugene two years ago, she sought to unite her passion for movement with other runners. It was only a short time before Robinson discovered Big Timber Running Club, eventually becoming the group’s social events coordinator.
“A lot of running clubs can be intimidating to go into because you have a bunch of just really fast people that you see,” Robinson said. “But the way that Big Timber is structured, it’s really just for anyone who’s looking to go out and work hard with other runners regardless of pace.”
Every Tuesday night, club members gather for workouts that test their endurance. The group has amassed nearly 200 people, all with differing skill sets, finding strength in a common bond of distance running.
In addition to its Tuesday night workouts, the club splits itself into seasons, each centered around a different racing goal. The spring season, comprising 16 weeks of training from January to April, predominantly centers around half to full-marathon training. As such, a significant emphasis is placed on road racing to gear up for the terrain of the Eugene Marathon.
“We have athletes who are looking to run their first ever marathon or their first ever half marathon, as well as athletes who are looking to qualify for Boston, and we have everybody in between,” Ben Blankenship, an Olympian and head coach of Big Timber Running Club, said. “It’s really cool to have that melting pot of energy. And I have the distinguished role of helping people and being that resource for people to tackle their challenges.”
While Big Timber Running Club’s spring season is soon set to wrap up, the true feat will be found in the Eugene Marathon’s 13.1 and 26.2mile races. Despite the challenge, the group has found solace in one another and has continuously exemplified that in distance running, there truly is no ‘i’ in ‘team.’
To learn more about Big Timber Running Club, visit the tab on Run Hub Northwest’s website.
I spoke with three members of UO a cappella group On The Rocks regarding their latest album release, “In the Groove”
BY CADEN TRAW • DESIGNED BY GABRIELA MARTINEZUniversity of Oregon’s lone male a cappella group is back on your streaming services with their ninth album, “In the Groove.” Recorded throughout most of the 2022-23 academic year, each member of the group has put in an overwhelming amount of time and effort into this project, and that is evident in each song. I sat down with baritone and “Blu” soloist Aymeric Burthey, tenor and “Animal Spirits” soloist Adem Abdulhayoglu and tenor/baritone Jason Bube regarding all things “In the Groove.”
The album starts out with a one-two punch of Silk Sonic with “Silk Sonic Intro” and “Skate.” Both songs include features from Tony Castro and Raul Patel, with “Silk Sonic Intro” concluding with a smooth-talkin’ introduction to the album’s host, Neal Bryan. While these two songs couldn’t be more different, they contain a characteristic that immediately jumped out at me: the vocal percussion.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The percussion sounded so crisp and authentic that I genuinely believed it was real drum samples, but all of it comes from former On The Rocks vocal percussionist Miles Imai. Not only is Imai the vocal percussionist on all but one song, but many On The Rocks alumni believe Imai is the best vocal percussionist the group has ever had.
“He’s been super good since he was in middle school, I’ve heard,” Abdulhayoglu said. “We’ve talked to a fair amount of On The Rocks alumni who have experienced other vocal percussionists and they all think he’s the best one On The Rocks has ever had.”
On top of Imai, bass Connor Watrous plays an incredibly important role in the rhythm section of every song. Whenever you hear a shockingly low frequency sneaking through, particularly on the songs “Movement” and “Outer Space,” that would be Watrous.
“[Imai and Watrous] do kind of play off each other, both as the rhythm section and the lowest section, and oftentimes they’re doing the same thing,” Burthey said. “It’s an unbelievable pairing. We got incredibly lucky with both Miles and Connor.”
While each song features a soloist who fits the part like a glove, picking a soloist for each song can be a long, painstaking process. A group like On The Rocks is chockfull of great singers, so picking soloists is never a slight to the person who doesn’t get the part. It is more so about finding the right fit for the song based on the tone necessary.
“When we audition a soloist for a song, we ask who’s interested, they sing a section of the song, and we all vote with our heads down to keep it as unbiased as possible,” Bube said. “We choose
a top 3, we send them out, and we all discuss why we want one person over the other. We’re not picking favorites. It’s about who fits this song best as a soloist.”
You can hear throughout the record the litany of talented vocalists blessing our ears, and one song where this is especially apparent is “How Deep Is Your Love.” Admittedly, I am a sucker for any and all things Bee Gees, so I have some inherent bias toward this song. But I can’t deny how well-done this cover is. Soloist Justin Mouledous effortlessly transitions between a crisp falsetto and an airy baritone timbre, supported by a beautiful, harmonious backing vocal section. The Bee Gees are masters of feeling and sensation, but On The Rocks’ rendition of “How Deep Is Your Love” certainly holds a candle.
An important element of “In the Groove” that remains a constant throughout is the production. While production may not be an aspect of a cappella music that immediately comes to mind, the production on this album is top-notch. More often than not, finding good producers and then executing effective production is a difficult process, but On The Rocks has been lucky to be connected with two producers who have incredibly prestigious accolades.
Ed Boyer, who does their mixing, and Bill Hare, who does their mastering, are two Grammy-award winning producers. Boyer and Hare have worked with seemingly every big a cappella and choral group out there, including Pentatonix, The King’s Singers, Voces8 and even Glee. Their work with On The Rocks is nothing short of stunning.
What separates “In the Groove” from other On The Rocks albums is how personal each song is to different members. Burthey explains how different choosing songs for this album was than prior OTR album releases.
“For this one, we had meetings where we were like, ‘Bring two to three of your favorite songs and pitch them to us,’” Burthey said. “We never clarified that this album should be our favorite songs, but it kind of morphed into that. We chose not to be constricted by a certain theme, I suppose.”
According to Abdulhayoglu, “In the Groove” is the first album in On The Rocks’ catalog to follow this method — all of their previous albums had a chosen theme prior to the song selection process.
Given how much love the members had for the songs before their inclusion on the album, it only makes sense how intricate each arrangement and performance is. Each solo is performed with vigor, the supporting vocals add charming harmonies and pizzazz and the bass and rhythm section round the sound out emphatically, all while having undeniable fun in the process. If you’re new to a cappella, “In the Groove” is one hell of a gateway.
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AFTER HIS DAZZLING U.S. OPEN WIN IN JUNE, FORMER OREGON GOLFER WYNDHAM CLARK CONTINUED HIS SUCCESS AND HAS BECOME THE FACE OF OREGON GOLF
The No. 24 Oregon men’s golf squad is a starstudded roster on its own, but the program has seen a rise in popularity ever since its finest export, World No. 4 Wyndham Clark, won the 2023 U.S. Open.
That was the first time a former Oregon golfer had ever won a major.
This was made much more meaningful when considering that there was a chance Clark would never make it to Eugene.
Oregon head coach Casey Martin had been scouting Clark ever since he was a 16-year-old golfer just trying to get his name out there at a junior tournament at Eugene Country Club.
It was there he met hosts Jeff and Jamie Gaskill, who would host him for that tournament, and fell in love with a polite, quiet kid who just wanted to win.
The Gaskills would host Clark for all of his Oregon-based recruiting trips and stayed close in touch with him.
That made it all the more disappointing when the supremely talented Denver native chose to take his talent to Oklahoma State University, which is widely regarded as one of the best programs in the nation.
But in 2013, before he could gain any momentum in Stillwater, Clark was devastated by the passing of his mother due to breast cancer, which negatively affected his play.
“I had a great redshirt-freshman year at Oklahoma State and then I had two bad seasons, and I ultimately transferred when I was in a really low spot,” Clark said after his U.S. Open victory to TenGolf. “I think that was a lot of carry-over from my mom passing.”
Clark decided to transfer as a fifth-year, as his underperformance at one of the top tier programs hurt his chances at making it to the PGA Tour. He wanted to be the number-one guy.
To the immense relief of Martin, Clark finally decided to make the move to Eugene with the influence of the Gaskills, who agreed to host him for his lone year as a Duck.
In his only season in Oregon, Clark quickly
regained his self-confidence and proved to all that he could compete at the highest level and won the 2017 Pac-12 tournament individual title, along with being named the Pac-12 Golfer of the Year.
It only took Clark two years after turning professional in 2017 to reach the PGA tour. After three seasons of slowly climbing up the FedEx Cup leaderboard, Clark won his first tournament at the 2023 Wells Fargo Championship.
Just over a month later, Clark secured a victory over Rory McIlroy at the 2023 U.S. Open in Los Angeles, which was the first major win by any former Duck. Along with being named on the USA team for the 2023 Ryder Cup, Clark has stacked up his fair share of accomplishments over the last year.
“It is crazy to think that 12 months ago, I hadn’t had a first PGA tour win and was still ranked outside the top-50 in the world,” Clark said to TenGolf. “In such a short time, I’ve done a bunch.”
Since then, Clark won the Pebble Beach ProAm in January and placed second in March’s Arnold Palmer Invitational behind Scottie Scheffler — current World No. 1.
Clark noted an unwavering confidence in himself to be one of the main contributors to his rapid rise over the last year, something that was scarce when he arrived in Eugene in 2017.
What has been evident from Clark’s success is that he pays it back to Oregon. He appeared at Autzen Stadium this past fall to present his U.S. Open trophy to a raucous crowd.
While Oregon isn’t widely renowned for its golf program, Clark has been a welcome beacon of hope for current and future Ducks hoping to carve out a career on the PGA tour.
He has proven that one doesn’t need to play at historically successful programs to get their name out there, and he has shown that the most important thing is repetition.
Clark transferred to Oregon so he could play consistent golf and become No. 1 on a successful team.
He excelled in Eugene, fought hard for his spot on the PGA tour and has achieved professional success unheard of by an Oregon golfer, which has put the program on the map.
Overall, Clark has been exactly what this program always needed — a face.
Writing isn’t usually my problem. There’s a ton of other things that I struggle with — outside of pasta, I can’t cook; I have never hit a baseball more than ten feet or so; and I can play exactly two songs on the piano. But I can usually figure something out with a blank page.
Until I couldn’t.
Nearly every sport that I’ve covered — from soccer all the way down the list — has had preexisting coverage. There’s something there, some precedent that allowed me to find a starting point from which to learn. Even when I’ve never watched a sport before, there’s millions who have (and who are willing to talk at me about it with no worry about if I can hold up my end).
There’s decades — centuries, sometimes — of history and stories that have been told. When I started covering acrobatics and tumbling at the University of Oregon earlier this year, there was almost none of that. Whether that’s because it’s a non-NCAA sport on a campus full of popular ones, or because it’s only 13-or-so years old, it was a wholly different experience than anything that I’ve done before.
There was no national writer — there were no
other writers at the meet. There was no running discourse on Twitter. I could see no world surrounding it, and so (for the first time), I had to sit, alone, and watch. It worried me, to be honest. What was I supposed to do? For a good amount of time, I had no idea what I was watching (or, at least, no way to comprehend it). I struggled to write recaps — something that I’d been writing for years. I sat in the press box, headphones on and wondered how I would figure this out.
In order to tell stories about a sport that I didn’t understand, I decided, I needed to learn twofold: about the action and about the people. The action, of course, seemed the more important of the two — it’s why readers would find my work, I thought. The result, or the defining moment (what they teach you to highlight in any piece of writing) is the singular most important thing someone can take from any coverage that I would provide.
But I don’t think that that’s true anymore.
That forgotten second part — the people — has been interesting so far beyond the feats of skill on the mat that I find myself wanting to tell those stories instead. Luckily, I have time — one of the “different” things about acro is the long (think
three or four weeks) gaps between meets. I spent that time listening to stories about the history of a sport younger than I am from people who know far more about it than I do. That, I found, was the most valuable way to spend that time. That, I discovered, was more fulfilling and left me more inspired than any action could (even though that action is damn impressive).
I’m so excited to share these stories with you, too. It’s been one of the best experiences of my career to slow down and talk to people about something other than what they’re doing during their time in the spotlight. I believe wholeheartedly that those stories of what makes people love a sport are important. I can’t wait to tell more of them, because they’re fun to tell — and even more exciting to hear.
I’ve discovered that I love to tell stories of people just as much as I like to tell stories of games. Games might speak for themselves sometimes, but the people who actually can are fascinating. The opportunity, and the responsibility to uncover stories that haven’t yet been told is an important one — and one that I enjoy.
So here’s to more — to more of the sports that aren’t always in the spotlight, to more of the stories that matter and to more sports, always.
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