A CONVERSATION WITH: Steve Ritchie of sportspac12.com on the GOATs of Pac-12 track and field...

WSU's Laura Lavine
(photo courtesy WSU Athletics)

paulmerca.blogspot.com is pleased to have Steve Ritchie from sportspac12.com on in the third of a series of conversations with the athletes, coaches, and journalists in the world of collegiate and professional track and field.

Steve, who resides in Silverton, Oregon, is currently writing a series of stories for the website on who the greatest men's and women's track and field athletes are from each of the Pac-12 schools.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Ritchie was scheduled to write a weekly column on the Pac-12 track and field season, highlighting the top marks and athletes in the conference on the road to the Pac-12 championship meet in Eugene, the NCAA West Regionals in Lawrence, Kansas, the NCAA Championships in Austin, and for a select few, the US Olympic Track & Field Trials in Eugene, and the Olympics in Tokyo.

With the 2020 outdoor collegiate season cancelled, he and his editor opted to go in a different direction, thus a weekly column on who the greatest athletes from each of the schools in the conference.

In his first column last week, he selected high jumpers Dick Fosbury and Joni Huntley from Oregon State; and decathlete Ashton Eaton and 800 meter runner Raevyn Rogers from Oregon.

You can read his first column here.

Brad Walker was named the GOAT of
UW track & field
(Paul Merca photo)

Once I got wind that he was writing about the GOATs of the Pac-12, my curiosity piqued when his next column was on the greatest track and field athletes from Washington and Washington State (spoiler alert: for the Huskies, it's pole vaulter Brad Walker and discus thrower Aretha Thurmond; for Washington State, it's distance runner Henry Rono and discus thrower Laura Lavine).

We talked about the process of who made the list, who his honorable mentions were, and of course, who got left out.

You can read his column on the greatest Husky and Cougar track and field athletes here.

He will have a column up on the GOATs of the two Bay Area schools (Cal and Stanford), followed by the two Mountain schools (Utah and Colorado), then the Desert schools (Arizona and Arizona State), and end with the two Los Angeles schools (USC and UCLA), which will spur some debate.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns about the video content, please don't hesitate to click the envelope at the bottom of the post or in the comments section of the YouTube channel.

Here's the video:



NOTE: The sports information offices of the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Washington State University, and the University of Washington contributed to this report.