Springfield High’s Woodshop adds a Splash of Hayward Magic to 2023 Medals

On Sunday, April 30, each finisher of the 2023 Eugene Marathon will once again receive a piece of Hayward Magic. For the third year in a row, salvaged wood from the East Grandstands of Historic Hayward Field will be a part of each marathon and half marathon medal.

The wood which held up Hayward Field for nearly 100 years (from 1919 to 2018) will be the focal point of this year’s medal – which is a true blend of the old and the new. The medals start with a traditional shape, material and foundation: in a gold finish for the marathon and silver for the half marathon. It contains the nine lanes of the track to commemorate the Hayward Field finish line, an iconic Eugene skyline with trees and buttes to highlight the course which traverses through Eugene and Springfield, and a profile that mimics the shell surrounding Hayward Field’s new stadium. Finally, there is the sky itself: pure Hayward Field timbers that were milled down and laser cut to fit just right. To top it all off, as a nod to the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 marathons – which took place in July 2022 on many of the same roads as the Eugene Marathon – is a ribbon holder that was molded in the shape of both the Oregon22 finish gantry and the recognizable ribs of Hayward Field’s reimagined stadium.

Each element of the medal tells a story, but none more so than the wood, which – if the wood could talk – would share stories of Otis Davis on his way to setting world records and winning two Olympic golds in the 1960s, of Steve Prefontaine’s American Record win in the 5,000 meters at the 1972 U.S. Olympic Trials, of Ashton Eaton’s decathlon world record at the 2012 Olympic Trials, and of Raevyn Rogers’ electric anchor leg in the 4x400 meter relay that led the Oregon women’s team to the 2017 NCAA triple crown.

The wood timbers’ latest story is another one that hits close to home. Late last fall, the timbers traveled just a few miles: from the Eugene Marathon warehouse (in the back of Race Director Ian Dobson’s little red truck) to the Springfield High School wood shop.

“This year we wanted to level up and keep the wood as local as possible,” Dobson said. “It was kind of a hare-brained idea, but I remembered Scott Touchette as a member of the running community and knew he was the woodshop teacher at Springfield, so I reached out to Scott and said: ‘hey, we don't have an idea fully-flushed out yet, but we’d like to see if you might be able to create an element for our finisher medals out of salvaged Hayward Field materials.’ Fortunately, he just said yes immediately!”

“Pretty quickly, we were able to figure out a way to take the old beams from Hayward Field and resaw them down into thin slices of lumber and then use our industrial laser to cut the discs,” Touchette said. “I'm a track guy and a running guy and I coached for 20 years. I wanted to incorporate the kids from the track team as much as possible because of the historic value of working with the Hayward Field materials.”

While Dobson and Touchette used the planer to get the timbers down to the correct thickness, wood shop students spent countless hours before, during and after class at the laser cutter. One of those students was senior Lucas Paugh.

“Mr. Touchette approached me when he got the offer from Ian; he knew I was already part of the track team and it was a fundraiser for both the track team and the woodshop, so it was a good fit,” said Paugh who is a thrower on the track & field team and a member of the Advanced Woodshop class.  

“Hayward Field is huge in Eugene,” Paugh continued. “When [Mr. Touchette] told me that the wood pieces were from Hayward Field, I got pretty excited. We also got to visit the new Hayward Field as a track team earlier this year. And it's just an amazing facility!”

Paugh ended up overseeing the creation of over 2,500 wooden discs in the month of January. He said he won’t miss the many hours he spent coming in before school to watch the laser cutter work its magic, but he’s proud that the time he spent raised money for both the track team and the woodshop.

“It was a really good fundraiser for [the woodshop] and, with the incorporation of the track kiddos, we were able to purchase brand new block equipment for the team,” Touchette said.

By keeping the project local, the Eugene Marathon was able to make sizable donations to both the woodshop and the track and cross country programs at Springfield.

“It feels really good to be able to see this through with a partner here in our community,” said Dobson. “The Hayward wood is such an extraordinary embellishment to our finisher medals. The connection to the history of running in this town is a big part of our identity as an event and that’s what we lead with; to work with Scott and the woodshop students at Springfield was the icing on the cake.”