Becky Sisley is Master of her Universe
Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:00 pm
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The Register-Guard
Sports: Home
STORY POSTED TO WEB: SUNDAY, JUL 26, 2009 12:17AM
MASTER OF HER UNIVERSE
Becky Sisley knocks off age-group track records with vigor and vitality
BY CHRIS HANSEN
The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Sunday, Jul 26, 2009
Sports: Home: Story
It was a bright summer morning in Eugene and Becky Sisley, sitting in a pop-up chair on the outside lane of the South Eugene High School track, was gushing about her new car.
After six weeks of meticulous research and deliberation, Sisley had purchased a light green 2010 Toyota Sienna XLE passenger van. The first of its kind in the Northwest, she had been told.
The only problem was, her new car was still sitting at the dealership waiting to be picked up. And had been, for two days.
“Too busy,” Sisley said.
Some things never change.
After a professional career spent as a coach, athletic director, professor and pioneer for women’s sports at the University of Oregon, Sisley, at age 70, is now more than two decades into life as an elite master’s track and field athlete.
And she seems to be just hitting her stride.
In the past six weeks, Sisley has set two world and three American age-group records, and today she is in Lahti, Finland, awaiting Tuesday’s start of the World Masters Athletic Championships.
“What I enjoy is the challenge of learning and getting better,” Sisley said. “I sort of thought that this might be the last year. But I have been so successful and I can see improvement.”
Sisley owns the world record for women age 70-74 in the pole vault (7 feet, 8 3/4 inches) and heptathlon (6,098 points), as well as the American records for that age group in the javelin (93-3), 80-meter hurdles (17.32 seconds) and 200 hurdles (43.87).
She’ll compete in those events plus the long jump and high jump at the World Masters meet, which runs through Aug. 8.
“She’s amazing,” said her coach, Kelly Blair LaBounty, the former world-class heptathlete. “Her desire and energy and work ethic; she’s just very passionate about it and loves it. She works very hard and is very dedicated. I would never imagine doing anything like she does. I hope I have just a little bit of her energy and enthusiasm.”
Sisley certainly has plenty of both. Her days are a constant whirlwind of activities and chores. She moves quickly from task to task, practice to practice, methodically knocking off each to-do on her daily lists that she keeps coordinated in a small notebook.
Two Thursdays ago, that included getting up extra early to go blueberry picking — she harvested 30 pounds — then back home for a little rest before an afternoon trip to Hayward Field, where she had to measure and set the 27-inch-tall hurdles for the all-comers meet that night. She later returned to compete in the pole vault at 5 p.m., the 80 hurdles at 6 and the 200 hurdles at 7:30.
Despite the long day, she still recorded her best hand-timed marks of the year in both hurdle events — 17.0 in the 80 and 41.7 in the 200 — and came up short in her attempts at a world age-group record in the pole vault.
“So,” she wrote in an e-mail sent at 10:45 p.m. that same day, “I am feeling pretty good.”
Trying track and field
After a playing and coaching career that centered around softball and field hockey, Sisley finally decided to give track and field a try in 1988 when, at 49, she began training for the masters world championship meet that was planned for Hayward Field the next summer.
“I always wanted to throw the javelin because I was a softball player,” Sisley said. “I also always wanted to high jump.”
She was successful from the start. In 1991 she made Sport Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd feature after winning five gold medals in the 50-54 age group at nationals. In 1995 she decided she wanted to try to teach herself how to pole vault. She dominated each age group and rarely had any setbacks.
“I basically have always won the javelin,” Sisley said. “I was successful right away with the pole vault because there weren’t that many that did it. I still don’t have the technique right. I still don’t clear the bar the proper way. I’m still learning how to drop my back so my feet will go up. But I’d say at nationals I have won 80 percent (of the time).”
She’s also gotten better.
Sisley is having her best season in six years and, with the exception of the javelin and the jumps, has posted her best marks in all other events since she was 65.
“I’ve been a little bit wiser,” Sisley said. “I have had a series of injuries that have limited me at the national level. The most critical one was a herniated disc in 2005. I couldn’t go to nationals because I couldn’t fly on the plane. I went to Spain (for the world meet) thinking I couldn’t compete, but I stood and threw the javelin. I took just one step and threw.”
She recovered from her back injury through spinal injections — no surgery — and now “I do exercises religiously every morning for my back, and I do my core exercises along with them,” Sisley said. “I also do weights once a week and yoga twice a week.”
While her back injury slowed her, Sisley said, not once did she think it was time to give up the sport. Even at 66.
“No. No, no. I wasn’t ready yet,” Sisley said. “I had just picked up the 300 hurdles. It was a great new challenge that I was still learning. I still enjoy the personal improvement and I know I’m being fit and healthy.”
An inspiring leader
That Sisley has been so successful as a track and field athlete surprises no one who knows her, nor that she remains such an inspirational figure.
Since arriving in Eugene in 1965, four years after graduating from the University of Washington, Sisley has played a significant role in how women’s sports at Oregon are treated, funded and even celebrated.
Sisley coached the UO softball team from 1965-79 and the field hockey team from 1967-75. Then in 1973, she was named Oregon’s director of women’s athletics and worked vigilantly to help the athletic department adapt to the new Title IX legislation.
“Pioneer is a very fair way to describe her,” said Peg Rees, the longtime director of physical education at Oregon and a former Duck softball player for Sisley. “She did amazing things with very little.
“In 1976, my junior year, 10 of our 11 women’s sports made nationals and we did it on a shoestring budget. (Becky) and the coaches created an atmosphere of success without recruiting, without scholarships. It was a culture of success for women that I doubt could be duplicated even if we had had more money.
“Becky was at the head of that.”
But by 1979 Sisley was done, burned out by fighting the fight for so many years and enduring work weeks that never seemed to end.
“It was an excessive amount of work,” Sisley said. “It was 80 hours a week and lots of canker sores.”
She took a one-year sabbatical and when she returned, it was “only” as a professor in the physical education department where she remained until retiring in 2000, though she still continued to teach through 2004.
In 1998 she was added to the UO athletic Hall of Fame and two years later, the athletic department honored her further with the naming of the Becky L. Sisley Award, given annually to a former UO women’s athlete. It is the women’s equivalent of the Leo Harris Award, which is given to former men’s athletes.
“Through her passion, she has created a legacy of coaching and teaching that is unmatched,” Rees said. “Only a handful of women nationwide have her credentials.”
Candidates for the award must have been out of school for 20-25 years and are judged on what they’ve done since college in regard to service to the community and service to the UO.
Former winners include Rees and Bev Smith.
“That award is based on some of the same characteristics Becky has,” Rees said. “She is still passionate and still active in finding ways to improve the quality and recognition of women in sports. She’s still got her foot in the door and is contributing a great deal. And of course, it’s all voluntary.”
Sisley was the driving force behind a UO softball reunion in 2008 — the first of its kind at Oregon— and for years has been leading Oregon’s effort to host a women’s sports celebration to honor all the women who did not receive a letter despite their athletic achievements through the 1980-81 school year.
Of the approximately 1,100 former athletes that fit this description, so far only 300 or so have registered.
“When it happens, it will be really fun,” said Karen Meats, a star field hockey and softball player for Sisley in the mid-1960s, as well as a former teammate on the McCullouch Chain Saws softball team that went to the national tournament in 1965 and 1966.
Meats, in the UO Hall of Fame thanks in part to Sisley’s efforts, is at least one benefactor of Sisley’s bulldog persistence in getting as many former female athletes as possible recognized and remembered.
“She’s been advocating for us athletes from way back,” Meats said. “She got us into the hall of fame. Because of her, a lot of people got recognition.”
Sisley still sits on the Oregon Hall of Fame Committee, as well as the executive committee for USA Track & Field Masters.
“Becky will die before she stops working,” Rees said. “She is just very passionate.”
A team effort
This season, more than ever, much of that passion has been reserved for her time on the track.
With the goal being the world games, Sisley has trained with more focus and desire this year. She has assembled a group of professionals around her to improve everything from her diet to her sprinting technique between hurdles.
Her group, which she likes to call her “team,” is led by LaBounty, the former UO heptathlete and UO assistant track and field coach, who helps Sisley get into heptathlon condition and to master all of the different elements of the event.
“Multi-eventers are the hardest working, most mentally focused athletes out there and I really prefer and enjoy coaching multi-event athletes,” LaBounty said. “There is no need to motivate them.
“With her, it’s been very fun. … She’s a world-class master’s athlete. I’m not coaching a novice or a beginner. It’s similar to college or a track club. She is a student. She’ll go and do practices on her own and she’ll study. She wants to improve and get better.”
For help in the 800, Sisley uses Margo Jennings, who for many years was the coach for Maria Mutola. Sisley has received javelin assistance and tips from ex-UO throws coach Sally Harmon and current javelin coach Christina Scherwin.
Ingrid Skoog, the director of nutrition at Oregon State, is also an adviser, as is trainer George Walcott and her old pole vault coach, Val Nasedkin.
“I do wish I had more freedom,” Sisley said. “I didn’t get married until I was 57. I was a workaholic, Type-A definitely. But I told my husband this is the big year. I’m 70, I haven’t competed in a world championship in 10 years. I was really gearing for Spain four years ago, but I couldn’t compete. So this is the year I’m committing myself, more so than any other year.”
THE BECKY SISLEY FILE
Age: 70
UO women’s softball coach: 1965-79
UO women’s field hockey coach: 1967-75
UO women’s AD: 1973-79
Master’s track and field athlete: 1988-present
Elected to UO Hall of Fame: 1998
The first year the Becky L. Sisley Award was given: 2000
The Register-Guard
Sports: Home
STORY POSTED TO WEB: SUNDAY, JUL 26, 2009 12:17AM
MASTER OF HER UNIVERSE
Becky Sisley knocks off age-group track records with vigor and vitality
BY CHRIS HANSEN
The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Sunday, Jul 26, 2009
Sports: Home: Story
It was a bright summer morning in Eugene and Becky Sisley, sitting in a pop-up chair on the outside lane of the South Eugene High School track, was gushing about her new car.
After six weeks of meticulous research and deliberation, Sisley had purchased a light green 2010 Toyota Sienna XLE passenger van. The first of its kind in the Northwest, she had been told.
The only problem was, her new car was still sitting at the dealership waiting to be picked up. And had been, for two days.
“Too busy,” Sisley said.
Some things never change.
After a professional career spent as a coach, athletic director, professor and pioneer for women’s sports at the University of Oregon, Sisley, at age 70, is now more than two decades into life as an elite master’s track and field athlete.
And she seems to be just hitting her stride.
In the past six weeks, Sisley has set two world and three American age-group records, and today she is in Lahti, Finland, awaiting Tuesday’s start of the World Masters Athletic Championships.
“What I enjoy is the challenge of learning and getting better,” Sisley said. “I sort of thought that this might be the last year. But I have been so successful and I can see improvement.”
Sisley owns the world record for women age 70-74 in the pole vault (7 feet, 8 3/4 inches) and heptathlon (6,098 points), as well as the American records for that age group in the javelin (93-3), 80-meter hurdles (17.32 seconds) and 200 hurdles (43.87).
She’ll compete in those events plus the long jump and high jump at the World Masters meet, which runs through Aug. 8.
“She’s amazing,” said her coach, Kelly Blair LaBounty, the former world-class heptathlete. “Her desire and energy and work ethic; she’s just very passionate about it and loves it. She works very hard and is very dedicated. I would never imagine doing anything like she does. I hope I have just a little bit of her energy and enthusiasm.”
Sisley certainly has plenty of both. Her days are a constant whirlwind of activities and chores. She moves quickly from task to task, practice to practice, methodically knocking off each to-do on her daily lists that she keeps coordinated in a small notebook.
Two Thursdays ago, that included getting up extra early to go blueberry picking — she harvested 30 pounds — then back home for a little rest before an afternoon trip to Hayward Field, where she had to measure and set the 27-inch-tall hurdles for the all-comers meet that night. She later returned to compete in the pole vault at 5 p.m., the 80 hurdles at 6 and the 200 hurdles at 7:30.
Despite the long day, she still recorded her best hand-timed marks of the year in both hurdle events — 17.0 in the 80 and 41.7 in the 200 — and came up short in her attempts at a world age-group record in the pole vault.
“So,” she wrote in an e-mail sent at 10:45 p.m. that same day, “I am feeling pretty good.”
Trying track and field
After a playing and coaching career that centered around softball and field hockey, Sisley finally decided to give track and field a try in 1988 when, at 49, she began training for the masters world championship meet that was planned for Hayward Field the next summer.
“I always wanted to throw the javelin because I was a softball player,” Sisley said. “I also always wanted to high jump.”
She was successful from the start. In 1991 she made Sport Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd feature after winning five gold medals in the 50-54 age group at nationals. In 1995 she decided she wanted to try to teach herself how to pole vault. She dominated each age group and rarely had any setbacks.
“I basically have always won the javelin,” Sisley said. “I was successful right away with the pole vault because there weren’t that many that did it. I still don’t have the technique right. I still don’t clear the bar the proper way. I’m still learning how to drop my back so my feet will go up. But I’d say at nationals I have won 80 percent (of the time).”
She’s also gotten better.
Sisley is having her best season in six years and, with the exception of the javelin and the jumps, has posted her best marks in all other events since she was 65.
“I’ve been a little bit wiser,” Sisley said. “I have had a series of injuries that have limited me at the national level. The most critical one was a herniated disc in 2005. I couldn’t go to nationals because I couldn’t fly on the plane. I went to Spain (for the world meet) thinking I couldn’t compete, but I stood and threw the javelin. I took just one step and threw.”
She recovered from her back injury through spinal injections — no surgery — and now “I do exercises religiously every morning for my back, and I do my core exercises along with them,” Sisley said. “I also do weights once a week and yoga twice a week.”
While her back injury slowed her, Sisley said, not once did she think it was time to give up the sport. Even at 66.
“No. No, no. I wasn’t ready yet,” Sisley said. “I had just picked up the 300 hurdles. It was a great new challenge that I was still learning. I still enjoy the personal improvement and I know I’m being fit and healthy.”
An inspiring leader
That Sisley has been so successful as a track and field athlete surprises no one who knows her, nor that she remains such an inspirational figure.
Since arriving in Eugene in 1965, four years after graduating from the University of Washington, Sisley has played a significant role in how women’s sports at Oregon are treated, funded and even celebrated.
Sisley coached the UO softball team from 1965-79 and the field hockey team from 1967-75. Then in 1973, she was named Oregon’s director of women’s athletics and worked vigilantly to help the athletic department adapt to the new Title IX legislation.
“Pioneer is a very fair way to describe her,” said Peg Rees, the longtime director of physical education at Oregon and a former Duck softball player for Sisley. “She did amazing things with very little.
“In 1976, my junior year, 10 of our 11 women’s sports made nationals and we did it on a shoestring budget. (Becky) and the coaches created an atmosphere of success without recruiting, without scholarships. It was a culture of success for women that I doubt could be duplicated even if we had had more money.
“Becky was at the head of that.”
But by 1979 Sisley was done, burned out by fighting the fight for so many years and enduring work weeks that never seemed to end.
“It was an excessive amount of work,” Sisley said. “It was 80 hours a week and lots of canker sores.”
She took a one-year sabbatical and when she returned, it was “only” as a professor in the physical education department where she remained until retiring in 2000, though she still continued to teach through 2004.
In 1998 she was added to the UO athletic Hall of Fame and two years later, the athletic department honored her further with the naming of the Becky L. Sisley Award, given annually to a former UO women’s athlete. It is the women’s equivalent of the Leo Harris Award, which is given to former men’s athletes.
“Through her passion, she has created a legacy of coaching and teaching that is unmatched,” Rees said. “Only a handful of women nationwide have her credentials.”
Candidates for the award must have been out of school for 20-25 years and are judged on what they’ve done since college in regard to service to the community and service to the UO.
Former winners include Rees and Bev Smith.
“That award is based on some of the same characteristics Becky has,” Rees said. “She is still passionate and still active in finding ways to improve the quality and recognition of women in sports. She’s still got her foot in the door and is contributing a great deal. And of course, it’s all voluntary.”
Sisley was the driving force behind a UO softball reunion in 2008 — the first of its kind at Oregon— and for years has been leading Oregon’s effort to host a women’s sports celebration to honor all the women who did not receive a letter despite their athletic achievements through the 1980-81 school year.
Of the approximately 1,100 former athletes that fit this description, so far only 300 or so have registered.
“When it happens, it will be really fun,” said Karen Meats, a star field hockey and softball player for Sisley in the mid-1960s, as well as a former teammate on the McCullouch Chain Saws softball team that went to the national tournament in 1965 and 1966.
Meats, in the UO Hall of Fame thanks in part to Sisley’s efforts, is at least one benefactor of Sisley’s bulldog persistence in getting as many former female athletes as possible recognized and remembered.
“She’s been advocating for us athletes from way back,” Meats said. “She got us into the hall of fame. Because of her, a lot of people got recognition.”
Sisley still sits on the Oregon Hall of Fame Committee, as well as the executive committee for USA Track & Field Masters.
“Becky will die before she stops working,” Rees said. “She is just very passionate.”
A team effort
This season, more than ever, much of that passion has been reserved for her time on the track.
With the goal being the world games, Sisley has trained with more focus and desire this year. She has assembled a group of professionals around her to improve everything from her diet to her sprinting technique between hurdles.
Her group, which she likes to call her “team,” is led by LaBounty, the former UO heptathlete and UO assistant track and field coach, who helps Sisley get into heptathlon condition and to master all of the different elements of the event.
“Multi-eventers are the hardest working, most mentally focused athletes out there and I really prefer and enjoy coaching multi-event athletes,” LaBounty said. “There is no need to motivate them.
“With her, it’s been very fun. … She’s a world-class master’s athlete. I’m not coaching a novice or a beginner. It’s similar to college or a track club. She is a student. She’ll go and do practices on her own and she’ll study. She wants to improve and get better.”
For help in the 800, Sisley uses Margo Jennings, who for many years was the coach for Maria Mutola. Sisley has received javelin assistance and tips from ex-UO throws coach Sally Harmon and current javelin coach Christina Scherwin.
Ingrid Skoog, the director of nutrition at Oregon State, is also an adviser, as is trainer George Walcott and her old pole vault coach, Val Nasedkin.
“I do wish I had more freedom,” Sisley said. “I didn’t get married until I was 57. I was a workaholic, Type-A definitely. But I told my husband this is the big year. I’m 70, I haven’t competed in a world championship in 10 years. I was really gearing for Spain four years ago, but I couldn’t compete. So this is the year I’m committing myself, more so than any other year.”
THE BECKY SISLEY FILE
Age: 70
UO women’s softball coach: 1965-79
UO women’s field hockey coach: 1967-75
UO women’s AD: 1973-79
Master’s track and field athlete: 1988-present
Elected to UO Hall of Fame: 1998
The first year the Becky L. Sisley Award was given: 2000