The Celebration of Maupin's 100 years brought a few visitors to town to experience this amazing community, the river and attend the official dedication of the Maupin Deschutes River Athletic Complex. Mayor Lynn Ewing and Rob Miles thanked the community and donors for their continued support of the project. We still have a few more stages to complete but as we fund and build those out events will surely come our way.
We were able to welcome the Oregon National Guard back to Maupin and show them the Track and Field Complex including the corner that they spent over 2 weeks in July of 2020 to create the footprint for us to lay the final design in place. There work was instrumental in the completion of the project and they were overjoyed to see the final results of their work.
In addition to the Oregon National Guard members of the Union Athletics Club, one of Nike's professional running teams came out to enjoy a raft trip and be present for the dedication of the track meeting the community members, donors and the future athletes that will compete on this track.
Sinclaire Johnson, this year's National Champion in the 1500 m and placing 6th at last summer's World Championships in Eugene. She was happy the be there and offered her congrats on building one of the picturesque tracks she had ever seen. Our goal is to get a few of the UAC team members to train and potentially have some events that bring them to DRAC!
Union Athletics Club 1500 meter star Craig Engels took a few laps with the locals including the current South Wasco County Redside 1500m record holder, Virgil Newberry who now is also part of the Oregon National Guard. Engels is one of the most popular distance runners in the world. The group camped on the BLM Road near Surf City and thanks to the Imperial River Company the UAC Athletes and the Oregon National Guard rafted the Deschutes before the ceremony.
One of the most popular athletes that attended was Donavan Brazier. Brazier won the 2019 World Championships and has run the fastest Outdoor and Indoor 800m times in US History. He set the American Record with a time of 1:42.34 in Doha at the World Championships. He loves the potential of training out here knowing there is quite a bit less rain in Maupin vs the Nike Campus in Beaverton.
The day completed with others that made the trip from UAC to compete in the annual tricycle races down Main Street Maupin where Craig Nowak placed 2nd overall during the evening festivities. We hope that this experience will bring them back for clinics, camps, training or racing to really make this a destination for the sport.
