The coaching staff at Oregon has to love it when an in-state recruit with big-time potential chooses to run for the Ducks when he has the academic scholarship money to choose any school he wants.
Boru Guyota, who emigrated from Ethiopia to Portland in 2006 when he was 16 years old, was a Class 5A state champion for Jefferson in 2009 in the 800 meters and the 4×400 relay. But he’s a distance runner who attended a school without a distance program. He was a cross country team of one last fall.
Guyota, with the help of acclaimed author Mark Mathabane, trained consistently for the first time in his life this spring but he was not eligible to run for his high school because he turned 20 in January. He ran in open meets and has quickly transformed into a mid-distance runner with a lot of potential. He has run 1:52.56 for 800 meters and believes he could have gone faster if he had gotten into more races.
But his situation also took him off the radar. The Ducks are getting freebie here, because he has earned more scholarship money than he knows what to do with. He won’t cost the track program one dime. He won the prestigious Ford Foundation scholarship, among others, that pays 90 percent of his bill wherever he chose to go.
Guyota met with Vin Lananna, assistant coach Andy Powell and some of Oregon’s athletes last week before they few to Iowa. It was enough to sway his decision, according to Mathabane.
I wrote about him a while back. His story is here.
