Lebanon’s Cade Weber won a state title in his specialty, the 400 meters, Saturday afternoon, May 30, at the OSAA 5A track and field championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, then anchored the Warriors to another win in the 4×400 relay.
Those wins were the culmination of a lot of waiting and a lot of work, said Logan Large, who was one of the four seniors on this year’s team, all returnees from the 2025 crew that finished 12th in 3:28.86.
Things were very different this time around.
Large and Rowan Jones ran the first two legs, Jones trailing five runners at the exchange with Bodhi Brown. Brown started reeling in the opponents on the first curve and up the backstretch, passing Crook County and pulling even with Canby as he approached the handoff with Weber, Coming into the home stretch of the third leg, Brown was even with the other two and Weber, who opened up a two-second lead and held it to bring the Warriors home in 3:21.07 – a season’s best by .09 seconds.
“We’ve been aiming for the gold medal this whole year, Large said. “I mean, that was the end goal. We don’t want to cut ourselves too short, but yeah, we really just have chemistry – we’re best friends, all of us. So, we’ve really worked together for two years on this, and it took a lot of teamwork to try to get this through, and I think it all paid off.”
Brown said as he pulled made up ground on the lead runners, “I said it during the race: ‘They don’t want it more than me.’ No one wanted it more than me at that moment. We wanted it more than anyone.”
Jones noted that the foursome put in “hard work” after “last year’s disappointment” that bonded them together.
“Running with these guys means everything,” he said. “It’s a great way to go out, senior year.”
Weber made it clear that he wasn’t there to lose, taking the lead early in the 400 and keeping it down the home stretch ahead of a tight pack of finishers behind him.
For him in this race, there was also a sense of finishing the job.
“ As soon as we got off that podium last year, I knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted to do was win it,” he said. “It’s been in my head since state last year, like, I have what it takes to come back here and get what I want and it’s been every day since then.”
His “stomach was turned upside down” prior to the race, but “when we got in the blocks, once I got out there, I know my race.”
It basically went according to plan.
“I go those first 200 and I don’t look at anybody,” he said. “My strength is no one can hurt as much as I can. I’m gonna put it on that last 150. I’m the strongest out there. I might not be the fastest kid around, but I’m going to be sure that (strength) carries me through.”
Lebanon’s boys were sixth (37 points) behind Summit (103), Crater (81), Silverton (66.5), Caldera (55) and Churchill (40).
The boys 4×100 relay team of Luke Johnson, Large, Weber and Brown finished fifth in 42.84.
Brown was fifth in both the 100 (10.98) and the 200 (22.23), and Large finished fifth in the triple jump (43-9).
Lebanon’s girls, competing in three field events, finished 22nd, getting those points from seniors Addy Pickles, who finished fourth in the triple jump (35-11½ ) and Ruby Vandenbos, who was sixth in that event (35-6).
Pickles scratched all three of her attempts in the long jump.
Junior Heather Savedra had a tough day in the javelin, finishing 13th with a best of 94-04, nearly 30 feet short of the personal best of 123-4 that she set the week before in winning the district championship.
Summit won the girls title with 70 points, followed by Caldera (63), Thurston and South Albany, which tied for third (56 points) as the Redhawks got a record-setting from senior Pharalynn Dickson, who won the 100, 200 and 400 for the fourth consecutive year, giving her 12 individual titles, and leading 4×100, ending her career with 14 titles.
