Hayward Field Is More Than a Stadium — It Is Eugene's Front Porch to the World
TrackTown USA is not a slogan pasted on a brochure. It is a century of track and field at Hayward Field, rebuilt for a new era and still the place the sport comes home to.
Every city has a building that explains it. In Eugene, that building is a track stadium. Hayward Field, on the University of Oregon campus, has been home to the Ducks' track and field teams since 1921 and carries the name of Bill Hayward, the coach who ran the program from 1904 to 1947. When people around the world say TrackTown USA, this is the address they mean.
The stadium Eugene knows today is both historic and new. Hayward Field was entirely rebuilt in a redevelopment completed in 2020, rising on the same ground where generations of runners, jumpers and throwers made the venue famous. The new Hayward kept the intimacy that made the old one beloved — spectators close to the track, sound held in the bowl — while giving the sport a modern stage, crowned by its distinctive tower.
That stage has been tested at the highest level. Hayward Field hosted the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in 2021, the summer captured in our launch photograph, and Eugene welcomed the World Athletics Championships in 2022, the first time that global championship was held in the United States. The Prefontaine Classic, part of the Diamond League and named for Oregon legend Steve Prefontaine, brings world-class fields back to the track year after year.
Competitions at Hayward are organized by TrackTown USA, the not-for-profit organization rooted in this community. That local stewardship matters: the biggest meets in the sport are run by people who also answer to Eugene, who fill its hotels and restaurants with visitors, and who recruit local volunteers by the hundreds when the world comes to town.
Our sports desk opens with a promise and a standard. The promise: Hayward Field will never be just a results service here — it is a civic institution, and we will cover it like one. The standard: no invented times, no invented results, ever. When there is a race worth reporting, we will report what actually happened, on the track, in front of the crowd that makes this place unlike anywhere else in the sport.
