The extra mile

  KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Cross country
head coach Eric Peterson’s enthusiasm motivates
his athletes.

By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

It was the spring of 1996, and Tina Bowen was a senior at San
Ramon High School in Danville, Calif.

She was in her house, seated with her parents, listening to UCLA
cross country and track distance coach Eric Peterson make a
last-minute sales pitch. Peterson hadn’t contacted her until
late in the recruiting process and Bowen had already made up her
mind to attend Vanderbilt, though she had yet to give the school a
commitment of any kind.

As she listened to Peterson speak, Bowen thought back to four
years ago, the summer before her freshman year in high school. She
was at a runners’ workshop in Lake Tahoe where Peterson, who
was not yet affiliated with UCLA, was a weight coach.

“He really motivated me there,” Bowen said. “I
sort of looked up to him, since he ran for Oregon and stuff. I was
young at the time and not totally into running, but he got me
enthusiastic.”

That memory lured Bowen to UCLA, where now, as a fifth-year
senior, she is the team’s top runner.

“What it really came down to,” Bowen said,
“was that I really trusted him and believed in him. I looked
back to that workshop and remembered how much energy he put
in.”

Bowen said that Peterson has done nothing since to betray her
trust.

“Eric is an amazing coach,” she said. “Of all
the coaches that I’ve had, he’s been able to motivate
the most. Every year I’ve been here, I’ve improved
tremendously.”

Peterson shrugs when asked why he spends so much energy in his
job.

“Coaching is not what I do,” he said.
“It’s who I am.

“I never wake up in the morning thinking I have to go to
work. I love thinking about the sport and preparing workouts. I
love recruiting and I love meeting people.”

Peterson was an All-American middle distance runner at Oregon in
the late ’90s and twice qualified for the Olympic Trials,
recording a personal best of 3:41.03 in the 1500-meter.

But, he said, “I always knew I was going to be a
coach.”

Upon graduating from Oregon in 1990, Peterson moved to San Diego
to continue training.

After two years, he returned to Oregon as a graduate assistant
strength coach. Peterson figured that the quickest way to get a job
as a college head coach was to first take a lower position at a
major university.

Then in 1993, Peterson got his break, as a spot opened on
UCLA’s staff when the women’s team was in need of a
distance coach.

The Bruins first offered the job to one of Peterson’s
friends, former Bruin runner Pam Thompson. But when Thompson took a
position at Saugus High School instead that would allow her to
teach and coach, UCLA turned to Peterson.

“It was the greatest entry-level job,” Peterson
said.

There was one problem: the job paid only $12,000 a year.

Nonetheless, Peterson, who was 26 years old at the time,
didn’t think twice about accepting the offer.

“I was willing to be here under any circumstance,”
he said.

Short of money, not having ever been in Los Angeles other than
when he was there to run, and without a place to live, Peterson
asked Thompson for some advice.

“My friend Sally lives nearby,” Thompson told him.
“She might have a room available.”

“Who’s Sally?” he asked, feeling uneasy as
thoughts of living with a total stranger entered his head.

“Sally, you know,” she said. “Sally
Struthers.”

Struthers, the actress, it turned out, had an open room in her
Brentwood residence. Peterson went to live there and was charged
only $185 a month in rent.

“If it weren’t for her,” Peterson said,
“I would have had a tough time making it.”

In the 1993 cross country season, his first year at UCLA,
Peterson coached Karen Hecox to the Pac-10 and West Regional
championships. In the spring track season that followed, Hecox won
the 3,000-meter run at the NCAA finals.

“I remember those early years really well,” Peterson
said. “I was very energized about my work and the athletes
were enthusiastic. It was a good fit.”

From the start, Peterson had to work on developing the
women’s distance program without the benefit of being able to
give scholarships.

Under NCAA rules, track and cross country must share
scholarships, and with UCLA investing most of them in the sprints
and field events, Peterson had few to work with. In addition,
several Pac-10 schools, such as Stanford, Oregon and Arizona, were
investing a good portion of their money into the distance events,
and UCLA had trouble keeping up.

But in 1998, the Bruins made their first appearance at the NCAAs
since 1988. Peterson had less than one scholarship invested in the
team, and he didn’t even recruit three of the seven runners
who competed at the championship meet.

Bowen, who was on that team, said Peterson’s approach of
developing his runners as more than athletes helped.

“A lot of times, he’ll start talking to you about
running and soon, the conversation gets deeper and deeper,”
she said. “You learn a lot about yourself. He makes you
realize the things in your life that you have to change to get the
most out of yourself. He doesn’t push you, but he makes you
realize what you have to do and a lot of times, that’s what
you need.”

Bowen added that Peterson makes himself available to his runners
at all times of the day and that she feels comfortable discussing
anything with him.

“When we talk to runners from other teams about Eric, they
get weirded out,” she said. “They don’t
understand how he can be our friend and somehow be
professional.

“He’s affected me as much as anyone in my
life.”

This year, Peterson’s duties expanded as he also took over
the men’s cross country team, which had been under Bob Larsen
for the last two decades, while continuing to coach the
women’s squad.

“It’s a totally different system,” said
sophomore Justin Patananan. “He’s very active. When we
do tempo runs, he’ll take 100-meter splits. That’s not
something you really expect.”

“I think he’s still young and trying to prove
himself,” added senior Paul Muite. “He’s using a
lot of energy and that gets us going too.”

As a result, the men’s team, which has spent the last few
years in the Pac-10’s gutter, has exceeded expectations. And
the women’s team, despite the departure of three top-flight
runners, looks to be in contention to grab its third consecutive
NCAA championship bid.

In the meantime, Peterson continues to run around recruiting, in
hopes of landing the elite athletes that will push his teams into
the top 10.

While he spends much of his free time with the friends he made
when he lived in San Diego, Peterson doesn’t get many of
those opportunities.

“I travel a lot and I don’t have a lot of
time,” he said. “But I love it. No one should feel
sorry for me. I love what I do.”