By Jack Pfeifer // Photos by Kim Spir

EUGENE, Ore. – Deajah Stevens – who at 21 has already attended three high schools and three colleges – is poised to contend for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team in the 200 meters here on Sunday.

Stevens’s odyssey began at Mt. Vernon and New Rochelle before she finally graduated from Cardozo High School in Queens. From there she spent an unproductive year at the University of South Carolina, won championships for the College of the Sequoias in Central California and this spring was NCAA runnerup for the hometown Oregon Ducks.

On Saturday she won the second semifinal of the 200 in 22.45, the second-fastest time of the day and faster even that Allyson Felix ran, in a losing effort, in Semi III. Tori Bowie won that one, 22.27-22.57 as Felix, nursing a tender ankle, had a tentative start.

Felix said, “I’m just trying to get through with what I have.”

Stevens said, “I was just doing what my coach told me to do…. Stick to the routine … Stay in there and try to get one of those spots.”

The highlight of Saturday, the next to last day of these stirring Trials, was the men’s 5,000 meters, won in stunning fashion by the ageless, 41-year-old Bernard Lagat, as he outkicked half a dozen younger guys to make the fifth Olympic team of his remarkable career. Jumping around the track like a little kid, he symbolically held up five fingers to the adoring crowd.

That U.S. trio was a first – all three members are African-born, as Lagat is joined by a fellow Kenyan, Paul Chelimo, and Somalia-born Hassan Mead. Mead, however, grew up as an American, moving to the States as a boy and attending high school in Washington and Minnesota before attending the University of Minnesota. Chelimo and Lagat also attended American colleges.

“I was trying to hold off Lagat a little but man!” Mead said to Chris Lotsbom of Race Results Weekly.  “Hats off to him!

“The man’s inspiring. I thought I was going to win and he came out of nowhere. Trying to hold him off, I couldn’t hold him off. What he is doing is brilliant.”

After the race, the much taller Mead hoisted Lagat off the track in tribute.

“I was just telling myself, ‘Keep going, keep going, you can make it, you can do it,’” Lagat said. “I kept telling myself that over and over again. When I started passing all the guys I was like, ‘Really it is happening!’”

The women’s 200 is not the only highly anticipated event of the final day. Both 1,500s will be held along with both 400 hurdles, the women’s 5,000, the conclusion of the heptathlon, and two field events, the women’s pole vault and the men’s high jump.

In the women’s 400 hurdles, all of the talk centers on the 16-year-old Sydney McLaughlin, a junior at Union Catholic High School in New Jersey. She won her semifinal, as did Dalilah Muhammad, a New Yorker who had the fastest time of that round.

“The rain messed up my hair,” McLaughlin said of her semi on Friday, “but that’s OK. I made it to the final.”

Muhammad, who ran 54.14 on Friday, said, “I felt good. I wanted to just get out there and execute.”

The men’s 1,500 includes Matthew Centrowitz, a finalist in London in 2012 and winner of the Indoor World Championships this March; two Columbia graduates, Kyle Merber and Johnny Gregorek, and New Jersey’s Robby Andrews. Merber, Centrowitz and Andrews are three of the five runners in the field who have attained the Olympic standard, along with Leo Manzano and Ben Blankenship.

Finals were also held on Saturday in the men’s triple jump, the women’s javelin, the men’s 200 and the men’s high hurdles.

The men’s 200 was a matchup of the winner of the 100, Justin Gatlin, and the 400, LaShawn Merritt. After he ran a world-leading 19.74 in the semis, Merritt was a decided favorite.

But Gatlin, outside in Lane 8, got off to a spectacular start and Merritt simply could not run him down, losing 19.74 to 19.79 in a battle of heavyweights. Not far back, another head-to-head was taking place between two high school stars, Michael Norman of California and Noah Lyles of Virginia. Lyles came from well back to get 4^th place in 20.09, defeating Norman by .05 and setting a new national high school record. Ameer Webb was 3^rd, for the final spot on the U.S. team, in 20.00.

Merritt, however, has not committed to running the 200 in the Games. If he gives up his spot, Lyles would be on the team.

Will Claye overtook the reigning Olympic champion, Christian Taylor, to win the triple jump, 57-11 to 57-0.75. Taylor was favoring a sore ankle.

The men’s hurdles were won by a hometown Duck, Devon Allen, in a lifetime best, 13.03. One of the prerace favorites, David Oliver, injured a hamstring in the semifinals and withdrew from the final. In 3^rd was Jeff Porter, from Somerset, N.J. His wife, Tiffany Ofili Porter, is also expected to be in Rio, running the 100 hurdles for Britain.

In the women’s heptathlon, Heather Miller-Koch of the Central Park Track Club was in excellent position, standing 3^rd with 3,822 points, 81 points behind the leader, Barbara Nwaba.