Dan Lanning shares fun details from ‘Duck Olympics’ throughout preseason

New Oregon Head Coach Dan Lanning is keeping things loose during fall camp with something called the “Duck Olympics.” In a nutshell, Lanning has set aside time for the Ducks to have friendly intra-team competitions in non-football activities like bowling or tennis.

While there probably won’t be medals for the Duck Olympics, it does seem like the Oregon players have enjoyed the chances to let loose. Lanning recounted a few highlights (and amusing lowlights) from the Duck Olympics to reporters at a recent practice.

“We’ve had a few competitions through here,” Lanning said. “We’re doing a Duck Olympics. And we’ve had free throw shooting contest. We did our home run derby with the tennis balls.”

While he didn’t specify winners of the aforementioned contests, Lanning was asked which player is the most complete in the Duck Olympics. It didn’t take the new Oregon coach long to land on his answer: redshirt freshman quarterback Jay Butterfield.

“Oh — this kind of falls back to me, I’ve talked about him before, but Jay Butterfield,” Lanning said. “He’s good at corn hole, slow pitch softball. He bowled the other day, I wanna say 234. Now you knew it was serious for Jay the minute we were getting on the bus and you realize he has his own bowling ball. Right? He’s like The Big Lebowski. He’s definitely a ringer when it comes to Duck Olympics.”

The Duck Olympics also gave Lanning the chance to return to the tennis court. He played in high school, but wasn’t very good then — and isn’t very good now, by his own admission.

“Yeah, wasn’t great. You guys see the one I whiffed? Oh, that didn’t make the cut? I appreciate that,” Lanning said. “There was one where I completely whiffed on the ball. I played tennis in high school. I wasn’t good at it. But they traveled to a lot of away games so you’d get out of school, right? That was the reason. And I didn’t have a set of golf clubs, so it was like, gonna do something.”