A rusty old waffle iron fished from a rubbish pit means new life for a tiny Eastern Oregon track team.

The players in this quirky tale include legendary University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman, members of his family, Nike executives and the Condon/Wheeler track team.

Bowerman, Nikes co-founder, set everything in motion one Sunday morning in the early 1970s as his wife Barbara cooked waffles for breakfast. An image of rubberized track shoe soles with waffle-shaped tread flashed into his brain. He rushed to his shop and grabbed a can of liquid urethane to test his idea, using the waffle iron as a mold.

The product evolved into Nikes Waffle Trainer, a lightweight shoe with tread that gripped. Later, Bowerman tossed the waffle iron into a rubbish pit behind his shop after an experiment ran amuck.

The two sides stuck together and he couldnt get it open, said Jon Bowerman, one of Bowermans sons.

According to Jon, Bill and Barbara had received the round six-inch waffle iron as a wedding present in 1936.

Last year, Bowermans youngest son, Tom, who lives on the property, decided to replace the old shop. He discovered the rubbish pit behind the shop where his father had tossed junk and yard debris for 50 years. Digging through the pit, Tom unearthed the waffle iron and some beat-up shoes early prototypes. Tom chucked the muddy artifacts into a box, intending to pitch them later.

The story might have ended there had Jons wife Melissa not found the box in a cupboard and decided the items had historic and monetary value. As Jon and Tom laughed at the notion, Melissa started brainstorming.

My wife is a real wheeler dealer, said Jon of Melissa. She buys and sells on eBay. She studies prices.

As an example, Jon said, Melissa once purchased a pair of cowboy boots for $3 and sold them for $65. A 10-inch cast iron skillet bought for a dollar fetched $26.

Zeroing in on a prospective buyer, Melissa e-mailed Nike historian Scott Reames that the shell of the original waffle iron had come back from the dead, along with some of Bills early prototypes. He asked Melissa what the Bowerman family would like in return for the relics.

Reames might have been expecting a sum, but instead Melissa asked for a pole vault pit.

Jon and Melissa, who share the position of head coach of the combined Condon/Wheeler track team are eager to bring the pole vault to their program. Jon said they had started looking into the pole vault after realizing that the event had gotten much safer in recent years with reconfigured landing pads and better poles. The expense of the equipment, however, blew them away.

A cheap set of mats is $12,000, Jon said. At a small school where there is no money for travel or uniforms, $12,000 might as well be $12 million.

The standards and several poles brought the cost to about $15,000.

Neither party Nike or the Bowermans will specify the exact terms, just say they made a trade, the Nike relics for a pole vault pit. As soon as the weather breaks, the county road department will lay a cement runway which will serve as the base for a 150-foot urethane mat.

Melissas son and Jons step-son Conlin is a 400-meter runner on the team who is also interested in pole vault. His parents started coaching track three years ago in Conlins freshman year. That year, six kids came out for track. This season, 31 kids are out, numbering half the combined Condon and Fossil student body.

The program got another Nike-related break in 2009, just as the Bowermans fretted about how to afford uniforms. The booster club had come up with uniforms early on, but the team was growing. One day, Jon received a call from Mike Yonkers, president of Wild Canyon Games, an event that combines running, biking, swimming, climbing, zip-lining and geocaching on a ranch near the Bowermans home in Clarno (19 miles from Fossil). Yonkers wondered if he could put the final geocache on Bowermans land in the form of a coin bearing the silhouette of Bill Bowerman. Jon said hed ponder it, but after some thought, told Melissa to tell him no if he phoned back.

When he called, Melissa learned that the personable Yonkers was a Nike vice-president.

How badly do you want this? she asked him.

She told him about their quest to get uniforms for the team.

What? Yonkers said. Bowermans home town (Fossil) doesnt have money for uniforms?

He called back shortly to tell her that Wild Canyon Games would sponsor team uniforms singlets, shorts, warm-ups and shoes.

Jon and Melissa are stoked these days. Track is alive in their neck of the woods. Condon/Wheeler athletes will compete in the pole vault.

They are chomping at the bit to get going, Jon said.

The Bowermans athletes came face to face with their history this week. On Tuesday, they loaded onto a bus and headed to Nikes headquarters in Beaverton to get a good look at the waffle iron and other relics on display.

Somewhere, Bill Bowerman is smiling.