JOE HARTMAN'S Q & A WITH
COACH BARBARA RICHARDSON

    DyeStatCal: Tell us a little about your background in running and how you ended up at Ponderosa.
    Coach Barbara Richardson: I really didn’t start running until I met my future husband (Ron Richardson, Asics Aggies). I didn’t run in college, didn’t run in high school.  In fact Paul Jones of Palo Alto high school tried to recruit me to run cross country a couple times and I wouldn’t do it because I was diving and doing 4 other sports in high school.  So every time I see him he says ‘I told ya so.” and I tell him, “You’re right”. Because I see it all the time with kids here that I wish would have run and I know would have been successful.  I was teaching down in Vallejo and my future husband was going to be living in Sacramento and I needed to get up this way and found an opening here, applied for it, and that’s how I got here. 

    DyeStatCal: Alex Kosinski’s injury got quite a bit of attention up here, but the most important injury regarding the upcoming high school season is that of Deborah Maier.  How is she doing?
    Coach: She’s doing well.  I think after watching Alex (in the fall of 2006) and realizing you can come back from that and do well, it made her realize the importance of taking care of it and being smart.  She’s back on the road to recovery.  She’s tough so she’s got the attitude that she can come back.  She was off that whole time… she didn’t start running until July and not every day… starting off with five, ten minutes and then just building.  There’s no pain right now. 
    DyeStatCal: Two close and exciting section meets in a row.  Any problems you foresee for keeping the girls hungry this season.
   Coach: As you know, they started off never running cross country so they didn’t know anything about the sport.  So the first

  year they were oblivious to everything that was going on.  But I knew and there were people who knew that watched them progress and progress. 
   Winning the first one was definitely ‘out of the blue’.  If you had told me at the start of the year that we would have won, I would have bet everything against it.  The second year, they were still the same kids…and they still are the same kids.  And you would never know from walking around campus that they have won two section championships.  They have never had that attitude, never come across that way.  And I think that’s what keeps them where they are and going like that is they’re just that type of kids.  In workouts they all work hard.  It doesn’t matter if somebody beats someone else in a race because they’re all in it together and they’re all good friends.  So the camaraderie has been great within healthy competition.

    DyeStatCal:  Everyone returns for the girls.  If the Top 5 run exactly like last year, it could be another great year.  But can they get better and who might have the most upside?
    Coach: I think Becky Preto has a lot of potential… and Sara Orofino.  But they all do.  It’s a hard question because they’re all so raw to the sport.  They’ve run here and there and they’ve played soccer here and there.  Everybody knows the more experience you have in the sport, the better you become.  You figure out your racing strategy and what works best for you and I think they’re still learning that.  They’ve won two section championships but I still think there’s a lot for them to learn.  And they want to learn more.  They don’t think they have it in the bag.
DyeStatCal:  The varsity boys with 5th in Division 2 last year.  Can you give us a little synopsis on what to expect from that group in 2007?
    Coach: Returning I have Seth Lawrence.  He’s a junior.  Obviously

   
Devin.  Kent Melville is returning again as is Justin McCarthy.  I have a newcomer also named Jacob Trujillo who ran track this year who I think will also do very well.  He’s a tenth grader.  And Lane Bacchi is returning.
    Overall I think the team is stronger this year than it was last year so I hope for definite improvement throughout the season.  Some are running kind of raw, others are running through experience and age and maturity.  Hopefully with Jesuit being gone, maybe we’ve got a shot!  Also they’re a great group of guys… the whole team is.  They gel real well with the girls.  They encourage each other.  They’re a fun group to work with.

DyeStatCal: What are the biggest pros and cons of coaching cross country at Ponderosa?
Coach:  The pro is definitely the kids that we have here.  Not the championships, not anything else… just the kids.  And the parent support from them is very good and positive so that’s what keeps me here.  The cons?  No flat work.  (Ponderosa High is in a very hilly area.)  And I wish I had an assistant coach.

DyeStatCal: What would you do if you were the Ponderosa athletic director for a day?
Coach:  Well I’d put an all-weather track in, that’s for sure.  Definitely a stipend for an assistant coach.  That would definitely help me.  I get a lot of support though asking how we’re doing and getting attention.  It’s a program that’s well-supported throughout the school.  A lot of coaches around here recognize that it’s a tough sport.

JOE HARTMAN'S Q & A
WITH DEVIN JOKERST

DyeStatCal: Devin, tell us a little about yourself… how long you’ve been running and what got you into running.
Devin Jokerst: Basically I started running in 4th grade and they always have that state physical testing.  The 5th graders do it but I was in the 4th grade so I ran it and I beat everyone so I started thinking maybe there’s more to it.  I started running a mile every Sunday, then two miles and it built up from there. 

DyeStatCal: Do you have any personal goals for 2007 in terms of league or section finishes?
Devin: I’ve been injured for the past six months so I just can’t wait to get back to where I was so I can prove to myself - and everyone else - that the injury didn’t ruin this season.  So that’s a big focus for me. 

(The injury was) tendonitis… kind of a combination of lack of stretching and weakness in the hip core area.  I started running one day and I couldn’t finish. I’ve been spending a ton of time in physical therapy: a lot of IT band work, IT band stretching, and muscle massaging. 

DyeStatCal: Is there anyone in the SVC that you personally want to beat - or at least stay with - in the league meets?
Devin: Definitely.  Definitely Amjed (Aboukhadije, So., Oak Ridge).  He’s a little intimidating being a year younger than me.  He got injured too, but he came back a lot faster.  Max Fernandez… a lot of the Oak Ridge guys.  And then Will Marquardt of Union Mine.  All of those guys in that group.

DyeStatCal: Tell us what you feel was the biggest reason for improvement between your first two seasons and also what is going to be the biggest reason for improvement this year?

Devin:  My biggest reason for improvement was just picking it up and running with the guys that were older than me and trying to stay up there and sticking to it.  Just running a lot in the summer and on the weekends.  For this year, I’m going to run smarter.  I’m not going to run ten miles on Saturday and Sunday.  I have so much more desire to run this year than I ever have in my life so there’s a fire building (in) me and I can’t wait to let it out. 

DyeStatCal: Which teams do you think are going to be tough in Division 2?
Devin:  Oak Ridge is going to stay strong.  Fairfield - if they stay in Division 2 - is definitely strong.  They have some pretty good guys but I’m not sure who all graduated.
 

DyeStatCal:  The D3 girls race at sections was very exciting but there’s nothing on the girls’ side that matches the excitement of the D2 team battle.  You girls have won section titles two years in a row.  Do you give any thought to defending the title now or at any point in the season or is it strictly one day at a time around here?
Kelly Roberts: I think about it one day at a time because it’s not the same race.  We’ve done it before but it doesn’t mean we’re going to do it again.  We just try our hardest. 
Samantha Diaz:  We do go one day at a time but we use that as a goal, to try to work harder and work towards it.
Deborah Maier:  We don’t really talk about it until the end of the season.  At that time, it’s ‘OK, we’ve got to get ready for Sections’, but before that it, we think about ‘Hey Stanford’s coming up!’.  We really don’t think about it that much until the end.

DyeStatCal:  Most races last year saw Ponderosa following a formula that saw Deborah go out with the leaders – or winning – with Becky, Kelly, and Sammi forming a nice 2-3-4 pack that would stay together for 12 minutes or so with no telling how it would sort out at the end.  Just curious - if we can get inside your heads - what goes through your minds at the two mile mark or so when it’s time for you to decide stay together?, drop?, or go?
Sammi: I think we try to stay together as long as possible, try to stay with whoever (among us) is in front.  But we don’t hold each other back, we just go when we feel comfortable. 
Kelly: I think at that two-mile mark, we’re not going to hold each other back, like Sam said.  If you can go and feel good, ‘Go’, but we want to stay together most of the time to get the points. 
Becky: When someone else tends to go at the two mile, we try to stay with them.  We work together, obviously.  We’ve been running together since third grade and we all know how each of us run. Sam, me, and Kelly – we finished 2-3-4 for all the races, but if someone goes, we go, even if you’re not feeling all that great.
DyeStatCal:  What’s your favorite part of training…summer running, hill work, tempo runs, Sunday runs?
Sara Orofino: I’m not good with heat.  I usually run in the mornings so it’s hard for me to run in the afternoon.  But long runs, we don’t typically run as fast.  It’s more
sustained so we can talk and be with each other.  But when we’re doing hard  workouts you can’t have that type of interaction.  But I don’t know if I have a favorite part of training. 

Becky: I enjoy hill workouts because it’s different from a tempo workout where you tend to lose each other.  But on hill workouts if you lose someone you can catch up to them on the downhill and start the hill over with them. 
Deborah: I personally like running to Bel Air to get cookies.  The pink ones…with frosting. 

DyeStatCal:  From talking to you before, it’s obvious that Coach Richardson inspires you.  What is it that makes you believe in her program and how does she make you a better runner?   
Deborah: She’s really good at motivating us for races.  Like sometimes with different coaches sometimes they’ll say something and you’ll think ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter’, but when she says something you know it actually matters.  And also because she’s a runner herself we know that she can relate.  She’s not someone who’s never felt the pain.  We know that she knows what she’s talking about
Kelly:  I think we all respect her for that because she’s a runner and she definitely has our respect.  She doesn’t yell at us the way other coaches will yell at you.  She’s strict but it’s the type of teaching that you’re willing to follow and will motivate you in a way that makes you want to become a better runner.  You have that mutual feeling.  She has a passion for being here.
Sara:  She helped me last year.  I mean I’ve done cross country a lot but I just kind of did it.  But last year she helped me with my form and I just think over the summer and last year that I’ve learned so much more about what I can do and how good of a runner I can actually be.  And I don’t think I’ve ever actually discovered that because I’ve never been pushed to work so hard.
Becky:  We’re good friends with her also so that helps because we go on weekend runs in the summer and also at practice.
Sammi:  She inspires all of us.  She’s almost like a second mother to all of us.  She makes you love the sport.
DyeStatCal:  Virtually all of you played club soccer and continued to do so while in high school for a while.  (Kelly still plays.)  What was the main reason to forego soccer and make running your priority?
Deborah:  I played soccer freshman year, but then it came down to track and soccer (my next year) during the spring and it was
a really hard decision.  But then I thought about it.  I realized there a lot of really good soccer players and it’s really competitive but there aren’t as many runners so I thought I might have a better future.

DyeStatCal:  Don’t discredit yourself.  Numbers-wise, there are probably more cross country runners than soccer players so you are competing against a big group.
Deborah: Well, also with cross country we’re really, really close.  In soccer it’s close too, but there are more cliques.  In cross country, everyone’s friends with each other.
Sara:  I played soccer for a really long time.  And all I wanted to do was play soccer in high school.  And I convinced my parents to play comp to get me ready to make the team.  I made the freshman basketball team and I was offered a spot on the AAU team over the summer.  I decided to do cross country to get in shape for all my other sports.  I figured I ‘might’ enjoy it.  (But in cross country) the people who run with you, you all become close friends.  It’s different all-around.  Running is something you can do by yourself and it’s something you can pursue your whole life even if you weren’t on a team. 

DyeStatCal:  Without the steady improvement of Sara Orofino, you girls might not be back-to-back section champions.  Can someone share the #1 aspect of Sara’s running and tell us about a prospect or two you might have for 2007?  
Deborah:  At first Sara didn’t really like running and we had to convince her.  She was like “I don’t like this” and she wasn’t sure if she liked it.  But then she realized with the team aspect that we were relying on her as a team and that’s when she started stepping it up: when she realized it wasn’t just her, it was six other girls relying on her.
Kelly:  I don’t know what point it was in the season, but at some point Sara saw that we needed her and she saw she had a lot of potential in herself and she stepped it up so much in that respect.  And once you have her on that mindset, you can’t get her on anything else.  As far as new girls, there’s Annie Sarge.  This is only our first week so we haven’t seen everyone, but the one girl ran with us over the summer and she’s been running continuously.  We know her pretty well.  She’s a sophomore and she definitely has potential.