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1987 Twenty Years Ago As we indicated in an earlier in the week introduction, the start of the 1987 California prep Cross Country season two decades back had a special feel to it as the season that would end with the first ever California State Championship in our sport. The three divisions by enrollment would bring the best in the different areas of the state together for a six title runs in Fresno at Woodward Park, which had successfully for a number of years held many harrier events, including the Kinney (now Foot Locker) Western Regional competition. We asked some folks who were prominent as coaches and athletes during that year to comment on the pre and early season as it had gone for them and their teams. Below we have the responses from Coach Tim O'Rourke from Arroyo HS in El Monte, whose squad would kick off that 1987 State Meet in superb style, Derrick Powers, an athlete from that 1987 Arroyo team, Terry Ward, the long time mentor of the super Bellarmine Prep program in the CCS in San Jose, and Bill Duley, the Agoura HS Coach who was only in his third year of coaching at the Southern Section school and had some real talent on that 1987 squad, soph Bryan Dameworth, eventually a National prep Champ in the sport, and Deena Drossin, who was just a frosh athlete that season. Through mid-September in those days there were not a whole lot of meets, with the Woodbridge affair down south having established itself already as the big competition in the greater Los Angeles/Orange County area, and the Lowell Invitational in the San Francisco area included the Bellarmine team as Coach Ward summarizes below. This first installment we will just let you read on to the sections below which talk about some of the state's most sucessful programs that first year of the State competition, and how things looked coming into the season and through mid-September. In the next installment, in a few weeks, we will ask them to cover how the team was doing through mid-October. We have attached a pdf of the old Cal Track News pages from their publication that covered this early part of the season for your reading enjoyment.
Coach Tim O'Rourke - Coach of the Arroyo (El Monte)
squad, ranked #1 in the Large Schools Statewide starting 1987 In many ways, the 1987 season was one of the easiest
for me as a coach. We had our top four and seven of our top nine
runners returning that year from a team that had done some high
quality training and had competed at a very high level the year
before—winning a CIF-SS title in 1986 . Derrick Powers - Member of
the the Arroyo
squad Coach O’Rourke had also listed one more goal for our team
this year which was the “ultimate goal:” Be the best
high school cross country team ever! It was apparent that this was going to be a great year for our team. Coach Terry Ward (Bellarmine Prep, San Jose - CCS) 1987 Cross Country Season –
The season began with great expectation. The previous three seasons had seen the team place 5th, 1st and 3rd at the Northern California Championships. The two top returning runners, seniors Ian Champeny and Torre Pena, had been members of these three teams and had also led the Bells to three consecutive CIF/CCS Division 1Championships. Backing up Ian and Torre were seniors, Quiche Rubalcava, Andy Zoldak, Chuck Ross, Kevin Vergho and junior Peter Fisher. The junior varsity, sophomore and freshmen teams had not lost a league meet since 1979 and were waiting in the wings to assist the varsity runners if need be. Out first race in September was the Lowell Invitation in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The meet took place on an overcast day – beautiful running weather. The team had a good summer of running and seemed ready to compete. At the first mile, the entire team was in the top 15 runners and looked composed as they traded places with each other. At the two mile mark, all anyone could see was the blue and white uniforms of the Bells. At the finish of the race, the Bells placed eight runners in the top nine. Torre Pena won the race and set a course record. The top 7 runners were within 24 seconds of each other and the season looked promising. This meet set the tone for the entire season. Coach Bill Duley (Agoura HS) - The 1987 squad featured
soph Bryan Dameworth, who was the first frosh ever to qualify for
the Kinney Nationals the year before, and Bill would welcome eventual
Olympian Deena Drossin to the 1987 program as a frosh athlete As I reflect back on the 1987 cross country season I have found that it was hard to remember just who ran on that squad. I’m not one to keep around old stats and such. With a little research I have managed to recall all the members of the girl’s team. The boy’s team still is a bit foggy. However as Doug asks for reflections on the season there is a lot that I do recall. This was the start of my third season. The first two years were spent trying to get some renewed momentum to the Agoura program. On the boys side we were feeling some success in rebuilding the team. With the success of freshman Bryan Dameworth and a Jr. transfer Matt Thompson we had managed to win the Frontier League final in 1986. However we didn’t have the depth to make much happen at the CIF prelims that year. Individually Dameworth and Thompson went on to place 3rd and 5th respectively in the championships. This gave the philosophy and work ethic I was trying to instill a shot in the arm. On the girls side we were still trying to get things going. 1987 became the real turning point for us. The boys saw the depth improve with the addition of Peter Oviatt joining the squad. The 3 brought an incredible work ethic. This started to become infectious on the boys side. On the girls side we knew we had talent arriving. Lindero Canyon Middle School (our feeder school) had fielded a team in the Mt. Sac Jr. High meet in 06. This group set the meet record for the 2 mile course. I was very familiar with some of the athletes from my days of youth track and cross country, specifically with Deena Drossin and Stacy Kristen. This group also had a newcomer to the school Tiffany York, she ran second on that team. The challenge as I would find out would be to blend this talented group of freshmen into the current line up. Our returning runners were a small group without strong credentials. We had the school record holder in the 2 mile(12:00 low at the time), Tally Rowland a senior. She was followed up by a nicely developing sophomore Cheyenne Zontelli. Rowland quickly saw that there was going to be changes in the line up and a power struggle ensued. This was overcome fairly quickly. In spring of 06 I had kicked 12 of 13 seniors off my boys track team to end a power struggle with me the new coach. Rowland was around to see this and all I had to do was remind her of how I ended that struggle, and the issues ended quickly. Deena and Tiffany quickly changed everything about our girls program. Both popular with others, they brought a collection of both male and female friends out for the team. We saw things changing very quickly. The work ethic, the confidence in my methods and the spirited attitude these young but confident athletes had. Workouts were going very well. Before the season we set a goal to win the Frontier league finals and advance to the CIF finals. That’s as far as we wanted set our sights at this point. I hadn’t given much if any thought to the state meet that was being introduced. I was however starting to learn as much as I could about the Hesperia girl’s team. This was the team all others in our division would have to measure up to. Something happened early this fall that I think is a valuable lesson for coaches. However I would not realize it until several years later. I believe that the perception of what is fast greatly effects the out come of a teams development. If your top varsity girl runs 20:30 at Mt. Sac then your younger athletes fell they are doing quite well running lets say 23:00. It was a struggle for the kids to accept the notion of training to run in the area of 19:30. considering that was way faster than our best athlete. As soon as we had our first meet and the 2 freshmen ran under 20:00 minutes this no longer seemed like an impossible task. This would quickly start to show over the next 2 to 3 years. I don’t have a lot to reflect on in regards to times and performances at certain meets. It was the transformation of the team. It is the attitude and confidence that stands out in my mind. How the ability for a couple of young talented athletes would turn a program around in so many ways. Suddenly a program that could barely field a girl’s team was gaining attention very quickly. These young ladies were mature way beyond their years. They seemed to easily handle the new found success. The next few weeks would find our program thinking more and more about its possibilities in CIF. The boys team had it’s best 1, 2, 3 combo in several years. However we just were not developing as well with the balance of the team. This found the girls getting more attention in write ups and such. This became the new area of concern as the boys started feeling a little envious of the girls. This was interesting territory for a relatively new coach. The fall went very well in training. We saw a number of athletes start to handle the 40 to 45 mile weeks we were doing. We were trying to follow a routine of easy, medium, and hard. So a week without competition looked something like this. Sunday was off so that equaled an easy day. Monday would be an eight mile run at a steady effort, a pace that felt hard at the end but didn’t feel like it was hard the next day. Tuesday would be a speed enhancement day, Generally intervals such as 12 x 400m w/1:30 recovery. Wednesday would be an easy day (recovery). usually 5 to 6 miles easy running with drills and strides at the end. Thursday would be a medium day again. This time of the year it would usually be the eight mile run again. Friday would be the second of 3 rotating hard days. We called this hard day heart stroke volume work. This would consist of something ranging in distance from 1000m meters to mile repeats. We usually did about 4 miles worth of repetitions. We also did a 3 mile run before intervals. Saturday would be an easy day and Sunday would now fall into a bonus extra easy/ off day. We tried to work on a nine day rotation. This would make the following Monday a medium day. Tuesday would be our 3rd of 3 hard days in our rotation. This was always a long run of about 1 hour and 30 minutes. Since this hard day was long we would do a 4 mile tempo run on Monday as our medium effort. Wednesday would be very easy. 30 minutes followed by drills and strides. Thursday would be meet day. When ever meets allowed I liked to follow as closely as possible to my nine day rotation. All workouts started with a mile jog, drills and stretching. On easy days we would do the drills and stretching at the end of practice. This is a nutshell of what our training was like. Things were going well the team’s spirits were high but I still don’t think I had even taken a look at the info about the state meet yet. October is when we started realizing we need to start adjusting out goals. Next Installment coming in a couple of Weeks - Through
mid-October 1987 - Year of the First State Meet We would invite more involvement of those who were significant in that first 1987 State Meet - if you know of any athletes or coaches who were successful that first competition please e-mail us information on them - Thanks!! Doug Speck |
