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1987 Twenty Years Ago INSTALLMENT TWO - Twenty years ago in 1987 it was the first California State High School Cross Country Championship year, which as we earlier stated, was the greatest single occurrence for the sport within the Golden State. Excitement accelerated immediately in all corners of the state with no longer complicated compilations on paper trying to sort out who was really the best when it counted, with the great situation at Woodward Park in Fresno providing annually a great setting to settle it "out on the course." Where the sport has come to in 2007 is a part of this process, with the quality and quantity of great folks in our sport currently the result of a couple decades of building around this state meet series. Another grand fall is rolling, but let us continue a bit of our looks back to that first campaign with the state meet at the end of the schedule! The late September period of the season gave all who wished to travel to Fresno and Woodward Park a chance to run the State Meet course with the Clovis Invitiational, September 26th that year, with the Dana Hills competition Southern California attracting a super group of female individuals to sort out some bragging rights that same date.
Palos Verdes swept both "Open Varsity"
races at the 1987 Clovis Invitational, with the
Girls romping to a 36 point total and the Boys nipping Upland 73-77,
with Walnut
third at 79, with two of those squads eventual State titlests (we
will get to that in a later edition in this series). Bellarmine
Prep was fourth at 103 in the Boys Open level race. That
September 26th weekend at Dana Hills had super individual, Kira
Jorgensen (Rancho Buena Vista, Vista) take Rayna Cervantes (Montebell)
and
Brigid
Freyne (Riveside Poly), all three Kinney (Foot Locker today) National
Finalists the year prior, 16:35-16:53-16:57, unheard of three mile
times back in those days. Jorgensen and Freyne were the nation's
highest returnees nationally form the year prior in the Kinney
series. A Bell-Jeff Invite contest at the Small Schools level the Paraclete (Lancaster) Girls nipped traditional power Maranatha (Sierra Madre) 64-70 in a preview of some later championship action. Early October action had a big competition at the
Kenny Staub Meet at Crescenta Valley Park in the greater Glendale
area, with the Stanford Invitational interestingly a Monday affair
in those days for the prep portion. Agoura's Bryan Dameworth,
who was the first ever ninth grade qualifier for the Kinney National
Finals the year prior would meet Palos Verdes star David Scudamore,
with so far undefeated frosh from Agoura, Deena Drossin (today
Deena Kastor) meeting up with Ashley Black, a star from Palos Verdes,
and a talented pack. On a warm morning, the Agoura duo of
Dameworth and Drossin raced away to big wins, Deena's especialy
impressive with her 17:47 clocking not far behind Melissa Sutton
of Newbury Park's 17:31 CR from the year before. The Palos
Verdes squads Boys and Girls swept the team titles.
Squads from all across the state, and from out of
state, headed to the October 5th Stanford Invitational that 1987
season, with the meet result a realization that the Arroyo (El
Monte) Boys' squad may be the very best team in the nation for
that fall. The Bend, Oregon, team, coached by former Palos
Verdes mentor, Bob Latham, was felt to be among the nation's top
squads, with the Arroyo team going 1-2-4-8-33 behind Derrick Powers'
15:42 and Jaime Ortega's 15:52 up front efforts to swamp Bend 114,
Bellarmine Prep (San Jose) 146, and the field. Katy McCandless
(Castilleja, Palo Alto) stepped up in divisions to run the Large
Schools' contest here, and had the day's quickest clocking, an
18:36 win over Robbyn Bryant (Hesperia) 18:42 and Jamie Park (Santa
Barbara) 18:53.
The year previous we had talked to Coach Joe Kelly
of Palos Verdes, who had a super group returning for 1987, about
possibly traveling back east to the Manhattan College Invitational
in New York City, annually a gathering of the top squads from that
part of the nation. It would be interesting to see how one
of the Golden State's top programs would do in a contest with the
folks from that part of the world, and it provided a bit of a "superiority
complex" for the California crowd for a few years, as the Sea King
Girls took a Sweepstakes level race by 68 points with a 71 point
total, and the Boys' had the #2 team time of the day, but were
the strongest squad there, with a balanced tight group. Ashley
Black of Palos Verdes was third to east coast legends Nnenna Lynch
and Jodi Bilotta, with David Scudamore a race winner on the Boys'
side. We took a stab at who would win the state titles
in a mid-October prognostication: Derrick Powers - Member of
the the Arroyo
squad Coach Terry Ward (Bellarmine Prep, San Jose - CCS) 1987 Cross Country Season – After some early season victories, the wheels became to come off. For a few weeks at the end of September numerous injury happened to many members of the team. Other factors such as taking the SAT, college visits and being on a three week heavy cycle made racing very hard. At the Clovis Invitational, the team placed 4th behind Palos Verdes, Upland and Walnut. Bellarmine only had two runners in the top 25 and the usual depth associated with the Bells was missing. Take nothing away from the teams that beat us, but we knew that we had much more then what was shown that day. As we entered October, the injuries were less and the tired legs began to dissipate. The Central Coast Section holds its finals on the Crystal Springs Course in Belmont, California and on Oct 10th, the Bells ran away with the Crystal Springs Invitational. The two top runners in the race broke the magical 15 minute mark – Reggie Williams from River City 14:51 and Torre Pena from Bellarmine – 14:54 (still the Bellarmine school record for the course). Two other Bells place in the top 10 – Senior Andy Zoldak and Junior Peter Fisher. On the next weekend, a depleted team – SAT - ran at the Moreau Invitational and placed 5th behind Del Campo, Montgomery and Jesuit. The decided that the after reviewing the race that if all of the team had competed, we would have placed higher. Between the invitational’s, we had league meets and ran well. Since most of the runners on the team were die hard track people, they were looking forward to the next race – the two mile postal. On Saturday, October 24, the Bells had all 5 of their top seven in a race for the first time all month. The gun went off and all of the top runners from the CCS settled into a good pace. At the end, the Bells placed 4 runners in the 9 places – Torre Pena – 1st – 9:21 – Ian Champeny – 2nd – 9:24 – 6th – Andy Zoldak – 9:32 and Quiche Rubalcava – 9th – 9:37. The total team time was 47:45. Gathering together after the race, the runners believed they were ready for the CIFCCS Finals.
The Gunn boys had a very successful season in 1986 (2nd in CCS and 7th in NorCal) and returned 6 of the top 8. I wasn't part of that group and although I had a little success my freshman year in 1986, I still didn't really know what I was doing. So while the top group ran fairly regularly during the summer, I didn't run at all until practices began two weeks before the start of classes. The top three seniors on the team (Joaquin Hartman, Jeff Dukes, and Phil Massey) were all good friends and dedicated runners. They were very excited about the new State Meet and were determined that we would qualify. More significantly for me, on that first day of practice when I was planning on just running an easy three miles with some of the other sophomores, Joaquin insisted that I go with them on what was my first run ever with the varsity group. I would run with them for the rest of the season. Despite our lofty goals, Coach Hal Daner maintained a pretty low key approach to the season. He focused more on team unity and fun, trusting that the team captains were capable of maintaining the training focus. In fact, during the first few weeks before we got an assistant coach, the varsity boys basically trained on our own while Coach Daner focused on the girls and the “newbies.” In looking back at the results from the beginning
of the season, I'm surprised at how poorly we were running
(beaten badly by Los
Gatos in a dual meet and 9th
at the Ram
Invitational). Through mid-September, we
hadn't raced at full strength due to injuries and several of us
were clearly out of shape. Coach Daner didn't
worry about these early season performances, confident
that we would put things together by the end of the
season. In fact, he preferred that we "sneak up" on
everyone. Between Coach Daner's confidence and the
captains' determination, I don't remember ever doubting
that we would make the State Meet. The first race where we finally had everyone healthy was the St. Francis Invitational at Foothill College. Although the races were run by grade, by comparing overall team times we saw that we just edged out St. Francis, at that time probably the favorite to win CCS in our division. The meet also had special significance for me as the sophomore boys race was the first, and only, cross country race I ever won. 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
In retrospect, that stretch in early October was probably the highpoint of the season for myself and the PVHS boys team. We went to New York City and competed on the legendary Van Cortland Park course. The girls team was ranked #1 in the nation at the time I think, and in NYC they deservedly received all the attention going into that race; at least one reporter said to the boys, "so you are just here because of the your girls team." The boys team more or less loathed living in the shadow of the girls, so we went into that race with a bit of a chip on our shoulders. We had been advised by locals to go out fast on that course, which we took to heart. All of our guys were out front by the first half mile, and we went on to easily take our section. I more or less ran the entire race up front by myself, and I beieve my time compared favorably to previous top times on that course. As I recall, Christian Brothers Academy, thought by some to be the top boys team in the nation, had a slightly faster team time in a different section, though if you had combined our sections we would have come in ahead on points. Of course the PVHS girls team crushed everyone, but for a few brief seconds the boys got to share the spotlight. Next Installment coming in
a couple of Weeks - Through Section Meets 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 |
