It was the most devastating moment in Marie Nguyen's otherwise error- free track career.

With just a lap-and-a-half to go in last year's Central Coast Section championship 3,200 meter race, Milpitas High's Nguyen, who was suffering from a nasty fever, nonetheless had pulled into second place against the wishes of her coach, Matt Newbrough, who had already yanked her from one event and hoped she would take it easy and coast to an easy fourth- or fifth-place finish.

But that wasn't good enough for Nguyen, who was coming off a Santa Clara Valley Athletic League-DeAnza Division win in the event and whom Newbrough calls "by far one of the most competitive athletes I've ever coached."

"That's not the kind of person she is," he said. "She wanted to go for the gold."

Nguyen paid a heavy price for that decision.

"She took a face dive with 600 meters to go," Newbrough said. "She just collapsed. It was heartbreaking to watch."

Heartbreaking and motivating at the same time.

Once Nguyen recovered and visited with a trainer, she made Newbrough, who had sprinted out onto the track, a stern promise that she's intent on keeping.

"She looked me straight in the face and said, 'You know I'm going to take that race next year, don't you?' " he recalled. "And I believed her. There was no doubt about it."

That disastrous race was precisely the impetus Nguyen needed to improve her times and her endurance this season to become competitive enough and, with any luck, healthy enough to follow through on that promise.

She'll get the final chance of her high school career to prove herself tonight, when she'll compete again in the CCS finals, to be held at San Jose City College.

"I'm pretty confident I can win the 3,200," said Nguyen, an 18-year-old senior.

She has every reason to be.

Nguyen, who has a 3.9 GPA, two weekend jobs and who began taking AP classes as a sophomore, has risen this season to become one of the Bay Area's best distance runners.

She's always been hot in cross country, where she's led the Trojans to three CCS team championships and this past season took top individual honors for the first time and placed 20th at state. But her ascent in track has come during the last two years, and this year she has exploded onto the scene.

To be fair, Nguyen had a great season last year until CCS finals. She won SCVAL titles in both the 1,600 meters (5:12.76) and the 3,200 meters (11:20. 10) events.

But it wasn't until this year's Oakland Invitational Relays in April that Nguyen landed on the radar of state track observers. Setting a personal best, she won the 3,200-meter event in 10:48.50 and rocketed to the top of the CCS rankings.

"That was the first (3,200) she raced this year," Newbrough said. "Needless to say, I was a little surprised she did so well."

Building on that momentum, a week later she set another personal best and overcame a major mental milestone at the Arcadia Invitational, where she beat five minutes in the 1,600 meters and finished in a time of 4:58.14, which ranked her third in the CCS.

"I started crying -- I was so happy," Nguyen said. "It felt like the easiest race of my life; I was having so much fun out there. It was so perfect. "

Topping it off, Nguyen again took home league titles in the SCVAL championships held earlier this month, winning both the 1,600 (5:04.07) and 3, 200 (10:59.58).

While Nguyen is favored to win the 3,200 meters at CCS this year and earn a state berth, she has her work cut out for her if she hopes to win the 1,600 title. The clear favorite in that race is Alicia Follmar of Saratoga High, whose state best time is about seven seconds faster than Nguyen's personal record.

But Nguyen has a strategy to beat Follmar: push a faster pace at the beginning of the race to sap energy from Follmar's trademark late-race sprint.

Newbrough says Nguyen's practice times indicate she can beat Follmar; Nguyen isn't as confident.

"I want to stay with her the first three laps and hang on as long as I can sprinting with her," Nguyen said, noting she'd like to shave her personal record by four seconds.

Regardless of the outcome of tonight's races, Nguyen has a bright future ahead of her.

She will head to UC Irvine in the fall on scholarship. Nguyen plans to pursue a doctorate in medicine to become a pharmacist. In fact, she enjoys talking about academics, her jobs at a pharmacy and a restaurant, and running six miles every Sunday with her dad, more than she likes talking about her accomplishments this season.

She's humble about the season and says that she's surprised to have progressed so far to even compete for a CCS track title.

"I feel like everything I've done the past three years is now paying off, " she said. "Coming in freshman year, I never would have thought I'd be running the times I've been running. But somehow it's all come together."