RUNNING / JOHN ORTEGA : National Meet Off to Shaky Start

No one said it was going to be easy for the national scholastic outdoor track and field championships to upstage the firmly established Golden West Invitational when the former was first staged at Birmingham High last year.

But the meet will never be taken seriously if it remains as unorganized as the second edition was last week at Birmingham.

First, preliminaries in eight of 16 boys’ and girls’ events were canceled Friday night because of a lack of competitors. Secondly, the final preliminary race ended at 9:20 p.m., yet complete results were not available until 10:30.

Things were worse Saturday, when the last event was run at 6:15 p.m., but complete results were not available until 8:30 p.m., and then only to the media.

The majority of athletes and coaches who took part in the meet did not read the results until Sunday, when they appeared in local newspapers. That is unacceptable for a meet that bills itself as the national championship.

Add national scholastic: Another suggestion for the national scholastic meet: Drop the relays from the list of events unless a minimum number--six, for example--of entrants can be guaranteed in each event.

Oakland Skyline won the girls’ 400 relay Saturday, but it was the only team entered in the race, and there were only three entries in the boys’ and girls’ 1,600 relay. Such small fields are an embarrassment to the meet.

Compare and contrast: The Golden West meet at American River College in Sacramento last Saturday had better winning marks than the national scholastic meet in 23 of 27 events, yet the organizers (the Birmingham High Dads Club) of the latter meet should not fret.

It might take several years before the newer meet approaches the quality of the Golden West Invitational, which made its debut in 1960.

The Golden West’s list of winners includes former world record-holders and/or Olympic gold medalists Jim Ryun, Bob Beamon, Tommie Smith, Rod Milburn, Dwight Stones and Steve Lewis, while Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks is the biggest-name athlete to have competed at the national scholastic meet.

Jones won the girls’ 200 last year but did not compete in the meet this season in order to concentrate on the U. S. Olympic trials in New Orleans, which start today.

Running on empty: A season that began with great promise for Hoover High junior Margarito Casillas ended in disappointment at the national scholastic meet.

Casillas, the fifth-place finisher in the Kinney national cross-country championships in December, opened the track season with an impressive win in the two-mile in the Sunkist Invitational indoor meet in February. But he was a well-beaten second with a time of 9 minutes 22 seconds on Saturday.

The mark was well off his converted personal best of 9:08.98, which he ran to finish second in the 3,200 in the Southern Section 4-A Division championships May 23.

“After (the 4-A meet), we thought he was right on pace to break nine minutes at the state meet,” Hoover assistant coach Greg Switzer said. “But he said his legs felt dead at the Masters meet and they were even worse at state.” Casillas placed second in 9:06.13 in the Masters meet and seventh in 9:11.52 in the state meet.

Switzer admits that Casillas’ heavy racing schedule--he frequently ran the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 in dual meets--contributed to his late-season fade.

“I viewed a lot of those races as part of his training,” Switzer said. “They were like workouts. But I’m convinced now that there is a competitive juice that a runner only has so much of, and once you use it up, it’s gone. I think that’s what happened to Margarito.”

Back on track: Hart High’s Keith Grossman, another talented junior, had his season cut short by a viral infection that produced symptoms similar to those associated with mononucleosis.

Grossman, the No. 1 runner on a Hart cross-country team that won its second consecutive state Division I title in November, ran a personal best of 9:09.83 to finish fourth in the 3,200 in the Arcadia Invitational on April 11. But he complained of extreme fatigue three days later.

“He came to school on the Tuesday after Arcadia and said he just felt dead,” Hart distance coach Gene Blankenship said. “It’s too bad because after Arcadia, we thought he was capable of running 9:02 by the end of the year.”

Although Grossman managed to finish second in the 3,200 (9:52.91) in the Foothill League finals in May, he was eliminated in his qualifying heat in the 4-A Division prelims.

Blankenship expects Grossman to be back at full strength for the cross-country season this fall, when Hart will attempt to win an unprecedented third consecutive state Division I title.