TRACK : STATE JC CHAMPIONSHIPS : Workload Takes Its Toll on Glendale’s Distance Runners

It’s difficult to blame Glendale College track and field Coach Eddie Lopez for doing it, but his decision to score as many points as he could with his distance runners in the two previous championship meets might have come back to haunt those individuals in the state junior college championships at Long Beach Veterans Stadium on Saturday night.

Glendale’s Robert Nelson said he did not feel tired during the steeplechase, in which he finished third, but when the pace began to lag midway through the race, he uncharacteristically let it get slower and slower.

“I just stayed behind them,” Nelson said. “I wanted to beat my best time (8 minutes 57.4 seconds) and I could tell from my watch that I wasn’t going to do that. But once they took off, I didn’t have it in me to go after them.”

Those leaders were Passmore Furusa of Riverside and Francis O’Neil of Long Beach City.

Nelson’s fatigue was not surprising considering that he had run the steeplechase, 5,000 and 10,000 in the Western State Conference meet April 24, and the steeplechase and the 5,000 in the Southern California championships last week.

Furusa won in 8:58.1, followed by O’Neil (9:01.5) and Nelson (9:05.2). Glendale’s Oscar Perez, who had run the same races as Nelson in the previous weeks, finished sixth in 9:21.8.

Glendale’s Oved Aguirre followed Friday night’s fourth-place finish in the 10,000 with a sixth-place effort of 14:53.26 in the 5,000 on Saturday. Aguirre was right with the lead pack with 400 meters to go, but when it came time to sprint he simply had no reserves upon which to draw.

Riverside won the men’s meet with 132 points, followed by Long Beach (119) and Bakersfield (51 1/2). Moorpark finished ninth with 28 points, and Glendale was tied with San Jose City in 10th place with 24.

Mt. San Antonio won the women’s title with 65 points. El Camino placed second with 55 and Taft was third with 52. Valley tied for 18th with 12 points.

The Moorpark men had an up-and-down meet. Dan Zorich finished second in the hammer throw (175 feet 9 inches) and the discus (158-3), and Jeff Ingalls added a third in the decathlon with a personal best of 6,241 points. The Raider men’s 1,600 relay team finished fourth in 3:12.08.

But the Moorpark men’s 400 relay team failed to finish when Ingalls and Bryan Krill were unable to hook up on the final pass, and Ty Wilcox placed 11th in the javelin (171-10) after finishing second in the Southern California meet.