Time Is Right for Pierce at Track Finals

Pierce College’s track team competed Wednesday in the Metropolitan Conference championship for the first time in eight years. And, with the help of Pierce Coach Bob Chambers, they got there just in time.

It was the last Metropolitan Conference title meet. Because the California Assn. of Community Colleges has releagued many of the state’s conferences, the conference will be disbanded after this school year.

The Metropolitan Conference, which held its first championship meet in 1949 and is perennially the finest junior college conference in the nation, has played host to many world-class athletes, including three-time Olympic champion Valerie Brisco-Hooks and former world record-holding sprinter Houston McTear.

Pierce teams, which had competed up until 1978, never won the conference title, and its latest team didn’t win Wednesday at Santa Monica College. The Brahmas finished sixth out of eight teams. The fact that Pierce was even represented, however, is a victory, of sorts, for its coach.

Chambers, who has coached and taught at Pierce for 24 years, said he asked the school athletic department last year for a cross-country team. Both the track team and cross-country teams had been eliminated after the 1978 season. The athletic department agreed--with one condition. If he coached cross-country, he’d have to coach track.

“I didn’t want to coach track at first,” Chambers said. “But after a while I saw that the cross-country team would have such a long layover between seasons that I decided to start a track club. I found out that a club was illegal and agreed to coach the track team.”

He had the OK, the job, the uniforms and a track. His only problem was finding bodies to fill out a roster.

So, in late December, 1985, and early January of this year, he began his search on campus for people who could run and jump enough to pass themselves off as a track team. Chambers did everything he could to find prospects, eventually attracting former high school runners, Pierce football and basketball players and even a Pierce cheerleader.

“I had to canvass all the other sports,” Chambers said. “I even got some girls out of PE classes.”

He found Sharie Green, who competes in hurdles and jumping field events, at cheerleading practice in Janurary. Three months later Green, who had never before belonged to a track team and admitted Wednesday that she had hated to run, won five events at the Bakersfield Relays.

“Coach just told me, ‘You look like a good athlete, you should come out for the team,’ ” she said. “And it’s been great. I sort of fell from the grace of cheerleading to the sweat of the track.”

Chambers began the year with 30 athletes on his roster. The number has since dwindled to about 20. Luckily for Chambers, most intend to return next season and he has a lot to do with their decision to go back to Pierce’s budding program.

“He encourages me more than any other coach has,” said Debbie Hite, who won the women’s 800 meters race Wednesday. “He’s just a really nice man.”

Before meeting Chambers, Aimee Maloney had never participated in track.

“This is one of the best thing I’ve ever done,” Maloney said. “The coach knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows all the angles.”

Keith Kropfl was a running back for Pierce’s football team before he came upon the track team.

“I went out to the track to work out for football,” said Kropfl, 20. “I liked the program coach was starting and I liked the competition. I stuck around.

“Coach is a real motivator. It’s really hard for him because he’s the only coach, but he tries to give each player the same amount of time”

Said Hite: “I used to just go out and run the 800. Now, I have a little bit of knowledge, a better understanding about how to run races.”

Distance runner Hagan Pedersen, 19, recently moved to North Hollywood from the Bay Area. He ran track in high school and wanted to continue after he enrolled at Pierce. Chambers had a spot for him.

“I never had a coach who really knew what he was doing,” Pedersen said. “He’s really easy to get along with. He’s the kind kind of coach who, when you do a workout, you kind of dislike. But when you’re done with the workout, that dislike passes. That’s important.”

Jim Wood is probably the best performer on the team. He won the 400 meters at the Bakersfield Relays but was disqualified from the conference finals because judges in the preliminaries ruled that he had moved his hand while using a standing start. His best is 48.68. He ran track at Birmingham High but said Chambers taught him more in a day than he learned all through high school.

“My coaches used to say, ‘OK, give it all you got,’ and then they would watch,” Wood said. “Here, he teaches. He’s done more for me in a single workout than I had ever learned in my life.”

Green, the Pierce cheerleader was forced to sit out Wednesday’s meet because she stepped into a gopher hole while jogging Tuesday and injured her foot. She said the track team has prepared her for future challenges.

“I would have never dreamed of running track,” she said. “I would look out to the track and say, ‘No way.’ ”

Chambers, who has put on a few pounds but kept the same crew cut since he finished sixth in the 800 meters at the 1948 Olympic Games in London, believes things can only get better next season. Getting a team was the hard part.