Shotputter Jim Doehring Keeps It Simple

High on a grassy knoll, overlooking silky green hills and empty blue skies, a 16-pound steel ball is heaved through the air and lands, crunch!, on a bed of weeds and crushed red brick.

Jim Doehring, the sixth-ranked shotputter in the United States, makes a mental note of the throw’s distance while readying himself for another try. He is preparing for the Los Angeles Times/GTE Indoor Games tonight at 7:30 in the Forum.

Cradling the ball with his thick fingers, Doehring squats, concentrating on the angles between toe, hips and wrist. He hushes the whinnying mare beside him and begins rotating back and forth, preparing his body and mind for another spin.

Holding the ball at ear level and tottering on a toe until balanced, Doehring outstretches his left hand and in a twirl heaves the ball toward the sky.

It lands in a sandy patch far beyond the weeds and crushed bricks.

As Doehring walks toward the mark, Sheba and Bear, his pit bull puppies, jump against their pen’s fence, whimpering for attention. Sheba breaks free and runs through the row of peach trees toward the goats’ pen. When she stops to dig at a gopher hole, Doehring sneaks up and grabs her.

“Back to your pen, bad dog,” Doehring says. “You have to learn to stay where your place is.”

That’s easy for Doehring to say. His place--a three-bedroom ranch home in the Fallbrook hills replete with fish, birds and dogs--has almost everything a world-class shotputter could ask for. He has a complete weight room in the garage and a video camera to record his shotput technique.

It’s the stable environment that Doehring says he needs to cultivate his shotput potential.

“Being able to train is all I want,” he said. “And to continue to improve. I’ve made it this far; it’s not that much farther.”

Doehring, 24, said his ultimate goal is to win a medal in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. But if that doesn’t happen, he’ll be happy breaking the American record of 72 feet 10 inches set by Brian Olfield in 1981. Doehring’s best is 69-11 3/4.

“I’m only just over two feet away from that record,” he said. “I’ve pretty much dedicated my life to it.”

Doehring, a graduate of San Clemente High School, Saddleback College and San Jose State, broke his back in a motorcycle accident when he was 18 and was told that his chances of competing again were slim. Nineteen months later, Doehring won the state junior college meet as a sophomore at Saddleback.

He accepted a full scholarship to San Jose State, where he trained with some of the nation’s best, including Olfield. Doehring was an All-American both years and was third in the NCAA outdoor final in 1984.

Doehring lives a simple life these days, tending the animals, planting plum, pear and peach trees, and hurling the 16-pound ball of steel over his homemade pit.

And at least for now, Doehring says, this is what his life is all about.