The Eagles Have Landed : Watts, Fellow Sprinters Lead Team Into National Prominence

The San Fernando Valley hasn’t been known for producing great high school sprinters.

Baseball players? Definitely. Distance runners? Sure. Not sprinters.

There have been exceptions--1975 state 100-meter champion Kevin Williams of San Fernando High is one--but the Valley is not an oasis for sprinters.

The arrival of Taft’s Quincy Watts, however, has signaled a change. Prolific sprinters at Valley-area high schools and track clubs are finally a reality.

The West Valley Eagles, a youth club based in Canoga Park, is a prime example.

Led by Watts, the Eagles won the team title in the young men’s division (for athletes born in 1969 and ‘70) at The Athletics Congress Youth championships in Philadelphia earlier this month. Starting today, they’ll begin their quest for a second title at the International Youth championships in Elmhurst, Ill.

The Eagles don’t have a large team in the young men’s division, but what they lack in numbers, they make up in naturals.

Hilliard Sumner and former Dodger Reggie Smith, the team’s co-coaches, have assembled a superb stable of sprinters. Here’s a sampling.

Quincy Watts--Possibly the top high school sprinter in the country, Watts won the 100 and 200 meters at this year’s state championships and the 200 in 1986. He was also the runner-up in that event at The Athletics Congress Junior Championships in Tucson, Ariz. He has personal bests of 10.30 in the 100, 20.50 in the 200 and 46.98 in the 400. His 100- and 200-meter clockings are the fastest high school times in the nation this season.

Tony Miller--As a junior at Riordan High in San Francisco, Miller placed fourth in the 200 and fifth in the 100 at the state championships. He has run 10.41 for 100 meters and 21.10 for 200.

Brian Bridgewater--As a junior at Washington High in Los Angeles, Bridgewater placed fourth in the 100 at the City Section championships. He has personal bests of 10.51 in the 100 and 21.18 in the 200.

Sean Roberts--A teammate of Watts’ at Taft, Roberts graduated in June. He placed third in the City championships at 100 meters and fifth in the 400. He will attend Taft College this fall, having run 10.81 in the 100, 22.22 in the 200 and 48.84 in the 400 in high school.

Percy Knox--A recent graduate of Antelope Valley High, Knox won the state title in the long jump and has a personal best of 25-5 1/2 in that event. Knox, who has run 10.6 for 100 meters, will attend Arizona this fall.

So why have many of the state’s top sprinters decided to run for West Valley?

According to Smith, some of it can be attributed to Watts, who helped the Eagles gain national recognition in 1985 when he ran for the club as a 14-year-old ninth-grader.

“Quincy helped put us on the map nationally when he was 14,” Smith said. “He ran so well that people started to recognize our name. He’s also been responsible for some of the other sprinters running for us.”

Watts concurs that he encouraged Miller and Knox, among others, to run for the Eagles.

“I knew they were looking for a club to run for,” Watts said. “And I figured we could run some really fast relay times if we all got together.”

Miller, who’s spending his summer with the Watts family in Woodland Hills, agreed with his roommate.

Miller said he had talked with Watts and Corey Ealy of Muir High in Pasadena about running together after the state meet. “It’s something we wanted to do for a long time.”

Eight days ago, David Feinstein, Bridgewater, Knox and Watts narrowly missed the national age-group record in the 400-meter relay (39.98), clocking 40.04 at the The Athletics Congress Junior Olympics in Provo, Utah.

With a team of Bridgewater, Roberts, Miller and Watts, Sumner says the Eagles are capable of breaking the record.

“On paper, this team is faster than the one that ran last week,” he said. “They’re capable of running 39.5,” a time that would have placed sixth in this year’s NCAA championships.

Although Sumner, 41, is in his first year of coaching, he’s been involved in track and field since high school.

His initial foray into the sport, however, was in distance running, not sprinting. Sumner ran cross-country in the fall and the mile and two-mile in the spring for Germantown High in Philadelphia.

In college, he ran for the Philadelphia Pioneers Track Club, clocking a personal best of 31:06 for 10,000 meters in the late 1960s.

Upon earning his undergraduate degree in business from Temple University, Sumner thought his days as an athlete were through.

“I had no intention of ever running 70 or 80 miles a week again,” he says with a chuckle. “That part of my life was over.”

His life as a sprinter, however, was just beginning. After moving to California in 1975, Sumner ran into former Olympic champions Lee Evans and Tommie Smith, who encouraged him to train with the Southern California Striders.

By the time he was 34, Sumner was one of the best in his age group with personal bests of 10.51 in the 100, 21.20 in the 200 and 47.52 in the 400. From 1976-81, he lost only one race in age-group competition--to Evans, who still holds the world record in the 400 (43.86).

This year, Sumner applied the knowledge he gained through training to coaching the sprinters at Chaminade High. Under his tutelage, junior John Adomian ran 10.9 for 100 meters and placed fifth in the 200 at the Southern Section 1-A championships.

Since then, Sumner’s reputation has grown by word of mouth.

Sprinters such as Miller speak very highly of him.

“He knows a lot about sprinting,” Miller said. “And he makes you work hard. He doesn’t let you loaf.”

Sumner’s philosophy is simple: “If you want to run on this team, you’re going to do what I tell you to,” he explains. “If you don’t run the workouts, you’re not going to run in the meets.”

Ealy, who placed second in the 200 and third in the 100 at the state championships, challenged Sumner’s philosophy a few weeks ago and lost.

After loafing through some workouts and failing to run in an all-comers race as instructed, Ealy was dropped from the team.

“He didn’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else,” Sumner said. “I couldn’t allow that.”

In spite of his competitive nature, Sumner concedes that winning isn’t everything.

“I do want the kids to run well and work hard,” he said. “But I also want them to realize that track is only one part of their lives, one avenue to success. School is just as important.

“My goal as a coach is to develop good athletes, but more importantly, I want to develop good individuals. Good human beings who are capable of functioning efficiently in society.”

With an attitude like that, the West Valley Eagles may be producing championships for years to come.