Ken Hall Has Tried to Run From Drugs Since He Was Just 13; Now He Thinks . . . : College Opportunity Could Mean His Best Miles Are Yet to Come

When he ran cross-country at San Clemente High School, Ken Hall’s style, if it could be called that, was to burst into the lead early and run hard, like a man who never wanted to be caught.

Caught by his past.

Hall now is a freshman at Point Loma Nazarene College, running cross-country and track. And he says he has been able to keep one step ahead. He is lucky. He is alive. He is on scholarship with a chance to get a college degree, surrounded by people who care and want to help.

These may seem average advantages for a college athlete. But Hall says his life differs greatly from where he was headed not long ago.

Hall remembers the first time he tried drugs. He was in the eighth grade and playing volleyball after school with some friends. They asked if he wanted to try marijuana.

“Six months later, I tried LSD,” Hall said. “I also used cocaine, pills . . . anything.”

He was 13, and his life seemed to be crumbling around him.

He says his parents’ divorce kept him from seeing his father as often as he wanted. He wasn’t getting along with his mother and stepfather.

Then his father lost a fight against brain cancer and died.

“That was the last straw,” Hall said. “Out of all the kids (four) in the family, I was the closest.”

The death and his home situation were leading Hall to something, and it turned out to be drugs.

“It was like that,” Hall said snapping his fingers. “It was like not even a month (after his father’s death) that I started using. I didn’t realize it then, of course.”

Hall’s drug use, and his problems, increased.

“The worst thing I could do was to steal for drugs,” Hall said. “I broke into houses, stole from people in our church, stole from the bishop from our church, my grandma, my mom . . .”

He kept it from his mother for a year. She found out when he was in the ninth grade. The mother of one of his friends had picked up another receiver when they were talking on the phone and heard part of the conversation.

“I was so good with it,” Hall said. “She didn’t know for so long.”

His relationship with his mother already was strained by the divorce and her subsequent remarriage. And she was active in the church; he wasn’t interested.

“She would leave notes in my room,” Hall said. “They would say ‘Please don’t do this’ and ‘you’re my son’. . . I just felt guilty all the time. I used (drugs) to cover up the guilt.”

Hall says he tried to quit once. He was suspended from school for forging notes. He asked to be placed on independent study, in which he could go to school, pick up his assignments and do the work at home.

“I thought if I’m away from people at school, maybe I could quit,” Hall said. “But then I started calling my friends and having them come over to the house.”

He says now he doesn’t think he would have been able to quit on his own. (“I don’t think I would have been able to,” he said. “I don’t think so.”) But by the end of his freshman year, the decision was made for him. His mother had had enough.

One day while he was at school, his mother pulled him out of class and drove him to Phoenix House, a drug rehabilitation program in Santa Ana. Hall didn’t know it during the drive, but she had arranged for two policeman to meet them.

“I was ready to go,” Hall said. “I didn’t put up a fight or anything. I was going to try it out. Yeah. I didn’t think the police were necessary. I said something like ‘Why did you bring these guys along.’ I was mad at her for a while.”

Hall started what would turn out to be a 16-month stay at Phoenix House, where residents live, eat and attend classes and therapy sessions, only getting out for brief periods on passes. At first, he resisted. He played games. He tried to beat the system.

“At first I went in there, and I was the angel,” Hall said. “I can pull off being the angel when I want to. They were wondering about me. They were looking at me like, ‘Why are you even in here?’

“I had my hair combed. I looked like the All-American Mormon boy.”

But after time away from his friends and their life style, he says, his resistance began to break down. He began to feel he was no longer dependent on drugs. The people at Phoenix House decided he was ready to return to San Clemente High for the beginning of his junior year. But Hall soon found it was not that easy.

He “slipped” a couple times, he said, and when he did, he would run back for therapy. Finally, they told him not to return if he was unable to make a commitment to help himself.

Hall slipped again. He didn’t go back.

“When I got out of Phoenix House, I used to say (the reason not to use drugs) was for them,” Hall said. “It wasn’t in myself. Finally I asked myself, ‘Why was I doing this?’ ”

Then came what Hall says was his biggest step. Somebody offered him drugs, and he said no.

“It made me feel a whole lot better,” Hall said. “Phoenix wasn’t there to hold my hand. I didn’t realize I used Phoenix to hold my hand.”

Hall says he hasn’t used drugs since.

During this time, Hall had joined the San Clemente cross-country team. He had competed in a 10-kilometer run as a freshman but never for the school. Running was just something he did well. He had run while at Phoenix House to stay in shape.

“I always had been good in endurance,” Hall said. “I wasn’t a runner. I’d just do it. I could run if I wanted to, but it wasn’t a big priority. I just wanted to see what I could do.”

Hall improved by his senior year and was one of the top runners in the Southern Section. He placed fifth at the Section 4-A cross-country championships at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, running 15 minutes 45 seconds on the hilly three-mile course.

He says he put a lot of pressure on himself that season. He wanted to go to college, but he didn’t have the money. He knew he had to perform well to earn a scholarship.

“I told myself ‘I have to run well this year,’ ” Hall said. “So, I ran as well as I could. I knew I had to go to college to get an education so I could do something in the long run.”

Hall’s mother and stepfather moved to Carlsbad early in his senior year. Hall decided he had to finish his senior year at San Clemente to get a scholarship.

At first he stayed with a friend, but he couldn’t find a permanent home. He said he spent one night in his car.

Jack Iverson, a mathematics teacher and volleyball coach at San Clemente, heard of Hall’s plight “through the grape vine” and approached Hall about staying with him and his wife. Hall is still close to the Iversons and visits them often.

Toward the end of his senior year, Hall approached Jim Crakes, Point Loma Nazarene cross-country and track coach, about running for the Crusaders. Hall said he liked Point Loma because it was a small school where he could receive individual attention.

“I knew I had to run (in order to go to college),” Hall said. “I wanted to go where I would fit in. A small school.

“It’s not a party school like a lot of universities. You don’t have (drugs) on campus. It’s not here on campus.”

Crakes said he was ready to give Hall a chance but had doubts.

“I didn’t have doubts about him,” Crakes said. “I had doubts in myself, whether I could do the right things for him. Make it progressive enough for him. It’s kind of enigmatic sometimes when you think about it.

“You always try to give the kid who wants to turn around every chance possible.”

Crakes gave Hall a scholarship. But in reaching this goal, Hall had paid a price. He had burned himself out on running. He did not run the entire summer and was out of shape when he started cross-country workouts.

“One of the things I try to get across with young freshmen is my philosophy,” Crakes said. “I don’t put pressure on them to perform at a high level the first year. But they have this feeling that they have to prove themselves. They spend so much time and energy into that, that they don’t get into other things like studying or getting used to their new environments.

“With him, of course, it was more important to consistently instill that,” Crakes said. “If he doesn’t do well, it’s devastating to him. He’s very competitive.”

Hall did not do well. In fact, he was awful.

The cross-country team went to Julian for their first workouts. Hall lasted 30 minutes before he quit. He sat down for five minutes, got back up and started running again.

“I had never failed like that in running,” Hall said. “I was showing my coach I can’t even run.

“I wasn’t ready to get involved. I even thought about not running.”

When Hall failed to finish part of a workout, he said, he would yell and swear and “act like a jerk.” He’d stop during races, then start again. Finally, he was ready to quit.

“I think every runner who runs hard thinks about quitting,” Crakes said. “But something in them says, ‘OK, I’ll go a little further.’ They can get back into that groove and finish it out. Some place there is that moment of decision. He stopped, and gradually he was able to come back. It was kind of scary at first whether he was going to make it.”

So, Crakes set a goal. Don’t worry about winning every race, he said. “He told me to just try and finish one race and keep my mouth shut,” Hall said.

Using that simple plan, Hall rebuilt his stamina and confidence with each race. He had his finest moment at the NAIA District III championships at Santa Barbara. Crakes was hoping Hall could finish in the top 17. Hall surprised everyone, including himself, with an 11th-place finish. He was the highest-placing freshman.

“I didn’t even know I was 11th,” Hall said. “When they handed me the card after I finished the race, I had to look at it twice.”

The district finish gave Hall confidence in his running again. But he must battle every day with his class work and his high expectations of himself and life.

Said Crakes: “It’s still a tenuous thing with him. Anytime you have a kid like him, with the problems he’s had, it’s a tight rope you’re walking.”

Crakes said he and others are working to help Hall get through this, his most crucial year.

“I’m hoping I can keep him going through the same progress,” Crakes said. “That will be the real determinant of his long-range success--if he can make it through the first year academically and athletically.”

Hall now is working on his running style. He will specialize in the 5,000-meter race during track and field.

“I started to learn how to become a runner,” Hall said, “instead of just running.”

Crakes also wants to teach him to also enjoy it.

“A great deal of his success has been through this competitive nature,” Crakes said. “He has done well despite his physical training level. He has not trained wisely. He’s driven himself, driven himself. . .run himself into the ground.

“He hasn’t learned yet, I believe, to enjoy training and competing. It’s more of a demand, it’s something he’s driven to do, than to enjoy to do.”

Hall knows that running, for him, is a way to cope.

“I like to run,” Hall said. “But I don’t die for running. Running is one thing I do.

“I have a lot of energy, so I run, I lift weights, and I study. By the end of the day, I’m tired. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to cope as well. I can’t completely handle it now, but I’m trying to learn.”