IN FATHER’S IMAGE : Dorsey High Hurdler Ron Copeland Jr. Brings Memories Hurtling Back for Track Fans

The obvious comparisons keep coming, and Ron Copeland Jr. handles them much as he sails over hurdles.

With grace.

At times, it seems, there is a parade of people talking about his father, Ron Copeland Sr. The former football player and track star at UCLA, and at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles before that, died suddenly 13 years ago this month at 28. The people want to talk memories, and that’s fine with young Ron.

But he is very conscious of keeping his focus on the present and, to a lesser degree, the future.

“I know a lot of people remember my father, and when I’m running I want those people to see the image of him,” said the Dorsey High track star. “But to the people who didn’t know him, I want them to look at me as a good hurdler. Hopefully, those people will remember me like the others have remembered him.”

Copeland has the best time in the state in the 110-meter high hurdles and ranks No. 4 in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles. No less an authority than Jim Bush, the former UCLA coach who works with Copeland and a few other hurdlers at Dorsey, says without hesitation: “I think he will be one of the world’s top hurdlers in a few years.”

The senior Copeland was one of the best in the United States in the late 1960s, when he ran for Bush at UCLA. He won National Collegiate Athletic Assn. titles in the 120-yard high hurdles and as a member of the 440 relay team in ‘66, anchored the mile relay team that won in ’67.

Bush, who has worked with many of the world’s great hurdlers, was fondest of Copeland, a transfer from East Los Angeles College. It was his spirit as much as his success.

Copeland, also a receiver on the Bruin football team, played one year with the Chicago Bears and later became an assistant coach in track and football at Mt. San Antonio College. He was in his third year when he was challenged by a member of the track team to a 60-yard dash.

Copeland won the race, then collapsed, dead of a heart attack only a week after heart disease claimed his father.

Ron Copeland Jr., whose earliest memories are of running around the track while his dad was coach, was 5. Younger brother Kevin, now a sophomore at Dorsey, was 3. Millicent Copeland, their mother, was expecting a third child.

Bush, who still gets emotional talking about his former star, delivered the eulogy at the funeral. He later renamed the inspirational award given annually to a member of the UCLA track team the Ron Copeland Award.

Through the years, Millicent sent Bush pictures and would occasionally stop by his office, but they almost always missed one another. Finally, last December, 12 years after last seeing the Copeland boys in person, they had a reunion at Bush’s house.

Ron Jr. had already established himself as a prep star by then. His 13.88-second time last season made him the second-fastest high school hurdler in the country for 1988. He also had dealt with his running out of respect for his father’s memory, rather than out of his own liking for track. He says, in fact, that he has turned that around.

“At first, it was 60% for my father and 40% because I wanted to,” said Copeland, who also runs legs on Dorsey’s 400-meter and mile relay teams. “But now, it’s more like 99% for me and 1% for that. Back then, I didn’t like track much. But I devote a lot more time to it now and have really gotten to like it.”

But when he started working with Bush two or three times week, there were fresh aspects to consider.

“I didn’t want to try and make it like him and my father,” Copeland said. “I didn’t want to be someone taking the place of my father’s memory with him. I decided to just start working with him as coach and to see what happens.

“But it’s worked out really well. There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for him and he wouldn’t do for me. That’s what it boils down to.”

The catch in this father-son-coach story, however, occurred last month, when Copeland signed a college letter of intent.

To attend USC.

No, Copeland says now, he wasn’t concerned about losing his identity if he chose UCLA, where his father was so successful. No, he wasn’t turned against the Bruins by Bush, the former coach who has some strong feelings against his former employers.

Basically, he said, acknowledging that his decision shocked some people, it came down to USC treating him better. The Trojans offered him a full scholarship, the Bruins only a partial. He said he got the feeling that UCLA was taking it for granted that he would sign with his father’s alma mater. “They thought I would come based just on tradition,” he said.

USC was right for him, he said, with its atmosphere and semester system as opposed to the quarter system at UCLA. Being part of an outstanding recruiting class that includes sprinters Quincy Watts of Woodland Hills Taft and Travis Hannah of Hawthorne, and quarter-miler Tony Miller of San Francisco Riordan didn’t exactly hurt, either.

And if people try to tie him in with the Bruins now, or want to talk about Ron Copeland Sr. and Jim Bush and all their NCAA titles at UCLA, Ron Copeland Jr. really doesn’t mind. He just asks that he be given his due in the plot.

“The odds of me being a hurdler, the odds of (Bush) coaching me, and the odds of me doing well in the hurdles, it’s all amazing,” he said. “It’s like history has repeated itself. Things seem to have fallen right into place.”