HER LEAP YEAR : El Dorado’s Svoboda Getting a Jump on Competition After an Off-Season

Two years ago, Lori Svoboda was leaping her way into prominence at El Dorado High School.

Svoboda, then a sophomore, became an Orange County sensation in the girls’ high jump. She won almost every meet she entered, and set the top mark in the state that year--5-feet 10 1/4-inches--in winning the event at the 1987 Southern Section Masters meet. She was named the 1987 Times’ Orange County girls’ track and field athlete of the year.

Then came 1988--a year Svoboda would like to forget, at least as far as the high jump is concerned.

Although Svoboda started that season with a respectable mark of 5-8, she was plagued by inconsistency, and failed to improve on that height.

After winning the Southern Section 3-A championship her first two years, she finished second as a junior. And a week later at the Masters meet, she finished last.

“It was awful,” Svoboda said of her junior year. “I didn’t jump worth beans.”

Looking back, Svoboda said the pressure of her own high expectations probably upended her abilities last year. El Dorado Coach Chuck Titus agreed, but added:

“That’s part of it, but there were some very heavy expectations placed on Lori by everybody--students, teachers, everyone. They all expected Lori to win every single time. . . . “If she went to a meet, it wasn’t ‘Did you win?’ They just assumed that. It was ‘How high did you jump?’ . . . It got to be so that she felt she had an obligation to win. I think they forgot she was human.”

Svoboda returns to the Southern Section meet Saturday to seek her third 3-A high jump title in four years.

Svoboda would appear to have a very good chance of winning this year.

“Last year, I’d go out and have no idea if I’d jump great or horrible,” Svoboda said. “I’d push myself and put a lot of pressure on myself to win. This year, I’m really calm and really confident,” she said.

“Last year, I’d be trying so hard, but it would never work. I couldn’t get my step down, and it got me really frustrated. . . . Plus, I’d always get up there and think too much. This year, I’ve learned not to think, just do it.”

The results have been impressive.

At the Bishop Amat Relays at Mt. San Antonio College last month, Svoboda set her personal best (5-10 3/4), which is the best in the section this season and ranks her among the nation’s top 10 for 1989.

Svoboda also won the high jump at the Orange County Championship with a mark of 5-8, and placed second to state champion Chrissy Mills of North Hollywood Campbell Hall at the prestigious Arcadia Invitational. Mills and Svoboda both cleared 5-8, but Mills did so on fewer misses.

Svoboda, who is 5-feet-10 and 130 pounds, also competed in the 100 and 200 meters through much of the Empire League season. She placed second in both events at the league championships last week, and qualified for the 3-A 100-meter final Saturday. (She won’t compete in the event to concentrate on the high jump, she said).

Although speed is one of Svoboda’s major assets, Titus said her biggest strength is strength.

“Lori can leg press for repetitions over 600 pounds,” Titus said. “Lori’s not a wimpy high jumper. It’s amazing when she goes into the weight room, the football players are awed by her.”

Titus said he believes Svoboda will clear 6 feet before the 1989 season is finished. If so, Svoboda would tie the Orange County record of 6-0 set by Anaheim’s Yleana Carrasco in 1984.

Svoboda is now third on the county’s all-time list behind Carrasco and Kennedy’s Ursula Lovely, who cleared 5-11 in 1986.

“All her practices so far indicate she can go 6 feet within the next three weeks,” Titus said. “One day, I had the bar set up at 6-2. She thought it was at 5-11, that’s what I told her. And she damn near made it. She cleared it, but knocked it with her hand on the way down.

“She’s gotten really up there, but the little bitty things have just kept her from making it.”

Svoboda said she’s certain that 6 feet is within her reach. And breaking--or at least tying--the county record is something she doesn’t talk about, but would love to do.

But even if neither of those things happen, Svoboda said one major goal this year has been met: She believes in her own abilities again.

“I came out this year with an open mind,” she said. “I knew I could jump, but I had to prove it to myself and to all those other people out there that, yes, Lori is still here.”

And she isn’t finished yet.