SECTION PLAYOFFS : Track : Morse Out for No. 11 in Relay

It was cause for concern when Nicola Stennis, a Morse High senior and three-time member of her school’s 400-meter relay team, found at the beginning of the season that her running mates were all sophomores.

That, Stennis thought, did not bode well for Morse adding to its string of 10 consecutive San Diego Section championships.

“I didn’t want to be on the team that broke the streak,” Stennis said.

So Stennis went to work. She became a leader, and the three sophomores--Ayanda Bennett, Sharon Russell and Nichelle Milner--listened.

“I just kind of talked to them,” Stennis said. “I let them know that they can accomplish their goals.”

Their ultimate goal, an 11th consecutive championship, could be realized today at the section track and field championships at Poway High School. The running events start at 3 p.m.--with the girls’ 400 relay. Field events begin at 2.

For much of the season, it looked as though the Morse streak was in jeopardy. The Tigers were a good half-second off Mount Carmel’s county best, which, before last week’s preliminaries, was 48.4.

The key word is “before.” At the prelims, Stennis, Bennett, Russell and Milner came together and turned in a breezy 47.99. This in a meet where tortoise-like times are the norm.

“We just concentrated on what we had to do,” Stennis said. “I told them (the sophomores) to block everything out of their minds, and they did. We accomplished what we set out to do.”

Well, almost. They still have the finals to run, and they still have to get past Mt. Carmel, which ran in a different heat in the prelims.

“Mt. Carmel has been running well all year,” cautioned Gary MacDonald, Morse coach. “In fact, last time we met them in competition (at the Sundevil Invitational), they beat us.”

In that race, Mount Carmel’s Margarette Ortega, Vicki Dejesus, Cassandra Tyson and Allison Dring clocked a 48.8. The Morse girls were right behind at 49.0, both figures being hand times.

Now it would seem that Mt. Carmel has to play catch up. But is that really the case? After all, appearances can be deceiving.

MacDonald knows that his quartet started “tapering down,” easing off the hard workouts and storing energy for race day, before the prelims. Most runners begin tapering just before the finals. All of which means, of course, that Mt. Carmel’s time could drop just as dramatically as did Morse’s last week.

Morse’s 10-year streak notwithstanding, the big event of the day will no doubt take place in the boys’ shotput ring.

The drama will not be in the competition. Fallbrook’s Brent Noon is more than 11 feet ahead of his nearest foe, who happens to be teammate Terry Sherman. Noon’s 69-feet-8 1/4 is this year’s national best. Sherman’s second-best county mark is 58-4.

No, the drama will be Noon vs. Noon. All year long, the junior has been talking of throwing 70 feet, and he has been inching toward that goal. He will have to do it either today or next week at the state finals at Cerritos College.

Other top events include the girls 1,600 and 3,200, in which Rancho Buena Vista’s Kira Jorgensen--who has dominated the events for the past four years--will make her last San Diego appearances; the boys’ 400, in which Hoover’s Jerome Gross (48.2) will battle Poway’s Jerry Ashworth (48.8); the boys’ 800, where San Pasqual’s Francis O’Neill (1:52.6) will be challenged by Fallbrook’s Jorge Rodriguez (1:52.87), and the boys’ triple jump, where Orange Glen’s Lenny McGill will try to improve on his state best 50-4.