Final Cross-Country Decoration Missing From Runner’s Room : Goal: Brian Gastelum has collected rows of trophies while following in his brother’s footsteps. Now the Birmingham senior wants to add the one that goes with a City Section title.

Brian Gastelum stood in the bedroom of his Granada Hills home recently and clasped a basketball trophy, the first he had ever won.

While fondly remembering the effort involved in securing the hardware, however, it dawned on Gastelum that the trophy, which he won at age 13, was really his second. His first came earlier the same year and was more the result of crying than trying.

Gastelum’s older brother Billy had a collection of cross-country and track trophies he earned at Birmingham High, so Brian told his mother that he wanted one too.

The two visited a local garage sale and Gloria, Brian’s mother, bought him a volleyball trophy. But the younger Gastelum still was not satisfied.

“I wanted one with my name right here,” he said, pointing to the marble base of the basketball trophy. “(My mother) put me in a basketball league so I could get this trophy. When I got this one, I threw the other one away.”

Now, Gastelum, a senior cross-country runner at Birmingham, has an array of trophies and medals that would make any athlete proud.

“I didn’t think I’d get all these,” he said, making a sweeping motion around the room.

Gastelum, undefeated in City Section races this season, may have another trophy to add to his collection Saturday. He is preparing for a run at the City individual championship in the finals at Pierce College. Gastelum has posted the fastest time on the three-mile course at Pierce this season, a 14:55 clocking in the Braves’ dual meet with Monroe on Oct. 26.

As a junior, he won the Valley Pac-8 Conference title and led Birmingham to the team championship. He retained his championship in the conference finals Nov. 2 and again paced the Braves to the team crown.

During his junior track campaign, Gastelum finished second in the 1,600 meters in the City track championships in May with a personal-best 4:17.29.

Gastelum’s cross-country success during his four-years at Birmingham, however, probably would not have been possible had he outran Pat Connelly, then a consultant to cross-country Coach Gary Mazziotti.

Gastelum had been cut from the B basketball team his freshman year but decided to stay in the basketball class. While walking near the locker room after class, he noticed Connelly and the cross-country team working out on the track.

At the same time, Connelly looked up in Gastelum’s direction. Trying to remain inconspicuous, the freshman stepped behind a green tarp covering the chain-link fence surrounding the track area.

The split second when Gastelum’s and Connelly’s eyes met served as a starting gun for the two, and Gastelum bolted for the gym, with Connelly, who had coached Gastelum’s brother, closing fast.

“He caught me (in the gym) and he said, ‘I want you to bring your running shoes tomorrow and you’re going to run,’ ” Gastelum said.

Connelly first learned about Gastelum from Billy, a 1986 graduate of Birmingham.

Connelly, who also worked in the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program in the Los Angeles Police Department while coaching at Birmingham, helped organize mini-Olympics events at several elementary schools throughout Los Angeles. He was at Nestle Avenue School in 1983 when he saw Gastelum, then in the fifth grade, run in a mini-Olympics 600-meter race.

“He didn’t know he could run,” Connelly said. “But when I saw him run in that 600, I said, ‘That kid’s not playing basketball.’ ”

Gastelum still wasn’t sure that cross-country was his sport but never missed a chance to work out with his older brother and the high school team “just to be with the guys.”

“I wanted to be like the rest of the group on the team and go on long runs with them,” Gastelum said. “(My brother) said, ‘No, you can’t because you’re not in shape and you’re not going to make it.”

J. R. Vasquez, an ’86 alum of Birmingham and one of Billy’s high school teammates, recalled an incident in which Gastelum was trying to break into his brother’s training clique.

“Billy and I we’re running and Brian was . . . in seventh grade and he’d come around and say, ‘I ran a 5:20 mile today,’ ” Vasquez laughed. “We were like, ‘Sure, you’re only a seventh-grader.’ ”

Though Gastelum wanted to run with his brother just for fun, he had no interest in enduring the competitiveness of the cross-country team his freshman year, or any other year. Instead, he tried out for B football.

“I didn’t want to go out for cross-country or track because I didn’t like it. I didn’t like running,” Gastelum said. “I went out for B football (but) I was just too skinny. I was getting hit too hard and I couldn’t take it. I got cut. The coach said I was going to be a tight end, but I didn’t know what that was.

“So I said, ‘Hmm, I like playing basketball.’ So I went out for it. It was kind of late, but I talked the coach into letting me try out. He said I wasn’t good enough.”

Thank goodness for Connelly.

However, during the latter part of his sophomore cross-country season and through his 1988 track campaign, Gastelum sustained a hip injury that hampered his summer training regime.

A change in coaches after his sophomore track season did not offer much relief, either.

“When I first came to Birmingham, I was told a lot about Brian,” second-year Coach Scott King said. “I remember the first week of workouts, he only came one day out of five. I started wondering what the deal was.

“He wasn’t really sure if he wanted to go through the pain again. I think what he was going through was that he wasn’t sure if he was even going to run again.”

But Gastelum showed up for the entire second week of practice and has not missed two workouts in a row since then, King said.

Although he had recovered from his hip injury, a cold contributed to a disappointing performance in what was to be the race of his junior year, and he struggled to finish 64th in the City championship.

Because of Gastelum’s poor showing last year, Obed Aguirre of San Fernando is the favorite for the individual title this year. Being an underdog suits Gastelum fine. “That way there’s not a lot of pressure on me,” he said. “If there’s a lot of pressure on me I might break.”

Yet, as Gastelum proved when he won a City track championship his freshman year, it would not be a wise move financially to bet against him.

Gastelum won a bet with his father, Bill, who said that he would buy his son a new bicycle if he won the C 1,600 meters at the City championships in 1987.

The young novice held off junior Paul Klinedinst of Granada Hills in the final stretch to win in 4:31.22. Klinedinst timed 4:32.21.

The bicycle he was given leans against a wall, a nice addition to Gastelum’s already well-decorated bedroom. Also lining the wall on one side of Gastelum’s room are letters of interest from colleges, including Stanford, Cornell, Notre Dame and Columbia as well as Cal State Northridge and Occidental.

However, along the opposite wall are flyers and pamphlets regarding Scholastic Aptitude Test preparation courses. “That’s just stuff from school,” he grinned.

Certainly, several tests await Gastelum.