Provenzano Scores With Home Run : JC track: Glendale runner second in state at 800 meters after leaving Colorado for familiar surroundings.

Less than five minutes into his first class at the University of Colorado last September, Rick Provenzano knew something was wrong.

“Excuse me,” Provenzano, 18, interrupted his Spanish teacher. “Aren’t we going to speak any English?”

“No, este es espanol intermediante.”

Provenzano remembered having taken a Spanish course in ninth grade, but that was about the only thing he remembered.

“I didn’t understand a thing,” Provenzano said. “I shouldn’t have been in that intermediate class. I had to get out of there.”

He did, before the class meeting was over. A few days later, he wanted to get out of Colorado too.

“I was scared so bad,” said Provenzano, who graduated from Arcadia High with a 3.0 grade-point average. “I got stuck in all these hard-core classes. I was afraid that I was going to flunk out. I felt like a little fish in a big pond.”

Last May, while at Arcadia, Provenzano placed fourth at 800 meters in the Southern Section 4-A Division finals, running 1 minute 52.54 seconds.

Although recruited by numerous schools, including USC and Cal State Northridge, Provenzano signed a letter of intent to attend Colorado and join his brother Steve, 21, a sprinter on the Colorado track team.

“I was so excited to go there,” Provenzano said. “I was looking forward to it all summer. I pictured myself running through the mountains on trails.”

But when Provenzano arrived two weeks before the fall semester began, the scenery wasn’t as picturesque.

“They had about 50 distance guys,” Provenzano said. “I had to compete just to feel a part of the team. I felt like a little boy and I was homesick. I wasn’t ready for the change.

“I was so used to high school life. I just wasn’t mentally prepared.”

Steve, who placed fourth at 400 meters for Arcadia in the 1987 state meet, also noticed.

“I don’t think he knew what he was getting into,” he said. “He was thinking of it as a long vacation. It’s a big transition from being a star in high school to just another runner. I tried to help him out and cheer him up, but it didn’t work. “

After receiving several telephone calls from Rick, Mike Provenzano flew to Boulder in an effort to convince his son to stay.

“It was Labor Day weekend,” Mike said. “He had been in school for only about four days. We talked it over. He had a chance to run with his brother and was giving up a scholarship, but there was no question about it. He wanted to come home.”

Two days later, Provenzano enrolled at Glendale College on the advice of a former high school teammate who had competed there.

“A lot of people have come over based on recommendations from former athletes who have been at Glendale and had a good experience,” Glendale Coach Tom McMurray said. “He was one of the top half-milers in the state in high school and we were pretty excited to have an athlete of his caliber.”

However, the transition to Glendale was also difficult. Provenzano ran one cross-country race in the fall before deciding to train on his own and concentrate on track.

His concentration wasn’t very good, as evidenced by his performance in December at the Cal State Los Angeles Distance Carnival. Provenzano ran a 1,600-meter leg for Glendale’s distance medley relay team in 4:49. Eight months earlier, at Arcadia, he had run an equivalent distance in 4:16.

“I was just so frustrated,” Provenzano said. “I was out there training on my own and wasn’t really into running. I was ready to drop track. I was wondering what was going wrong.”

Glendale distance Coach Ed Lopez knew.

“He was in horrible shape,” Lopez said. “I told him ‘What do you expect? You’ve been training on your own.’ He wasn’t used to running with a lot of people and being pushed in practice.”

Provenzano heeded Lopez’s advice and began working out with the team in mid-December.

“I was dead last by so much in all the workouts,” Provenzano said. “When I went on a distance runs with the team, I had trouble trying to stay within a stoplight of the other guys to see where they were going. I kept getting lost.”

Four weeks later, Provenzano was heading in the right direction when he ran 1:53.55 in The Times/Eagle Indoor Games qualifying meet.

“That was definitely one of the biggest shockers,” Provenzano said. “It was pretty incredible. I was scared out of mind before the race. I never thought that I be running that fast. I think when you start thinking mentally that you can do things, you can.”

At the Bronco Invitational at Cal Poly Pomona three weeks ago, Provenzano proved he could, shattering his personal best with a mark of 1:51.9. The time ranks as fastest by a junior college runner in Southern California and is second fastest in the state.

“He’s highly motivated and has adapted well,” McMurray said. “He had to make some transitions. It’s not easy to come back from Colorado, make a lot of adjustments and then show improvement.”

Provenzano, who is shooting for Bob Blanchard’s 26-year-old school record of 1:50.7, believes his biggest adjustment was to put track in perspective.

“My attitude is a lot different now,” Provenzano said. “In high school, track was my life. I was just thinking about it 24 hours a day.

“But this year track is not the most important thing. When I had a bad workout, it used to carry over into races. Now I’m learning to be more positive and not dwell on it.”

Despite his breakthroughs, Provenzano, who will compete in the Fresno Relays on Saturday, is reluctant to make any predictions about next month’s junior college state meet.

“I’ve had problems in the big meets. In high school, I made the Master’s Meet (the qualifier for the state meet) in my sophomore and senior seasons and was looking forward to the state meet, but something always happened and I didn’t make it. Coach Lopez and I don’t want to count chickens before they hatch.

“Our main goal is just to run fast.”