Runner Proves She Can Go the Distance : Track: South Hills High’s Karen Hecox has the state’s top 1,600-meter time as she heads for the big meets.

Ever since she stepped on a track in high school, Karen Hecox of South Hills High in West Covina has pretty much proven that she can go the distance.

The 17-year-old senior has reached the state track final, in either the 1,600- or the 3,200-meter runs, three straight times and and advanced to the state cross- country championship each of the first three years that the meet has been held.

Included in those appearances were first-place finishes in the state Division II cross-country final and the 3,200 meters at the state track meet, both in 1988.

In fact, she has never finished worse than fourth in the state track finals or less than third in the cross-country championships.

About the only question is: What is her best distance?

The answer may be open to debate but there isn’t much uncertainty in the mind of Hecox.

“I think at this point in time I’m best at 1,600 meters because I haven’t run many 3,200 meters this season,” she said.

But her coach, Mike Gomez, isn’t quite convinced.

“Right now she runs a lot more 1,600s and I think it’s her favorite event,” he said. “But if you asked people what her best event is, it might be the 3,200. I think she likes the 1,600 better but the 3,200 is her best distance.”

As a senior she has already demonstrated that she is quite capable at both longer and shorter distance events. She has produced the fastest time in the state this season, 4:52.04, in the 1,600.

“I think she’s a strong kid at either distance,” Gomez says. “I’m not sure there is anybody in high school who can shift gears from one distance to another as well as she can.”

That leaves Hecox in the enviable position of being able to run either or both at her final state track meet in early June.

“I think after the CIF Master’s (meet) she’ll make a decision,” her coach said. “It’s kind of like it was last year for her but there are good kids at each distance. It just depends on the competition.”

Gomez said he is not going to push Hecox to run both distances in the state meet.

“If she decides to do both it’s OK but it’s up to her,” he said. “We’d like to win both events but we’re not greedy.”

Hecox says that she will probably focus on one event like she has done in each of her first three appearances in the meet.

“I’ll probably be doing both through CIF (Master’s) and after CIF I’ll probably drop one for state but I don’t know which one it will be yet,” she said.

This time Hecox is hoping for a better performance than last year, when she finished third in the state meet in the 1,600 in 4:55.48.

“It was disappointing to me, not because I won the year before,” she said. “I just fell apart in that race. I just wasn’t myself.”

That has made Hecox more determined than ever to succeed in the state meet this time.

“I don’t think it makes me any more focused,” she said. “All of the time I’ve been pretty focused. But as a senior coming off last year’s meet I want to do well for myself just to show I can do it.”

The senior year didn’t start in the best fashion for Hecox.

She suffered a leg injury early in the cross-country season that forced her to miss most of her league meets.

All the same, Hecox still finished the cross-country season impressively. She finished second at the Southern Section 2-A Division meet in 18:29 and third at the state Division II final in 18:18.

While her best sport has been track, Hecox has also excelled on the basketball court. As a starting point guard last season, she averaged 9.8 points and 3.4 assists to help lead the Huskies into the Southern Section playoffs. She also received All-Valle Vista League and honorable mention All-Valley honors.

“I like track the best but there are some things I like about basketball more,” Hecox says. “I like the team aspect in basketball over the individual aspect of track. But at my school we have a pretty good girls distance team so we stick together and we’re all pretty good friends.”

Gomez said the distance runner’s success in basketball is an indication of her strong, competitive nature.

“She’s just a very competitive person,” he said. “It’s not everyone who can play basketball in the off-season and make all-league. She’s got great quickness and she’s just a super-intelligent kid.”

Hecox has stood out on the high school track circuit despite the fact that she is small for distance runners at only 5-4 and 105 pounds.

“She is able to get the maximum out of the minimum,” Gomez said. “She has such a natural reaction to running and she’s got a good leg kick. She’s a tiny person but she has grown a lot since her freshman year.”

In addition, Hecox said, she has benefited this season from a more difficult distance-running regimen.

“This year we kind of decided to have three weeks where we upped the mileage,” she said. “We used to run 25 miles a week and this year for three weeks we’re running 35 miles.

“It really helps me even if it’s just to build my confidence because I heard some of the other girls (from other teams) telling me how far they were going and I felt like I was doing nothing.”

As the Southern Section and state meets approach, she said, it also helps to have her college plans for next season settled.

Hecox had narrowed her choice of schools to UCLA, Stanford, UC Irvine and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo before signing a national letter of intent with UCLA last week. But it was not an easy decision.

“It was a tough decision for her,” Gomez said. “She had a couple of the other schools that she was really interested in.”

She said the recruiting process wasn’t quite as difficult as she had thought it would be, though.

“A lot of schools sent letters but I decided pretty early that I didn’t want to go out of state,” she said. “So I didn’t have to deal with a lot of places that I didn’t want to go. I heard a lot of horror stories about kids getting a lot of phone calls from recruiters but I think I was pretty straight with them all along and told them up front whether I was interested or not.”

Still, it was not until April 13 that she finally decided to sign with the Bruins.

“I was starting to put it off but my dad said I should do it,” Hecox said. “He said it would be good for the school and take a weight off me and I think it did.”

Gomez, for one, believes that Hecox has a bright future in track.

“It’s more of a phenomenon that’s going to come with time,” he says. “I would hope that she looks into the future four or eight years as to what she can accomplish in running.

“I see it as this kid will only get better with tougher competition. I don’t think she’s going to hit a certain level in college and just plateau there.”

But for the moment, Hecox is focusing on finishing her senior season with a flurry and she has been making progress in the right direction.

“I can see it more and more in my workouts,” she said. “Just over the last two weeks I feel like I’m improving and doing a lot better.”

With the Southern Section and state meets looming just ahead, Hecox is hoping that she has saved her best for last.