RUNNING : Eagles Soar in National Meet Without Benefit of a Top Sprinter

Unlike previous years’ squads, the West Valley Eagles track club has no standout sprinter. But that has not prevented the Canoga Park-based team from excelling at the national level.

There is no Quincy Watts (the USC standout is too old to compete with the Eagles) and no Marion Jones (the Rio Mesa High star is injured) on this year’s team. Yet last weekend the Eagles sent 13 athletes to The Athletics Congress Youth Athletic Championships in Spokane, Wash., and won 39 medals.

Despite winning only one event, the Eagles were the top team in the midget boys’ and girls’ divisions (for 10- and 11-year-olds) in Spokane.

West Valley’s lone victory came in the midget boys’ 400-meter relay, where Larry Phillips, Armone Lochard, Steve Webber and Jalal Milby clocked 49.65 seconds, only .09 seconds off the national record, according to Coach Roger Lipkis.

Michael Granville and Akira Kennett, both 11, were standouts for West Valley. Granville placed second in the midget boys’ 100 (12.41 seconds), 200 (25.29) and 400 (55.22), while Kennett finished second in the midget girls’ 80-meter low hurdles (13.47), long jump (14 feet 8 inches) and pentathlon (2,568 points).

Kennett also ran the third leg on the Eagles’ 400 relay team, which placed third in 51.7.

Granville’s performances were doubly impressive, considering that Lipkis had recruited him off the baseball diamond only two weeks earlier.

“I saw him playing baseball and he looked like he was pretty fast,” Lipkis said. “So I got him to come out. . . . He’s going to be a good one.”

West Valley will compete in The Track City International Classic in Eugene, Ore., July 20-22, before finishing the season at the TAC Junior Olympics in Lincoln, Neb., July 24-29.

Rebuilding: Glendale College, the Western State Conference cross-country champion in 1987 and ‘88, finished second behind Ventura last fall.

However, with four of their top seven runners returning, the addition of one prized recruit and the possible addition of another, the Vaqueros could have enough firepower to reclaim the WSC title.

According to Ed Lopez, the Glendale coach, Obed Aguirre and Robert Nelson will be running for his team in the fall.

Both runners have been working out with the team this summer but Aguirre said last week that he wouldn’t decide between Glendale and Pasadena City College until the end of the month. Aguirre, who graduated from San Fernando High last month, placed fourth in the 3,200 meters (9 minutes 1.11 seconds) at the state track championships in the spring and finished seventh in the state Division I cross-country championships last November.

Nelson, who attended Pasadena last season, placed 10th in the 1989 Southern California junior college regional cross-country championships.

As a senior at Muir High in Pasadena in 1988, Nelson was the runner-up in the Southern Section 4-A Division cross-country championships and placed sixth in the 3,200 (9:09.20) at the state track meet the following spring.

“With those two coming in and with the runners we have coming back, I think we are looking pretty good,” Lopez said.

Trivia time: What do Crissy Mills of USC and Campbell Hall High, Walt Stewart of Cal State Northridge and Melanie Clarke of Valley College have in common?

Break time: Cindy Byrne, the Southern Section 4-A Division champion in the 300-meter low hurdles as a Canyon High junior in 1988, withdrew from CSUN last fall and has no intentions of returning any time soon.

“I went (to CSUN) for a couple of months and I just wasn’t into it like I should have been,” Byrne said. “I was training well, but I just felt like I needed a break.”

After clocking 43.47 to win the 4-A title, Byrne appeared capable of successfully defending her title as a senior but was declared academically ineligible prior to the Southern Section prelims.

“That’s when I first felt like I might need a break,” Byrne said. “But once the summer started, I was back training again. It was like I didn’t really have a summer last year.”

Currently working as a waitress and auditioning for acting roles, Byrne said she misses track but doesn’t plan to compete again in the near future.

“Eventually, I’d like to get back into it,” she said. “But right now, I’m pretty happy doing what I’m doing.”

Time passages: Statistically, this has been the best season of Darcy Arreola’s career. But unless she lowers her personal best in the 1,500 meters at the Sports Festival in Minneapolis tonight, it could also be her most frustrating.

Arreola, who redshirted at CSUN in the spring while running for the Nike Coast track club, has posted personal bests at 800 meters (2:04.05), the mile (4:33.91) and 3,000 meters (9:12.77). She also has run her fastest 5,000 (16:39) on the roads, but her year-old 1,500 best (4:14.15) has proved elusive.

She ran 4:15--the second-fastest time of her career--off a slow early pace to win the Modesto Invitational on May 5. But that remains her season best.

Trivia answer: Each has won at least one significant championship in recent years while being coached by Charlie DiMarco of the Advantage Athletics Track Club.

Mills, who missed her senior season in high school with a knee injury, won the girls’ high jump at the 1988 and ’89 state championships. Stewart won the 1989 NCAA Division II title in the men’s high jump, and Clarke, who also trains with Valley Coach James Harvey, won the heptathlon at the state junior college championships in May and at The Athletics Congress Junior meet in June.