SAN DIEGO COLLEGE NOTEBOOK / JIM LINDGREN : Cross-Country Trip Wasn’t Needed Here

College coaches often travel hundreds of miles to recruit athletes.

Then again, it sometimes pays just to look down the street.

Rich Cota, University of San Diego cross-country coach, was driving along Linda Vista Road near USD last Thursday when he saw a young woman running up the steep grade.

“Hmm,” he thought to himself. “Good form. Good speed. I’ve got to . . .”

Suddenly, Cota slowed, rolled down his window and yelled, “Hey, who do you run for?”

“No one,” she said. “I just go to USD.”

“Have you ever thought about cross-country?”

“Oh, you must be Rich Cota. I thought about it, but I have classes that interfere with your practice time.”

“Come by my office Monday, and we’ll work something out.”

The conversation, which lasted just a few moments longer, took place with Cota in his car and the woman still running.

Afterward, Cota talked with Carolyn Greer, USD’s trainer, and decided he couldn’t even wait until Monday; he called the woman Friday instead. They worked out a plan--with the team’s blessing--in which she would train on her own when she couldn’t make practice.

That’s how Cota landed Julie Lemery, who played basketball the past two seasons with the Toreras.

Lemery, who had run competitively since the fifth grade, helped Lewis & Clark High in Spokane, Wash., to a fourth-place finish in the Washington cross-country championships her junior year but didn’t compete as a senior. She wanted to concentrate on basketball.

In her freshman year at USD, Lemery, who is 5-feet-11, started 12 of 27 games and averaged 2.5 points and 4.7 rebounds. Her numbers fell off a bit last year, and she had decided not to play this fall. She said basketball was too time-consuming, interfering with her studies--she has a 3.55 grade-point average in accounting--and also with her enjoyment of some other things the university has to offer.

Cross-country, she said, shouldn’t be too much of a problem, because she runs every day anyway.

“I’m kind of nervous about (competing),” Lemery said. “The first race, I’m just going to have to go with the flow. I’m more in endurance shape than I am race shape.”

Said Cota, “To be honest, I don’t have any expectations (for Lemery). We’re just not sure how she’s going to do. We’ll just have to see her in that first race and take it from there.”

That first race will be Saturday in the Aztec Invitational.

The 48th Aztec Invitational--beginning at 9 a.m. at Morley Field--is the largest and longest-running invitational west of the Mississippi, according to San Diego State Coach Jim Cerveny, the race director.

More than 700 runners from more than 60 men’s and women’s teams are expected to compete in the meet, which features two races for the men (each at 8,000 meters) and two for the women (at 5,000 meters). A few prominent local runners, such as Thom Hunt, also will run.

More cross-country:

--SDSU will travel more 26,000 miles this year, including trips to Japan, Hawaii and Utah. Said Cerveny, “Not bad for a program that has no money.”

The trip to Japan is sponsored. Hawaii will provide lodging, and athletes will pay their air fare for that trip.

--SDSU’s women’s team will compete in the Western Athletic Conference for the first time this fall. To prepare the team for the high-altitude courses it will run, Cerveny held a week-long training camp at a ski lodge (elevation: 8,000 feet) near Flagstaff, Ariz.

--Point Loma Nazarene Coach Jim Crakes, who has been conducting training camps for going on 30 years, said this year’s trip to Mammoth Lakes was one of his best ever: “It was just a real good time. The scenery was stunning. The weather was perfect. It was just inspirational.”

Proving a college sports information director’s job is never done, PLNC’s Dan Van Ommen went along as the team chef. How did he do?

“I’d say on a scale of 10, he’s close to an eight, 7.95,” Crakes said. “Considering we were roughing it, he was great. One of our accomplishments was going through three meals a day all week without any hamburger.”

--PLNC’s Goshu Tadese, who won the men’s NAIA District 3 championship last year, is taking a semester off from competing to concentrate on school.

“It’s not that he’s done so poorly,” Crakes said. “He just wants to do better in academics.”