Dana Hills’ Sullivan Adds Plenty of Distance to His Drives : Cross-country: After leaving golf behind, runner gains confidence and picks up the pace.

Brendan Sullivan of Dana Hills High School is a champion cross-country runner, but nobody expected him to be one, including himself.

Sullivan set out to be a golfer, having played the sport since he was 7. After all, Sullivan and others thought he didn’t have any running ability--that he was too slow.

At the Orange County Cross-Country Championships on Oct. 13, Sullivan, a senior, placed fifth in the boys’ seeded race. He covered the three-mile course in 15 minutes 39 seconds, 20 seconds behind the race-winner, teammate Daniel Niednagel. Niednagel is one of the best runners in the state. Sullivan is no longer considered slow.

Sullivan’s transformation from golfer to runner began four years ago--before his freshman year of high school--when he moved to California from New Jersey. He ended up in a spring physical education class taught by Tim Butler, Dana Hills’ cross-country and track coach. Sullivan ran a 6:07 mile in the class and Butler invited him to try out for the cross-country team, which would compete in the fall.

“I try to encourage all the kids in my P.E. class to come out for cross-country,” Butler said.

Sullivan was “bored” and looking for a team sport, but didn’t know anything about cross-country.

“I never thought I’d be a good runner,” said Sullivan, 17. “That wasn’t my motive for going out. I just did it because I wanted to do a sport and I figured if the coach thought I could make the team, I might as well try it.”

When Sullivan told his family he was going to join the cross-country team, he received a less-than-enthusiastic response.

“They (my sisters and mother) laughed at me,” Sullivan said. “But my dad didn’t.”

Sullivan’s father, Kevin, competed for the state championship team at New Canaan High School in Connecticut in 1961.

“He is the one who came up with the idea of running cross-country and I encouraged him to do so because I knew the sport required as much mental toughness as fitness,” Kevin Sullivan said. “But his sisters and mom didn’t think it was the sport for him.”

Sullivan’s sisters, Molly, 18, and Brigid, 21, who is a coxswain for the University of San Diego crew team, were athletic in high school but didn’t think their brother could run well.

“They just said, ‘You aren’t cut out to be a runner,’ ” he recalled.

Perhaps his family was mindful of the time when, as a toddler, Sullivan broke two bones in his right foot. He was sitting on his uncle’s lap on the family’s porch when the two fell off the porch, his uncle landing on top of him.

Sullivan says the injury didn’t affect his mobility, but his parents disagree.

“It made him slow as far as learning to walk and run,” his father said.

But after Sullivan made the cross-country team, he made up for the slow start. He started on the junior varsity team, steadily improving each week in the 1988 season. Although he was a lot slower than others on the team, it didn’t bother him much.

“I didn’t really get down on myself because each race I was running 30 seconds faster than the previous one. I just kept picking it up,” he said.

So much so that Sullivan ended the season as the fifth man on Dana Hills’ Division I state championship team. But Sullivan, who ran a personal best of 16:42 over the 5,000-meter course at Fresno’s Woodward Park, finished in 89th place--far behind the team’s other runners. In contrast, Dana Hills’ No. 1 runner, Mike Tansley, was fifth in 15:21, more than a minute faster. Sullivan proved he was a good runner, though far from great.

Sullivan made little progress his junior year when the Dana Hills’ team finished ninth in the 4-A Southern Section Finals. Sullivan, who competed on the junior varsity golf team his freshman and sophomore years, attended a tryout for the varsity team, but failed to make it. Butler convinced him that putting some extra mileage in on the track team would improve his running.

During the spring, Sullivan ran 4:27 for 1,600 meters, finishing second in the South Coast League finals.

Sullivan’s new-found confidence carried over to this year’s cross-country season. At the Dana Hills Invitational on Sept. 29, Sullivan surprised Butler again. He finished second in a time of 15:00, nine seconds behind Niednagel, moving to sixth on Dana Hills’ all-time list.

“I simply didn’t think of Brendan as a guy who could run with the top four or five guys on our all-time list,” Butler said. “I didn’t think he was in the same class.”

Neither did Niednagel.

“I finished the race, turned around and he was right behind me,” Niednagel said. “I knew he was good and he was getting better, but not that much better.”

Sullivan, who holds a 3.5 grade-point average, is the senior class president and wants to attend an Ivy League school. He has also caught the eye of college coaches. Bob Rothenberg, the men’s cross-country and track coach at Brown University, is one.

“He seems to have improved an awful lot since last year--the difference is considerable and I think part of that is due to training with good people,” Rothenberg said. “That is an advantage he has.”

Rothenberg, who coached former University High runner Greg Whiteley, a five-time National Collegiate Athletic Assn. All-American in cross-country and track, said he prefers working with a “late bloomer.”

“There are two ends of the spectrum,” he said. “For instance, take a runner who has worked many years and has been doing double workouts for years. He knows how to train hard, but is he a finished project? Or there’s the runner who is just starting to improve and it’s exciting to see. I would rather see someone who has a long way to go.”

Rothenberg sees Sullivan as such a prospect.

“Cross-country is the type of sport that if you work hard, you will improve,” Rothenberg said. “If your heart is big and you are into running, you will be successful. And I have a feeling that Brendan has an awful big heart.”

Sullivan’s goals this year include helping Dana Hills, which has won six consecutive South Coast League championships, qualify for the Nov. 10 Southern Section prelims in Walnut. He hopes to run faster than his best time of 16:41.