Teacher Turns Student to Make the Grade as a Runner at LBCC

Dew glittered on the graceful contours of La Mirada Regional Park last Saturday morning as Patrick McKean, a Long Beach City College teacher, broke from the starting line as a member of the school’s cross-country team.

In his uniform of black shorts and a red tank top bearing the initials LBCC, he would run four miles, hopefully in 22 1/2 minutes, past pines, eucalyptuses, a shining lake and, to make the paradise complete, his proud father.

McKean is in his second season with the Vikings, the only school athletic team he has ever made. “I made one bad attempt at C basketball,” McKean said, recalling the disappointment he and his parents felt when he was 5 feet 4 and failed to make the 10th-grade team at Ventura High School.

Now, at 5-10 and 140 pounds, he possesses the same lean frame as many of his teammates who are 15 years younger. He is 34, but his narrow face, accented by pale blue eyes and a prominent nose, is smooth, and the gray flecks in his dark hair are not easily noticed.

This appearance and an easygoing nature allow McKean, though nicknamed “Teacher,” to blend in with his teammates. “We don’t consider him a teacher or an old person,” sophomore Clarence Allums said as he and McKean stretched Saturday before the Cerritos College Invitational meet.

Andrew Tansley, another teammate who once had been a student in McKean’s class, said, “I thought it was weird at first, having someone so old. But he’s just one of the guys. He adds life to the team. He’s kind of our leader, in a different way than a running leader. A lot of people ask him for advice.”

That is how McKean likes to be perceived. “They respect me for what I know, but I can also go out and run and shoot the bull with them,” he said. “I try not to be the authority figure out there because I want to relax, too.”

He has driven the team van but prefers to let coaches do that. “If we have a flat tire they take care of it, I’m just a runner,” he said.

McKean, a USC graduate, has taught journalism since 1988 at the community college at Clark Avenue and Carson Street. He had been a copy editor at the Orange County Register and then, until it went out of business, at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

When he arrived at Long Beach City College he was a veteran runner, having trained seriously since watching Carlos Lopes, 36, win the marathon in the 1984 Olympics. Aware that distance runners tend to reach their prime in their 30s, McKean figured he was a candidate for the Viking cross-country and track teams.

“And I hadn’t used up my eligibility before,” he said.

He called Viking Coach Ron Allice, whose principles include never cutting anyone who tries out. Allice assured McKean that other older runners, even some with full-time jobs, had been on the team in the past.

Soon came the thrilling day when McKean received a school uniform for the first time.

“I was like a little kid,” he said, the memory still fresh and exciting. “I thought, ‘Wow, I made the team,’ even though everybody in cross-country makes the team. I went up to my dad’s (in Ventura) that weekend, showed the shorts, the shirt and the sweats off to him and my sister and three brothers. They were all proud. I was like, ‘Gosh, I feel like sleeping in them.’ ”

Any student is allowed to compete two seasons in a community college sport, and McKean had to become one again to be eligible. He takes the required 12 credits a semester, mostly in physical education, and also teaches newswriting and serves as faculty adviser for the student newspaper.

“It’s not the toughest academic schedule, but it’s legal and official,” said McKean, who has straight A’s.

Each day at 3 p.m., his classes over, McKean practices with his teammates, trying to keep up with them. “He’s totally involved,” said Allice, who in 11 seasons has eight state track titles, but none in cross-country. “He has a very positive influence on the guys. He’s really a joy to have as part of the program.”

Under Allice and graduate assistant Tyrus Deminter, an All-American at the school in 1982-83, McKean has improved greatly. Before coming to Long Beach he had completed each of the first four Los Angeles Marathons in about 4 1/2 hours. He ran the fifth in March in 3:26.

Also last spring he finished eighth in the 10,000-meter run to record a point for the Viking track team in the South Coast Conference championship meet. “We won by 8 or 10 points and we joked that mine was the turning point,” he said.

In cross-country, McKean can generally be found in the middle of the pack in weekly competition against the top runners in Southern California. He said opponents do not seem to mind passing someone almost old enough to be their father, nor do they complain when he passes them.

“I’ve moved almost up to the top 50% of big (meets), usually about 70th out of 135 runners,” McKean said last Friday in his office at the school newspaper. “I’m hoping tomorrow, with a weaker field, that I will break into the top 50%.”

McKean has found team competition much more demanding than “huffing along” in 5-Ks and 10-Ks in Downey and Cerritos. “There have been many times when I churned up a hill in 105-degree heat, chewing my teammates’ dust, wondering why in the world I’m doing this,” he said. “I could be in the air-conditioned office grading papers or out playing a leisurely round of golf.”

What has hooked him is team spirit.

“We have the potential to be state champions,” he said. “I’m glad to be ninth-string and part of that.”

The realization that his belated but brief college career is nearing an end seemed to sadden McKean. “I have tomorrow and next week (at the conference championships),” he said. “Then I’m going to run track next spring, and I’m hoping to qualify in the 10,000 in the state meet.”

The teacher got off to a good start in Saturday’s race for runners eighth and lower on their teams. At the halfway mark, he and teammate Andy Dale noticed something unusual--they could still see the leaders.

But McKean soon started to tire and dropped to his customary position in the middle of the pack, if, with the small field, it could be called a pack. But he finished strong, sprinting up a little hill to the finish line.

In a field of 26, he was 15th with a time of 23:36. He was still not in the top 50% but he had bettered his time over the same course last year by 20 seconds.

Sweat glistened on him like the dew had on the grass. “I ran as hard as I could,” he said. “My left foot kind of cramped. I dream of 22:30, but it’s always tougher than it looks on Thursday.”

His father, Mack McKean, who had driven from Ventura and joined the few other spectators, shook his son’s hand. As they stood there under a tree, the older man in his jeans and the runner in his cherished uniform, the disappointment both had felt so long ago when Mack’s boy had been cut from the basketball team had vanished.