Single-Sport Keeps Hartman on Track

Before his freshman year at Canyon High, Dave Hartman wanted to be a tri-athlete.

No, not the maniacal swim-bike-run type, but of the three-sport, big-man-on-campus variety.

Football, basketball and track were on Hartman’s itinerary when he arrived in 1987 at a high school that eats, drinks and breathes football. And he was working on all three sports in the summer preceding his freshman year.

“During the summer he would work out in the morning with the football team and then, in the evening, he would get on a bike or get a ride from a friend and come to our evening practice to run eight to 10 miles,” said Ed Chaidez, who coached cross-country at Canyon during 1986-88.

Hartman, the No. 2 returning runner in the state, started running weekend five-kilometer races for fun while in junior high. He was unaware he was genetically inclined to be a distance runner.

Hartman’s father Arnold ran indoor track as a freshman at Purdue and was the No. 2 runner on his high school cross-country team, which finished fifth in the Ohio state meet his senior year.

“I didn’t know he was a runner until I started running,” Hartman said.

The elder Hartman was modest about his past.

“I may have mentioned it in passing, but I never really emphasized it,” Arnold said. “I really had no reason to go over it with him until he got into it.”

Like most high school freshmen, Hartman “had no clue” and desired to play football and run cross-country--in the same season.

Such a plan was fine with the freshman football coach but Chaidez threw a prevent defense over the idea.

“I wanted to do both,” Hartman said. “I asked the football coach and he said, ‘Fine.’ I asked Chaidez and he said, ‘No way.’

“He believed you couldn’t be a dedicated runner if you were also doing another sport. So I chose cross-country.”

In his first high school meet, the freshman race in the Colton Invitational, Hartman won in 16 minutes, 36 seconds--the fourth-fastest time among Canyon runners that day.

But Hartman’s most memorable race his freshman year was a Golden League quadrangular meet that included Antelope Valley, the fourth-ranked team in the Southern Section 4-A Division. Hartman outleaned Mike Quin of Antelope Valley to finish second behind teammate Mike Rattary, sparking a Cowboy upset.

Now, in his senior year, Hartman, 17, is gearing up for Arroyo Grande’s Louie Quintana, the top returnee in the nation. Quintana finished second in the state Division I final a year ago while Hartman was sixth. They were the top underclassmen in the state and have emerged as the best this season.

In the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational on Oct. 20, Hartman timed 14:51--the seventh-fastest mark on the course to date--in finishing second to Quintana. With his 14:40, Quintana moved to fifth on the all-time list.

Blessed with broad shoulders, a barrel-like upper body and thighs that would make cyclists envious, Hartman might have fit in well on Canyon’s powerful football team. Instead, the 5-foot-11, 154-pound Hartman used his strength to gain stature as the Southern Section 4-A cross-country champion. He relies mainly on endurance in races rather than an explosive kick at the finish.

“You ask Dave to take off his shirt and he looks like a football player,” cross-country Coach Dave DeLong said. “He doesn’t look like a runner. He’s got this huge rib cage and big (chest).”

Fortunately, tackling is not legal in cross-country.

“Just to see him run hill repeats the way he does, the word that comes to mind is ‘strength,’ ” said DeLong, in his second year as head coach at Canyon. I’ve never seen that type of strength in a runner.

“I’ve coached the more fluid runners like Sasha Vujic (Burroughs, 1988) and Dan Berkeland (Canyon, 1990), but they didn’t have the overall strength that Dave has.”

Chaidez went as far as to compare Hartman to former running greats Dave Babiracki and Steve Prefontaine.

“He kind of reminds me of (Babiracki and Prefontaine), where you have a barrel-like upper body and a lot of lung capacity,” Chaidez said.

Babiracki, a former Granada Hills High, Valley College and Brigham Young standout, won a national 20-kilometer road-race championship in the mid-70s. Prefontaine simultaneously held every U. S. record from the 3,000 to the 10,000 meters and placed fourth in the 5,000 in the 1972 Munich Olympics. He died in an automobile accident in 1975.

Hartman’s strength has developed over a relatively short career. Once a run-for-fun type, Hartman only started competitive training before his freshman year at Canyon.

While in the eighth grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Hartman started racing five-kilometer events almost every weekend and maintained a three- to four-mile daily training regimen in between.

“I had never heard of running intervals,” Hartman said. “Running up a hill, coming down and running up the same hill again. “

Although Hartman maintains above-average grades and writes a sports column for Canyon’s school newspaper, most of his studying appears to be in newspaper agate pages and running magazines.

True, he wants to see how his opposition is running. But he remembers marks from as long as three years ago and can make accurate predictions on how a runner will fare on a particular course.

“He has all these runners’ times, from last year, two years ago and three years ago, memorized,” DeLong said. “He’s a true student of the sport.”