As a Senior, His Competition Is the Clock : Running: Louie Quintana’s rivals are graduated, so his chief motivation is to become high school sports’ fourth sub-four minute miler.

One school of thought is that Louie Quintana, Arroyo Grande High’s talented senior middle distance runner, is his own worst enemy because he is too good.

This fall, the undefeated Quintana has broken several cross-country course records and is favored to win Saturday’s state final at Woodward Park in Fresno. However, winning every prep race is expected from the nation’s best high school miler, and no matter how he dominates his competition, Quintana ultimately will be judged on whether he breaks four minutes in the mile next spring.

Only three prep milers have reached this mark: Jim Ryun, 3:55.3 in 1965; Tim Danielson, 3:59.4 in 1966, and Marty Liquori, 3:59.8 in 1967.

Quintana became a candidate when he ran a 4:08.65 in the 1,600 meters last spring. Since his freshman year, Quintana has been the nation’s top miler in his class every year.

“After I ran a 4:19 in the mile my freshman year, my coach (Greg DeNike) and I talked about the four-minute barrier,” said Quintana, 5 feet 10, 140 pounds. “It was really low-key then, but now it’s really emerged. I feel that I have a shot to do it, but it’s going to take a lot of work.”

Liquori, a track commentator for cable television’s ESPN, says Quintana has a realistic chance to achieve his goal.

“I don’t know if he will break four minutes, but if he can run 4:08 as a junior, there is no reason why he cannot run four flat as a senior,” Liquori said. “I only ran a 4:13 my junior year.

“Quintana will face a lot of pressure that is self-imposed: The pressure that this is his last shot, and that he can’t do it next year. Everyone only remembers if you do it or not in high school.”

DeNike, who has coached five boys’ and girls’ Southern Section cross-country championship teams in his 15 years at Arroyo Grande, says that Quintana can handle the pressure.

“What sets him apart is his whole approach,” DeNike said. “He’s very talented, but a lot of kids have the same talent as him. He just works harder than the rest and is a team player. What’s so unusual is that he’s an elite athlete in an individual sport where a lot of motivation is ego-driven, but you don’t see that in him.

Expectations were high for Quintana before this cross-country season, and so far he has met the challenge.

In a series of early-season races, Quintana destroyed the Stanford Invitational course record by more than a minute with a winning time of 14:47; set a record at the Virginia Invitational in Charlottesville, in 15:26, and ran away with the Clovis Invitational in Fresno by finishing 46 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.

No one has come close to defeating Quintana this cross-country season, and he has emerged as the favorite to win the Kinney National Championship at Balboa Park in San Diego, Dec. 8. However, he has not always been in the favorite role.

Before this season, Quintana seemed destined to be a permanent runner-up. Despite being considered one of the best runners in the state, Quintana competed against two outstanding Southern California runners: Bryan Dameworth of Agoura, who won four consecutive state cross-country titles, and Coley Candaele of Carpinteria, who won last year’s state 1,600-meters title.

“At one point I felt that they had a lot on me,” Quintana said. “I used to ask myself, ‘Do I have to wait forever to win a CIF title?’ What they did do for me was make me work a little harder.”

Over the last two years, Quintana gained notice for his battles with those two older rivals. Last year, Quintana ran his best cross-country race of the season at the Mt. San Antonio Invitational, where he finished second to Dameworth.

“He beat me by four seconds,” Quintana said. “We battled back and forth the whole race, and he out-kicked me at the end. It was an intense race, but I gave him a good scare.”

Quintana also shadowed Dameworth in the Southern Section 2-A Division, state Division I and Kinney West regional championships.

“In the back of my mind, I knew I had a shot to beat (Dameworth),” Quintana said. “But, he always beat me in the last 800 meters of the race. I would use up a lot of my strength trying to stay with him, and my leg speed would not be there at the end.”

Once he stopped chasing Dameworth--who is sitting out his freshman year at Wisconsin because of a stress fracture--on the cross-country courses, Quintana turned to his rivalry with Candaele on the track. In last spring’s state 1,600-meter final, they met in a thrilling race in which the Carpinteria senior out-kicked Quintana to win.

“That was probably the most tactical race in my life,” Quintana said. “All season long, I tried not to let (Candaele) see my plans. What I tried to do was run the third lap hard to try to knock out his leg speed. It almost worked.”

Quintana nearly stole the race by taking a commanding lead with 600 meters remaining. It took a frantic kick from Candaele, now a University of Oregon freshman, to prevent an upset.

“I really was not that disappointed that I lost because I knew that I had executed my race as well as I possibly could,” Quintana said. “Coley just had what Dameworth had . . . that little extra strength that I didn’t have.”

Quintana says that he misses his races against Dameworth and Candaele.

“They were great competitors and were fun to run against,” Quintana said. “This year it is not the same. I’ve been running against the clock in almost every race.”

When he was in elementary school, Quintana imagined himself as a basketball player, not a runner.

“I started running in seventh grade as a training thing for basketball,” he said. “My first race was a school meet and I ran a course record for 1.3 miles. I didn’t expect to win, so the record was a surprise.

“Because I was not used to winning because all of the teams I had ever played for had lost, I liked track after that. I went on to run in a couple of more races, but it was nothing serious until I got to high school.”

Once in high school, Quintana emerged as Arroyo Grande’s top runner. In training 45 miles a week, Quintana has shown the ability to run 49.2 seconds in the 400 meters, 1:51.91 in the 800 meters, and 9:12 in the 3,200 meters. This year, he has become even stronger thanks to an off-season weight training program.

Liquori says Quintana may need to increase his training mileage, along with his weight workouts, to run under four minutes in the mile.

“I don’t know if he is trying to pace himself or not, but his chances of breaking the mark are not as good as if he was running 80 to 100 miles a week,” Liquori said. “There are so many factors out there for him from picking his races well to training. I wish him luck.”