Graham Running With a Fast Crowd : Track: Former Hawthorne High star in California after three-year absence. He will compete in elite 440-yard field at Sunkist Invitational.

Michael Graham, who will compete in the 440-yard run today at the Sunkist Invitational Track Meet at the Sports Arena, says it’s great to be back in the Southern California track scene after a three-year absence.

The 23-year-old former Hawthorne High track standout moved to Iowa in 1987 and has been competing primarily in the Midwest since. Recently, however, he moved to Irvine to train with Olympic hurdler Danny Harris, who also attended Iowa State. Graham will run in a tough 440-yard field that includes Antonio McKay, a former indoor world-record holder in the 400 meters and a 1988 Olympic gold medalist in the 4x100 relay. Kevin Little of Drake University and Chris Nelloms, a national high school record-holder in the 100 hurdles, will also present a challenge.

But the 5-10, 158-pound Graham should hold his own. He was a three-time All-American at Iowa State, where he helped the Cyclones win three Big Eight championships. Graham competed in the 400 meters, 400-meter hurdles, 4x100 relay and the 1,600-meter relay.

As a sophomore he placed second in the 400 hurdles at the Big Eight meet, and as a senior he won that event. In his junior and senior seasons, he reached the semifinals of the 400 hurdles at the NCAA championship meet.

“Every year I fell short,” Graham said after an intense workout at the UC Irvine track. “It was kind of disappointing.”

But Graham says he was satisfied with his overall performance at Iowa State. He transferred there from USC after his freshman year because USC couldn’t offer him a scholarship, only some financial aid.

“That’s the main reason I left,” he said. “I couldn’t afford it. It just wasn’t what I expected.”

Graham says he was also

disappointed at USC because coaches questioned his ability to compete in the hurdles, saying he was too short.

“I didn’t like that,” Graham said. “It just wasn’t comfortable for me over there. I knew I had to go.”

It is not as if Graham didn’t have other choices. Practically every major university in the country recruited him after his spectacular career at Hawthorne. He chose USC so that he could stay in Southern California.

As a Trojan he set a freshman record in the 400 hurdles (50.40) and qualified for the U.S. National Junior Team that competed in Europe. He also placed fourth at the Pacific 10 meet in the 400 hurdles.

Ernie Bullard, USC’s track coach at the time, said there are no hard feelings between him and Graham.

“I couldn’t get him a scholarship, and he was very deserving of one,” said Bullard, who quit coaching last year to become an assistant athletic director for USC. “He was a good student and a very hard worker. We would have liked to keep him.”

Graham did not transfer to a Pac-10 school because conference policy says an athlete transferring within the league must sit out two years. He competed immediately at Iowa State, on a full scholarship, after USC released him.

Graham went to Iowa State because Harris recommended the school. A longtime friend of Graham, Harris competed at Perris High and went on to win three NCAA titles (1984, ’85 and ‘86) in the 400 hurdles at Iowa State. He also won a silver medal in that event at the 1984 Olympics.

“He told me to come, that the coaching was good and I could contribute a lot to the team,” Graham said. “The hardest thing was adjusting to the snow. They really take the indoor season seriously over there.”

At first Graham was homesick for warm, sunny winter days, but it never affected the standard of performance he had learned at Hawthorne, one of the country’s premier high school track programs.

Graham competed for two years at McAteer High in San Francisco before moving in with an uncle in Hawthorne for his last two years of high school. At McAteer, Graham won the city title in the 70-meter hurdles and placed second in the high jump.

At Hawthorne he was part of two state champion teams. He ran on the Cougar 4x400 relay team that set a national high school record (3:07.40) in Texas.

As a junior, Graham placed fourth in the state in the 300 hurdles and ran the second leg on Hawthorne’s state champion mile relay team.

As a senior, he recorded the second-fastest high school time in the nation in the 300 hurdles. He placed second to Cabrillo High’s George Porter in that event at the state meet. Porter went on to USC, where he was a top-five NCAA hurdler in 1988 and 1989.

“Michael ran everything from the 100 to the 800, and he was good at all of them,” said Hawthorne Coach Kye Courtney, who has led the Cougars to seven state titles. “That’s why everybody wanted him as a senior: UCLA, Cal, USC, Nebraska, Texas--you name it.”

Courtney says Graham’s stock went up during the 1985 state championship meet in Sacramento. Two of Hawthorne’s top athletes missed the meet--standout sprinter Henry Thomas with appendicitis and Sean Kelly with mononucleosis. Graham helped pick up the slack under tremendous pressure.

“I told Mike (Marsh), ‘You have to win the 200,’ and I told Michael (Graham), ‘You have to place second in the hurdles,’ ” Courtney said. “They did, and we won the meet with 28 points.”

Thomas and Marsh competed at UCLA, where they were highly ranked sprinters. Kelly went to the University of Texas.

“It helped me so much to be part of a program that was so organized and developed,” Graham said. “I had never seen anything like it. Running with a guy like Henry Thomas really helped me develop.”

Talent-wise, Courtney says the class of 1985 was the best group he’s had at Hawthorne and that Graham is one of the best all-around athletes he’s coached.

“He was tremendous, and his work ethic is outstanding,” Courtney said. “He was also extremely dedicated, which is rare in kids that age. Anything I asked him to do, he would do it.”

Graham says he’ll continue training in Irvine and gearing up for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. But he also has a back-up plan. He majored in philosophy at Iowa State and plans to attend law school in September.

His first choice is Loyola Marymount. This time he doesn’t plan on leaving Southern California.