El Camino’s Polk Is Searching for Identity : Colleges: Standout middle-distance runner wants comparisons to her predecessor to end.

At first LaToya Polk felt pressured when coaches and teammates at El Camino College told complimentary stories about her predecessor, Sharette Garcia. Polk is the Warriors’ top middle-distance runner this season, but she’s still competing against records set by Garcia the past two years.

Garcia, who received a track scholarship at Arizona State, won two 800-meter state titles and a 1,500-meter title during her community college career. She was also on the Warriors’ state championship mile relay team. Her teammates called her “monster” because she succeeded in every event she competed in. Garcia also helped El Camino win the 1990 state cross-country championship with a sixth-place finish at the state meet.

“The first thing I heard when I came here was that Sharette Garcia won four state titles,” the soft-spoken Polk said. “She’ll always be there until I break her records.”

The freshman from Hamilton High came to a quick conclusion shortly after enrolling at El Camino: Expectations would be high because she competes in all of Garcia’s events (the 800, 1,500 and mile relay).

Inevitably, Polk is constantly compared to Garcia, a petite athlete from Belize who was highly recruited after two seasons at El Camino. She says however, that Garcia’s lingering presence doesn’t intimidate her like it once did.

“When I first came here all I heard was ‘Sharette did this, Sharette did that. Sharette won a state title in this. Sharette won a state title in that,’ ” Polk said. “Yeah, I guess sometimes I still feel pressure because I know I have big shoes to fill. When they look at me they naturally think. . . . Garcia. I’m flattered because of the things she’s accomplished. I’m in awe at what she did. I can’t even find the words. . . .

“But I’m not Sharette. I’m LaToya. We’re two different people.”

But their stories are similar. Like Garcia, Polk didn’t compete seriously until her junior year in high school. Both women were recruited by Division I colleges, but failed to score the minimum 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test to compete as freshmen under NCAA guidelines. Both athletes are solid in the 800 and 1,500 as well as short and distance relays and both compete in cross-country to prepare for track.

El Camino Coach Terry McFate believes that Polk will develop into a top-notch NCAA Division I prospect by the end of her community college career.

“The comparisons are not fair, but it’s helped Toya because she can say ‘if Sharette did it, so can I.’ ” McFate said. “All of this (community college) stuff will help her out. Sharette started late in high school and by the time she left here she could have gone anywhere in the U.S. Every major university recruited her. The same will happen to Toya.”

Polk, 18, already has the state’s top time in the 800 (2:13.5) this season and she ranks second to East Los Angeles College’s Gracie Padilla (4:32.17) in the 1,500 (4:44.4). She also runs the first leg in El Camino’s 1,600-meter relay team, which ranks No. 1 in the state (3:52.81), and she anchors the Warriors’ distance medley relay team.

Last week she helped the Warriors sweep the community college team title at the Fresno Relays. El Camino is 4-0 in the South Coast Conference and a contender to win its third state championship May 17-18 at Sacramento City College. McFate expects Polk to qualify for the state meet with strong performances at the Southern California Championships on May 11.

“She has really blossomed fast,” said McFate, who has coached the El Camino women for the past eight years. “She’s still inexperienced and therefore lacks some confidence, but within a year she’ll be real good.”

Polk started running late because she was a member of Hamilton’s drill team until her sophomore year. A friend suggested she try out for track and the idea appealed to Polk who was tired of performing dance routines.

She laughs when recalling her first experience with the track team as a junior. She was so out of shape that warm-ups seemed grueling.

“I couldn’t even run two laps,” she said. “I didn’t really take it seriously. It was just something to do. The coaches just put me out there to do the 100 and the long jump.”

By her senior year, Polk was serious about track. She started training hard and went undefeated in the 800 during the regular season. She improved from 2:30 in her first 800-meter race to 2:11.5 by the end of the season.

Polk won the City 800-meter title and placed fourth at the state meet. She was an All-Western League and All-City selection and went on to place fifth at the junior national meet in Fresno that summer.

In June, she will compete in the junior nationals in Minnesota. Polk qualified for that meet last year when she ran a 2:11 in the 800.

“When she first came out for track she couldn’t even run a full mile without stopping,” Hamilton track Coach Bruce Thomson said. “What she did in six months is very uncommon. She really made a big jump. She went from a pretty good high school runner to a national level high school runner in just six months.”

Thomson believes Polk will benefit by competing at El Camino. He says her lack of experience would have made it difficult to jump into a Division I program out of high school.

“Going to a (community college) is going to help her in the long run because she’s not going to get burned out,” he said. “A lot of (Division I) schools have expressed interest in her.”

Polk has set some lofty goals for herself. Besides becoming a top-notch collegiate runner, she wants to major in political science and eventually become an attorney.

But first she must attain her community college goal. She wants to get the Sharette Garcia monkey off her back.

“They called her monster and they call me little monster,” Polk said. “I don’t want to be little monster any more. . . . I want to be Godzilla!”