Clarke Leads Valley Women to WSC Title : College track: Sophomore wins four events and places in four others to account for 51 of the Monarchs’ 189 points.

Spectators at the Western State Conference track and field championships at Santa Barbara City College on Saturday can be excused if they thought they had double-, triple- or even quadruple-vision.

After all, sophomore Melanie Clarke of Valley College seemed to be everywhere, whether it was at the high jump pit, on the javelin runway, in the shotput ring, at the long jump runway or on the track.

Clarke, the defending state junior college champion in the two-day, seven-event heptathlon, competed in eight events in the WSC meet, winning the women’s 200 meters in 25.10 seconds, the 400 in 55.57, and running legs on Valley’s victorious 400- and 1,600-meter relay teams--49.03 seconds in the former event, 4 minutes 7.53 seconds in the latter.

She also placed second in the long jump (17 feet 9 inches) and third in the high jump (5-2), shotput (35-1 1/2) and javelin (116-4).

In all, Clarke accounted for 51 of Valley’s 189 points as the Monarchs ran away with the women’s team title. Santa Barbara placed second with 99 points, and Bakersfield (98 points), Moorpark (84) and Santa Monica (75) rounded out the top five.

Bakersfield won the men’s title with 226 points, followed by Glendale (163 1/2), Moorpark (162), Cuesta (66) and West Los Angeles (56).

Hugo Allan Garcia of Glendale and Guatemala, the 1990 state junior college cross-country champion, paced the Vaqueros with a win in the 5,000 meters (15:23.25) and a second in the 1,500 (3:58.42) on Saturday after winning the 10,000 (32:35.1) on Wednesday.

Moorpark was powered by sprinters Robert Harris and Phil Antoine. Harris defeated Antoine for the 200 title, 21.70 to 21.75, after placing second in the 400 in 47.92.

Antoine had run 10.70 to win the 100 earlier, and both he and Harris ran legs on the Raiders’ 400- (42.19) and 1,600-meter (3:18.2) relay teams, which finished fourth and first, respectively.

Clarke, however, was the star of the meet. She began the afternoon with a second-place finish in the long jump and capped it with a storming 53.7-second anchor leg in the 1,600 relay.

“I’m really tired,” Clarke said of her personal octathlon. “This is the most tired I’ve ever been. But I like to keep busy at meets. I don’t like sitting down in the stands.”

She did little of that Saturday, appearing to be in perpetual motion.

The top five men’s and the top six women’s finishers in each event qualified for next week’s Southern California preliminaries at Bakersfield College, but Clarke expects to drop the shotput and the javelin from her itinerary for that meet.

That will leave her with only six events, not counting the heptathlon, in which she has already qualified for the state championships in Sacramento next month.

Several other Valley-area performers won events Saturday, including Glendale’s Rick Provenzano and Ryan Barreras, and Moorpark’s Noelle Righter.

Provenzano took the 800 in 1:55.16 and Barreras threw 190-11 in the javelin.

Righter won the women’s 800 (2:18.37) and 1,500 (4:52.02) meters.