NOTEBOOK : U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL: ORANGE COUNTY’S DAY : LOS ANGELES 1991

Pit crew: UC Irvine track and field Coach Vince O’Boyle is attending the Festival’s track competition--not as an official coach, but as a helper.

O’Boyle, a distance specialist, will be manning the long and triple jump pits. How much experience does he bring to those events?

“None,” he laughed. “But I wanted to do something to help out.”

Of course, there may be another motive. O’Boyle trains distance runner Laura Cattivera, who competes in the women’s 3,000 Sunday at 6:15 p.m.

Perhaps there’s a better vantage point from the pits.

High flyer: Before he begins his Festival high jump competition at UCLA Sunday afternoon, Olympian Doug Nordquist will compete at another meet Saturday--in New York.

Nordquist, a Sonora High School graduate and a resident of La Habra, is flying from Los Angeles to New York today for the New York Games. He will try to grab a red-eye flight back to L.A. Saturday night--that is, if the high jump competition ends soon enough.

Otherwise, Nordquist will be flying in Sunday and doing his stretching and warm-up in a taxi to Drake Stadium.

“Nice relaxing weekend, huh?” said Nordquist, an assistant coach at Fullerton College. “Actually, there are some other athletes competing at both meets, but they’re all in New York already and will fly back for the Olympic Festival.

“I guess I’m just a backwards kind of guy.”

Actually, it’s because Nordquist is an honorable guy. The reason Nordquist isn’t in New York is because he made a commitment for a speaking engagement Friday morning in Los Angeles.