SOUTHERN SECTION 2-A TRACK PRELIMS : Working Out in Pool Helps Valencia in 100, 200, Relays

There must be something magical in the water at Valencia High School’s pool. A little dose of cross-training certainly hasn’t hurt the Tigers’ sprinting corps. If anything, they say it has made them decidedly stronger and faster as the track and field season has progressed.

Example No. 1 is Kevin Alexander, who blew through his heat of the 100 meters in an Orange County-leading 10.72 seconds, ran a swift 21.92 for 200 and anchored the Tigers’ winning 400 and 1,600-meter relays teams at the Southern Section 2-A preliminaries Friday at Trabuco Hills.

Example No. 2 is Kevin’s brother, Korey, who ran 10.88 for the 100 and 21.94 for the 200. He, too, ran strong legs on the 400 and 1,600 relays, which Valencia won in 42.85 and 3:22.18, respectively.

Heat winners and the next best five finishers advanced to the section finals next Saturday at Cerritos College.

Going into Friday’s prelims, Valencia seemed poised to give retiring Coach Mike Cummins his first section championship in 30 years at the school. But the Tigers, as strong as they were in the sprints, suffered a big blow to their title hopes when long jumper Ace Riggins scratched three times and did not advance to the finals.

Any remaining hopes now would seem to rest squarely on the shoulders of the Alexander brothers, who were most impressive in winning their 100 heats.

Korey went first, beating second-place finisher Anthony Rudolph of Inglewood Morningside, 10.88 to 11.03.

Two heats later, Kevin ran a blistering 10.72 to edge Terry Barnum of Mission Hills Alemany, who was second in 10.87. Kevin set the previous county-leading mark of 10.80 in winning the Orange League final last week.

“I can go faster, but I’m happy with my time,” Kevin Alexander said. “I was running with the pack at the start, then I decided to kick and I started pulling away. I know I can go out quicker than I did. I know I can go faster.”

Later, Korey won his 200 heat in 21.94, only to be outdone by Kevin, who ran 21.90 in the next heat. However, Kevin was beaten by Travion Harris of Morningside, whose time of 21.82 made him Friday’s fastest qualifier.

And still later, Korey and Kevin finished with 49.3 and 50.0 legs on the 1,600 relay team.

All that work hardly seemed to faze Kevin Alexander.

“Right now, that’s where all the conditioning comes in,” he said. “Our coach has us working in the pool a couple of times a week. (Fatigue) shouldn’t be a factor. We just have to come out and run and do what we have to do to win.”

Other top county qualifiers included:

--Jesse Fausto of Los Amigos, who had the second-fastest time in the boys’ 400, 49.73, and also qualified in the 300 intermediate hurdles, winning his heat in 40.37.

--Costa Mesa’s Julie Maher and Denisha Bendz, who won their respective girls’ 800 heats in 2:20.92 and 2:21.46. Bendz also won her 1,600 heat in 5:12.13, the fastest of the day.

--Carrie Garritson of Sunny Hills, who turned in a strong double in winning her heats of the girls’ 1,600 and 3,200. Running without much competition, Garritson ran 5:16.49 for 1,600 and 10:56.33 for a full 60-second victory in the 3,200.

--Heather Novak of Santa Margarita set a personal-best of 14.97 in winning her heat of the girls’ 100-meter low hurdles. She was aided by a tail wind of 3.29 meters-per-second, however.