On Their Marks, They’re Set to Go for Record : Track: At its best, the boys’ 1,600-meter relay team from Foothill High can break an 11-year-old county record tonight at the Masters meet.

Tonight in the Masters track and field meet at Cerritos College, Foothill’s main objective in the boys’ 1,600-meter relay will simply be to finish among the top five and advance to the State meet.

But the Knights also are chasing an 11-year-old Orange County record.

In theory, they have already broken it. If you add up the four runners’ best legs, it comes out to 3 minutes 14.1 seconds, faster than Fountain Valley’s 3:16.41 set in 1981. (Santa Ana’s 3:15.0 in 1972 is the county’s fastest mile relay--a few yards longer.)

The trick for Foothill is for all four runners to run those bests on the same night.

Here is how it might happen:

ELAPSED TIME: 0:00.00

The starter climbs a step stool next to the track and raises his pistol above his head.

On the track, nine runners crouch into their starting blocks, clenching relay batons in nervous hands. In the stands, the crowd tenses for the last, and often most exciting, race of the meet.

At the crack of the gun, Foothill senior Nate Kuchera is off and running.

Kuchera feels a heavy burden. He is the only one of the four team members who hasn’t broken the elusive 50-second barrier. But it’s only a matter of slicing a few tenths of a second off his best of 50.6, set during Foothill’s 3:16.64 victory at the Southern Section 3-A finals last week.

“I think my start and my finish--the handoff--are not what they should be,” Kuchera said. “If I can run under 50, the team will get off to a good start. Long Beach Poly and (Inglewood) Morningside have 49.5 leadoff legs.”

Kuchera’s inability to crack 50 seconds certainly hasn’t hurt Foothill this season. Other teams have faster times, but the Knights have turned back all comers, winning at the Arcadia Invitational, the Mt. San Antonio College Relays, the Orange County championships, the Century League championships and the 3-A preliminaries and finals.

“Winning State finals and breaking 50 would be the perfect race,” he said.

0:50.6

Sophomore Ethan Taub takes over for Kuchera, powers around the curve, then moves from his lane entering the backstretch. The runners are all out of their staggered lanes now. He must be careful to avoid any bumping that could send him, or the baton, reeling out of control.

“Everybody knows me as Aaron’s little brother,” said Ethan, younger by three years than senior anchor Aaron Taub but just as fast on the relay; both have run 47.7 splits.

“It’s not like a challenge between my brother and I,” Ethan said. “We work together and push each other. We (all four runners) are like a family even though our ages are all spread out.”

The most obvious coming together happens on the track, but it happens on other, more relaxed occasions, too.

Take for instance, an air guitar contest one recent evening at Foothill.

The runners mimed a song from the group Color Me Badd and earned a standing ovation from the crowd, but they say they got rooked in the final voting.

“Everyone said we should have won,” Ethan said, shaking his head disgustedly. “But we didn’t.”

That’s one nice thing about running the relay--there is never much question about winning and losing.

Although Ethan often finds himself running in the long shadow of his brother, he has found room to stand alone in the limelight, too.

At the Orange County championships April 25, Ethan held strong in the final 50 meters of the boys’ 400 and finished an impressive second to Greg Muniz of Woodbridge in 48.73. Aaron, meanwhile, struggled through one of his rare poor finishes to take fourth in 49.05.

Ethan hasn’t given an inch on the relay team, either.

1:38.3

Ethan hands the baton to junior Tad Heath, and the team’s fortunes ride on his capable legs for the all-important third leg.

Though not as fast as the Taubs, Heath is one of the county’s most versatile runners, running everything from a 100-meter leg on the Knights’ 400 relay team to an individual 1,600 this season. His best event is the 800.

Well, at least that’s the race the Foothill coaching staff has been priming Heath for.

“Everything I’ve done is for the 800,” said Heath, whose personal-best of 1:55.08 last week was fast enough to qualify for tonight’s meet. “The 100s and 200s give me a lot of speed. The miles have been distance work.”

But until this year, Heath wasn’t especially happy to be running the 800. He had a best of 1:59.21, which, when compared to the sprints . . . well, let’s just say it seemed like a long time to be running.

“You know,” he said, “I never really liked the 800 until this year, when I started having some success.”

That same mix of speed and distance also comes together nicely on the relay for Heath, who lowered his best to 48.1 last week.

And while he has grown to like the 800, the relay has always held a special appeal. There is just something he likes about going full blast with the baton in his hand and the crowd standing and screaming.

“The big meets give you that feeling that you don’t want to let your teammates down with a bad time,” he said.

So far, he has always come through.

“We’ve never been in second place,” he said, “when I handed off to Aaron.”

2:26.4

Aaron Taub, the team’s leader, is ahead once again as he storms down the track for the anchor leg. Heath has given him a commanding, 15-meter lead.

Aaron can make the numbers jibe. He is Foothill’s resident statistics nut. He knows all the other teams’ best marks this season, and he knows his teammates’ best relay legs this season.

He knows exactly how fast the Knights need to run to 1) set the county record and 2) win the State title.

What he can’t seem to do is win the fans’ respect.

When the four runners walked to the starting line at Mt. SAC on April 18, some wise guy sitting in the front row said sarcastically, “My money’s on Foothill.”

Aaron fumed.

“We’ll talk after the race,” he shot back.

When Foothill, with Taub anchoring, powered away from Morningside, Sacramento Valley and Long Beach Poly to win, he was vindicated.

And when he was done celebrating with his teammates, Taub pointed at the man in the stands and said, “I told you.”

“We’re starting to get some respect now,” Taub said this week.

Victories in prestigious invitationals tend to force people to take notice.

“We haven’t lost a race yet,” he said, running down the Knights’ long list of victories. “We want to get the county record. We’d really like to get that.”

It might not come tonight, because the objective is simply to move ahead to State, but he is certain the record will fall before season’s end. Perhaps they can run as fast as 3:13, but he knows they are capable of 3:14.1.

After all, they’ve done it before. Now all they have to do is do it together: 3:14.1.