Thousand Oaks Girls Gear Up for Run at Title

Barring an injury or the unforeseen, Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks High will roll to her third consecutive title in each of the girls’ 100- and 200-meter dashes in the state high school track and field championships at Cerritos College, which begin today with qualifying rounds and conclude Saturday.

How Jones’ teammates fare, however, could determine if the Lancers win their first state title.

Stacey Auer, Heather Hanger, Wendy Wendelstein and Lisa Gillette are Jones’ lesser-known teammates who will play a part in the Lancers’ title drive.

Auer, a junior, is ranked fourth in the 3,200 (10 minutes 52.88 seconds).

Hanger is ranked 10th in the 300 low hurdles and runs legs for the 400 and 1,600 relay teams, which are ranked third and sixth.

Wendelstein, a junior, and Gillette, a senior, run the first two legs for both relay teams.

Thousand Oaks Coach Art Green is confident Hanger, a senior, can score with a top-six finish in the 300 low hurdles.

“It’s possible for her to run (under 44 seconds) if she puts it all together,” Green said of Hanger, who has a personal best of 44.83. “She’s ready to do that.”

Based on season-best performances, Long Beach Poly will win the girls’ team title with 36 points, followed by Thousand Oaks (31) and Oakland Bishop O’Dowd (28), but Green does not give much credence to those projections.

“The state meet is such that anything can happen--and usually does,” he said. “A lot of things happen in this meet that you simply have no control over.”

If Jones, the national high school record-holder in the 200 (22.67), wins the 100 and 200, the 5-foot-11 junior will go into the record books in several categories.

She will become the second athlete to win three state girls’ titles in the 100, joining Rio Mesa’s Angela Burnham, who won in 1986, ’88 and ’89.

In addition, Jones can become the first girls’ athlete to win three state titles in the 200 and the first girls’ sprinter to win six individual titles, breaking Burnham’s record of five.

Senior Nikki Shaw of Fillmore, the national leader in the girls’ 1,600 with a time of 4:50.40, will try to become the first athlete from her school to win a state title since Sam Johnson won the 120-yard high hurdles in 1939.

That will not be easy for Shaw, who must defeat Milena Glusac of Fallbrook and Shelley Taylor of Huntington Beach Edison. She also will have to overcome a sore arch in her right foot, an injury that was so painful earlier in the week that she contemplated pulling out of the meet.

“On Sunday and Monday, I was having a hard time running on it,” Shaw said. “It’s improved the last couple of days. . . . I just want to qualify as easily as possible on Friday, and then just run an all-out, gutsy race on Saturday.”

Several other performers from the region are ranked among the top three in their events. Senior Jeff Wilson of Newbury Park (4:09.75 in the boys’ 1,600) and junior Nada Kawar of Crescenta Valley (45 feet 9 1/2 inches) in the girls’ shotput are ranked second.

Juniors Margarito Casillas of Hoover, Maribella Aparicio of Fillmore and Crystal Brownlee of Westlake and sophomore Jeremy Fischer of Camarillo are ranked third in their events.

Casillas has run 9:05.79 in the boys’ 3,200, and Aparicio has timed 10:39.94 in the girls’ 3,200. Brownlee has a season-best of 44-8 1/2 in the girls’ shotput and Fischer has cleared 6-11 1/2 in the boys’ high jump.

Today’s preliminaries will start with the field events at 3 p.m., followed by the running events at 5. Field events will begin at 3 p.m. Saturday, with the running events starting at 4.