Confidence Is the Key to Her Success : Cross-country: Outstanding track season last spring prepares Ocean View’s Christie Engesser to make her run.

They gave Christie Engesser a key to the school. Wise move. It couldn’t rest in more capable or deserving hands.

A senior at Ocean View, Engesser is the school’s student body president, carries a 4.5 grade-point average and might be the finest female athlete in the school’s history. She came into high school as a national record-holder in track and field and hasn’t slowed down since.

Engesser was second in the 800 meters at the CIF State meet last June, running a personal-best 2 minutes 11.23 seconds to conclude her finest season at Ocean View.

“I was happy because through the year I ran three PRs and a couple of other times ran close to a PR,” she said while relaxing in the student government office, her office. “It was a good season all the way through.”

Now, if she can only run that well in cross-country.

In the past, Engesser has entered the cross-country season with the greatest of intentions and the highest of hopes, only to have them all come crashing down around her. Illness and a resulting lack of confidence have conspired to wipe out more than one promising season.

Now, she’s in sound shape, as fit and as confident as she has ever been coming into a cross-country season. She owes so much of it to the success of her junior track season.

“She has so much more confidence,” Ocean View Coach Beth Chilcott said. “She looks much more relaxed. Part of the trouble last year was that she tensed up a lot, and you could see how she carried it through her shoulders.

“This year, she’s much more fluid, more smooth. I think that’s the biggest (difference).”

Engesser was something of a phenom as a freshman, having run at a national-class level with an age-group club called the Time Machine. She even held a national age-group record in the 1,500 meters.

In one of her first cross-country meets at Ocean View, she set a course record for freshman girls by covering the Dana Hills Invitational three-mile course in 17:48. On the track, she placed second in the prestigious Arcadia Invitational 800 meters in 2:12.79.

There were no hints that Engesser would be anything short of spectacular in her next three years. But not long after her freshman track season, Engesser came down with mononucleosis.

The illness tends to linger, and Chilcott said it was close to a year before Engesser returned to full speed. Her sophomore track season came and went without improvement and that’s when Engesser began to tense up, according to Chilcott.

“She probably had some minor injuries as an age-grouper,” Chilcott said, “but nothing like the mono. It’s tough to deal with when you don’t know what’s wrong and you’re not running well.”

By her junior cross-country season, Engesser was beginning to wonder why her legs couldn’t carry her as fast as they once could. She’d been through droughts before, but this one was becoming a major confidence destroyer. Even teammates were starting to catch and pass her. At last year’s Orange County championships, Engesser finished behind teammate Tayrn Lawson, a freshman, by 16 seconds.

“I’ve been running for so long that I know you’re going to have your ups and downs,” Engesser said.

And that was the attitude she took to the starting line for the 800 at the Arcadia Invitational last April. In two laps of the school’s all-weather track, she discovered she wasn’t through yet.

Although she didn’t win and couldn’t come close to matching her best time, Engesser felt her confidence returning.

“She had a kick,” Chilcott said. “That’s where it all started. From there on you could see a real change.”

A week later at the Mt. San Antonio College Relays, Engesser blew past Mexico’s Monica Medina in the homestretch and lowered her best to 2:12.45, ending a two-year dry spell.

A month later, she finished second to Edison’s Shelley Taylor in the Southern Section 3-A 800 final. And a week after that, with Taylor opting to run only the 1,600, Engesser won the 800 in the Masters Meet in a personal best of 2:11.50, making her one of the favorites at the State meet.

In the end, Miesha Marzell of Oakland Bishop O’Dowd got away in the final meters to defeat Engesser by less than one second. Engesser’s time of 2:11.23 was yet another personal best and, at the time, the fifth-best time in the nation.

And if that wasn’t enough of a morale booster, Engesser won the election for student body president last spring and got her own office. Now, she figures the time is right for her best cross-country season.

“It’s important to me,” she said. “I just want to prove to myself I can run cross-country. I gained a lot of confidence last track season and I’m looking forward to this year.”