Newport Harbor Boys’ Success Comes as a Surprise to Them : Cross-country: The Sailors, ranked No. 3 in county and No. 1 in Division III, are improving at a rapid pace.

The boys’ cross-country runners at Newport Harbor apparently don’t know how good they can be, so day after day their coach, Bim Barry, has to tell them.

Forget about inflated egos with this group. Persuading the team that they can be No. 1 is the toughest job Barry faces this fall.

One day last week, Barry read from a newspaper article in which a rival coach praised Newport Harbor. The coach was quoted as saying the Sailors were the team that scared him most of all.

The runners listened, but looked as if they didn’t believe the words. Their expressions said, “Nah. Get outta here.”

This was one day before Newport Harbor, ranked third in Orange County and No. 1 in Southern Section Division III, knocked off Saddleback, No. 2 in the county and No. 8 in Division I. And get this, the Sailors won without their No. 3 runner, Dylan Guggenmos, who was attending a wedding in New York.

It was just the latest in a series of impressive victories for Newport Harbor this season. Impressive, that is, to everyone except Newport Harbor.

The cold hard fact is this: The Sailors are improving so quickly it’s difficult to keep pace with their latest breakthroughs.

But leave it to Barry to come up with the most telling statistic of all.

“Last year at the Dana Hills Invitational, Jared Overton was our fastest runner at 15 (minutes) 46 (seconds, for three miles),” he said. “This year, our five fastest guys were all under 15:40.”

On Oct. 3, that speed resulted in an easy victory in the Division II seniors race as only nine seconds separated Sky Peterka, who was third in 15:13, Overton (fourth in 15:16) and Guggenmos (fifth in 15:22).

As much as the Sailors have enjoyed their victories this season, Barry keeps their focus on the championship meets at season’s end. There’s no sense winning tuneups in September and October only to fall apart when it really counts in November, he said.

To that end, Barry stresses moderation in the team’s workouts. Seldom do the Sailors run more than 40 miles in a week, and there was a distinctly relaxed air at their workout on the eve of the Saddleback meet.

“We make sure the easy days are easy,” Barry said. “You can’t beat yourself up. The quality days are quality, and the easy days are easy.”

It sounds simple, but harder to drill into the minds of talented, fast-improving young runners.

“We’ve never been this deep in talent before,” said Peterka, a former basketball player who turned to cross-country when he found he wasn’t growing to Shaquille O’Neal-like dimensions.

“The pieces are clicking together,” said Guggenmos, who ran 800 meters in 1:57.6 in track last season.

Of being highly ranked in Orange County, junior Trent Bryson said, “We’re happy, but we hope we can (live up to) it.”

Bryson, who has run 15:38, is one of the runners who makes Newport Harbor so strong. Many teams have quality front runners, but the Sailors seem to have the depth in the middle of the pack needed to win championships.

Shahram Dezahd, a sophomore, is another runner you won’t see out in front, but without him Newport Harbor couldn’t win.

This is Dezahd’s first season on the varsity, and he’s dropping his time almost weekly. His personal best as a freshman was an unremarkable 16:32, but he’s since lowered that to 15:31.

“Now, he’s the fastest sophomore in the school’s history,” said Barry, a former Newport Harbor cross-country runner who once held the school record for sophomores. “It’s always nice seeing someone go from being an average runner to a very good runner. It’s nice to see that development.”

Barry is counting on that continued development to carry Newport Harbor to the CIF State meet Nov. 28 at Fresno’s Woodward Park.

When asked their No. 1 goal this season, the runners didn’t hesitate in their reply. “State,” they responded in unison.

All the meets leading up to the State meet are simply stepping stones, according to Barry. And the Orange County championships, which will feature all the county’s top-ranked teams, on Saturday at Irvine Park is no exception.

Newport Harbor’s top priority will be to run well in important Sea View League meets--such as the one last week against Saddleback--and qualify for the section preliminaries next month at Mt. San Antonio College.

“All those rankings mean very little,” Barry said. “But it’s nice for them (his runners) to know they’re being recognized, especially by (other teams).”