Her Running Has Become an Art Form : Track: At Foothill High, Stacy Kneeshaw was a top competitor in running events. Now the mother of two, she balances running with family life and a career as an artist.

Stacy Kneeshaw was always a versatile athlete.

When she was 2, her mother caught her hanging from the top of her bedroom window, holding onto a curtain rod, when she was supposed to be napping.

When she was in the sixth grade, she and her team went to the Bobby Sox softball nationals. She competed on the boys’ track team at Hewes Junior High.

While at Foothill High, Kneeshaw held every girls’ school record in the flat races from 100 yards to one mile. A four-time participant at the State track meet, she placed three consecutive years and her name remains among the all-time elite runners in Orange County.

In 1980, her senior year at Foothill, she finished fifth in 1,600 meters, behind such runners as University’s Polly Plumer and Mission Hills Alemany’s Vicki Cook.

Stacy Kneeshaw was always interested in art, too.

Beginning in the fifth grade, she would enter horse-drawing contests at the Peacock Hill Riding Stables each year. The winners got a free ticket to a horse show at the stable park.

Growing up amid hills dotted with orange groves, she often rode horses with her sister, Leigh. Instead of playing with dolls, the two entertained themselves with toy horses.

“We had a garage full of them,” Kneeshaw said. “My sister and I never had Barbie dolls, we had the Breyer horses and we played horses at school.”

Today, Stacy Kneeshaw Rucker is still running, but only for the fun of it. She is still interested in art, too, but now pursues it as a career. She has learned to strike a balance between running, her family and her career.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Rucker sits in an oversized chair in the living room of the house she shares with her husband, Darrell, and their two children, Austin, 4, and Colton, 2. That morning, Rucker had placed second in the women’s division of the Arturo Barrios People’s 5K in Chula Vista, running in the mid-17-minute range.

Rucker, now 30, is also a painter, specializing in watercolor illustrations of animals, including equine art, and sports figures, such as baseball and basketball players, working primarily on private commissions.

Coming out of high school with bests of 2:09.4 for 800 meters and 4:49.57 in the 1,600, Rucker was heavily recruited by colleges, eventually choosing San Diego State to work with Coach Fred LaPlante. After two years, LaPlante accepted the coaching job at USC and Jim Cerveny took over, coaching Rucker her last two years at SDSU (1984 and ‘85).

Rucker didn’t improve much in college and even now can’t remember what times she ran. Cerveny says that although Rucker was sometimes frustrated about her progress, she had other interests besides running.

“I think it’s true with a lot of people,” said Cerveny, who now coaches at San Diego Lincoln High. “You love something so much but it’s difficult to focus on it. Your focus is not narrow enough.”

Rucker says she found other activities in college and although she had good friends on SDSU’s track team, the camaraderie wasn’t the same as in high school.

“I think at that point in my life, running started becoming less and less important,” Rucker said. “I was out of the home and it was my own little life.”

Rucker started as a zoology major at SDSU because of her love of animals, but changed her major because the demands of competition and classwork were too much. Through her teammate and friend, Jane Spencer, Rucker rediscovered her love of art and chose graphic design as a major.

“I’d go by and pick her up for a run,” Rucker said, “and she’d be working on these fun-looking projects and I’d think, ‘All right!’ So I’d sit down, be doodling with her and that’s how I really got interested in art (again).”

About the same time, Stacy met Darrell Rucker, an All-American swimmer at Cal State Hayward, at a friend’s party. Stacy and Darrell were married in March, 1986. The same year, after receiving her diploma, Stacy found work as an intern designing and doing book covers for a publishing house. She then worked as a commerical artist for several companies and also took on work on a free-lance basis.

In 1987, Rucker became pregnant for the first time; it was the beginning of events that eventually changed the direction of her career and her running.

Less than seven months into the pregnancy, Rucker went into premature labor. After unsuccessfully trying to stave off labor for 3 1/2 weeks, Rucker gave birth to Meghan, a girl weighing less than two pounds. Meghan lived only a few hours; her lungs too immature to support life.

Three months later, Rucker was pregnant again.

“The doctors wanted me to wait, but in a way that was a form of therapy,” she said. “I was ready to get on with it and physically, I felt I was OK.”

About 11 weeks pregnant with Austin, Rucker again started to have problems with the pregnancy. This time, she underwent emergency cerclage surgery (an operation in which the cervix is stitched closed). Afterward, Rucker was confined to bed rest for 4 1/2 months. She could get out of bed only to go to the bathroom, and she could not paint or run, which she says was a relief.

“As I look back, it’s almost as if being told by the doctors to sit down and relax was a big weight lifted off my shoulders,” Rucker said. “It was a time of my life when I didn’t have to perform. I didn’t have to be super productive all the time.”

Austin was born healthy and on time. Rucker slowly regained her strength and was back running, when, on the day Austin turned 1, Rucker found out she was again pregnant. It was the impetus that Rucker needed to restart her art career. She also went ahead with plans to compete in the Mission Bay Triathlon in 1989.

“I saw my life flash before my eyes,” she said. “I thought: ‘Oh no, I haven’t done enough with my life. I’d better get going.’ I knew what one kid was like, so what were two going to be like?”

Rucker started contacting galleries to exhibit her work and began working harder at her craft. She also competed in the triathlon, finishing second in her age category.

Then after having her second surgery for what was diagnosed as an incompetent cervix--a cervix that opens spontaneously in midpregnancy, resulting in a miscarriage or premature birth--Rucker was told to stay off her feet at least eight hours a day, but she could paint during the other hours. Running was out of the question.

After Colton’s birth, Rucker, who had added 60 pounds to her 5-foot-9, 138-pound frame, delved full force into her painting and started to train again. Rucker, who had worked out of her home since 1987, didn’t want to be labeled “as just a housewife.”

“I think I was afraid to be called a housewife. You know how society is, people say, ‘Oh, you’re just a mom,” says Rucker. “I would get defensive when someone said that.

“I needed a little bit more respect, although there’s nothing wrong with raising children--I think that’s probably the biggest challenge you could ever face. But for me, in order to justify staying home, I had to make it a business.”

And she has, building a career that once was only word-of-mouth into one in which Rucker’s paintings sell on average from $600 to $1,500 apiece.

And she has resurrected her running career to a point, training regularly when she can and competing occasionally in road races just for the fun of it.

“Since I have the kids and the career, the running is really something for me,” Rucker said. “I really appreciate excelling in something I do. My paintings, for the most part, are for my clients, although I love to do the paintings.”

In her converted studio in the garage, Rucker is painting an intricate picture of wild horses and a cowboy. The cowboy is modeled after the character from the motion picture “The Man From Snowy River,” but the gray horse underneath him is modeled after one her client owned as a child. She is attempting to blend what the client wants and what reality dictates. She works for perfection, painting in fine strokes.

Much as she balances her own life.