KINNEY NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS : Skieresz Finishes 3rd in Surprise

An objective was met where there was none Saturday in the Kinney national high school cross-country championships at Balboa Park’s Morley Field.

Amy Skieresz, an Agoura High sophomore, had no particular goal entering the race but wanted to run well.

She exceeded her expectations, finishing third with a time of 17 minutes 42.1 seconds over the 5,000-meter course.

Co-favorites Amanda White of Dulaney High in Cockeysville, Md., and Milena Glusac of Fallbrook, Calif., finished first (17:34.1) and second (17:38.1), but Skieresz was briefly in the hunt for the individual title with a half-mile left.

Nordhoff senior Karen Bockel, an exchange student from Germany, finished 26th (18:59.4) in the 32-runner field.

“I felt great,” Skieresz said. “The race went exactly how I wanted it to. Me and (Agoura Coach Bill Duley) had talked about the race, and we both thought that it would be best for me to go out at my own pace and just work my way up through the pack.”

Skieresz, runner-up to Glusac in last week’s West regional in Fresno, executed the plan well.

She was in 20th place after the first half-mile, and she moved up to 14th at the mile mark (5:30), 13 seconds behind the leading senior trio of White, Glusac and Becki Wells of Dickinson (N.D.) High.

At two miles, White led (11:12) with Glusac second (11:16), and a hard-charging Skieresz third (11:28).

“At that point, I told her, ‘You’ve got to take a shot at the leaders,’ ” Duley said.

Skieresz did as instructed and trailed White by nine seconds and Glusac by five seconds with a half-mile left.

“At that point, I thought to myself, ‘OK. You’ve got a chance at winning,’ ” Skieresz said. “I just went for it.”

Although Skieresz was unable to make up any more ground on White, she drew even with Glusac with 400 meters remaining before the Fallbrook runner launched her final kick.

“She just took off at that point,” Skieresz said. “I couldn’t go with her from that far out and still finish.”

Bockel, the state Division IV champion, was shooting for a top-15 finish but never got untracked.

She was 30th at the mile mark, and 28th at two miles before finishing in 18:59.4.

Jeannie Rothman of Westlake, who finished second in 1990, is the only female runner from the region to have placed higher than Skieresz in the Kinney championships, which began in 1979.

“These last two weeks have been a real maturing process for her,” Duley said. “She’s always run fast times, but in the last two weeks she’s competed so well.”

The decreasing time gap between Skieresz and Glusac supports Duley’s claim.

Glusac demolished Skieresz by 42 seconds in the team sweepstakes race of the Mt. San Antonio College invitational in October, but Skieresz trimmed the gap to 28 seconds in the state Division I championships, and to 16 seconds in the West regional.

“She learned a lot from Mt. SAC,” Duley said. “That race got us talking about some things that needed to be discussed to get her to this point.”