Award Goes to Jones for the 3rd Time : Track and field: Thousand Oaks sprinter is named national female high school athlete of the year.

Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks High was honored Tuesday as Gatorade’s national female high school track athlete of the year, an unprecedented third time she has won the award.

“It’s great to three-peat,” Jones said. “It means a lot to me to know that my hard work and dedication is rewarded, and this definitely proves it. . . . What a perfect way to cap off my high school career.”

Jones, who will graduate from Thousand Oaks today before taking a monthlong vacation with relatives in Belize, won the 100 and 200 meters and long jump in the state meet at Cerritos College on Saturday and is the most decorated athlete in the history of the state track and field championships.

The titles were the seventh, eighth and ninth of her career. No one else has won more than six. With the wins in the two sprints, she is only the second athlete in state history to win four consecutive titles in any event. Natalie Kaaiawahia of Fullerton was the girls’ shotput champion from 1980-83.

Jones is the first girl to win three individual state titles in the same year since Janeene Vickers of Pomona won the 100, 100 low hurdles and 300 lows in the 1987 state meet.

Jones, who has signed a letter of intent to run track and play basketball for North Carolina, capped a remarkable high school career Saturday.

She is the national high school record-holder in the 200 (22.58 seconds) and ranks second in the 100 (11.14) and long jump (22 feet 1/2 inch). She also ranks 21st in the 400 (52.91), despite running only a handful of serious 400s during her career.

She placed fourth in the 200 and fifth in the 100 in last year’s U.S. Olympic trials in New Orleans and was ranked fifth in the nation in both events by Track & Field News magazine last year.

Jones, who transferred from Rio Mesa High to Thousand Oaks early in her junior year, dominates the all-time high school list in the 200 with the five fastest times ever, eight of the top nine and 13 of the top 17.

Although her personal best in the 100 is .01 seconds shy of the national record set by Chandra Cheeseborough of Ribault (Fla.) High in 1976, she has more sub-11.30 performances (nine) than anyone.

She has won 10 individual Southern Section titles and holds a combined total of seven national age-group records in the 100, 200 and long jump, and seven class records in the 100 and 200 (indoors and outdoors).

She has not lost a high school race since her freshman year at Rio Mesa High, when Inger Miler of Pasadena Muir defeated her in the 100 and 200 in the 1990 Arcadia Invitational.