O’Bric, Philman Push Each Other to the Top : Track and field: Pair from Edison will attempt this weekend to qualify for AAU National Championships.

It’s not Dan vs. Dave, but Kerry vs. Marie has the makings of a nice multi-event track and field rivalry, without the shoe contracts.

Until this year, however, it had been one-sided. Kerry O’Bric didn’t expect to beat bigger, stronger Marie Philman and never did.

The reason why is evident when the two stand side by side on the track at Edison High School, where they will be sophomores in the fall. Philman, 5 feet 9 and built solidly, dwarfs O’Bric, who is 5-3 and about 100 pounds.

So it was a minor shock when O’Bric finished ahead of Philman in the heptathlon at the Mt. San Antonio Relays this spring. Then O’Bric did it again last month in a competition at Trabuco Hills.

“Nobody is more surprised than Kerry that she has beaten Marie twice this year,” said Karen O’Bric, who is the Edison girls’ track coach and Kerry’s mother.

Philman puts it more bluntly.

“I used to be the one kicking her butt,” she said. “I guess what goes around comes around because now she’s smearing me.”

Philman, however, is catching up. At Mt. SAC, O’Bric finished second, 35 points ahead of third-place Philman; at Trabuco Hills, the difference was 12 points.

Saturday and Sunday, they will go at it again, in Visalia, as they attempt to qualify for the AAU National Championships Aug. 1-2 at the University of Tennessee.

Their chances of qualifying are good, Karen O’Bric said. The top three finishers and anyone who scores better than 3,600 will advance. At Trabuco Hills, O’Bric scored 3,657 and Philman 3,645.

Both are experienced in national age-group competition. Philman, 15, has won the AAU national pentathlon championship two of the past three years; O’Bric, 14, has finished third three years in a row.

In AAU track and field, girls are introduced to the heptathlon--the women’s equivalent of the decathlon--in stages. For the 9- and 10-year-olds, it’s the triathlon (shotput, high jump and 200 meters). For the 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds, the 100 hurdles, long jump and 800 are added and the 200 is eliminated. For those 14 and above, the 200 returns and the javelin is added.

It’s obviously an event for a well-balanced athlete, and both Philman and O’Bric fit the profile.

Both were freshman standouts for the Edison track team, each dominating in four events, the maximum an individual can enter in a high school meet. Philman led the undefeated and Sunset League champion Chargers in dual-meet scoring, averaging 19 points in seven meets. O’Bric was right behind, averaging 18.1.

At league finals, Philman won the 100 hurdles and the discus, finished second in the shotput and third in the high jump, while O’Bric won the triple jump, ran the third leg on the winning 400-meter relay team and finished second in the 300 hurdles and the long jump.

Philman also plays volleyball and was a starting post player on the girls’ varsity basketball team. She missed much of the season after knee surgery in December, but returned for the last several league games and helped Edison advance to the quarterfinals of the Southern Section playoffs.

The knee injury took a toll on Philman’s stamina and she said she is just starting to feel in shape again, but she refuses to use that as an excuse for losing to O’Bric.

“She’s a great athlete,” Philman said. “She totally takes everything seriously and works hard at practice. I joke around all day long while she’s sweating. She’d come up to me and say, ‘Let’s run some 800s.’ I would say, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ She would say, ‘You want to get better don’t you?’ I’d say, ‘Not really.’

“Then there I am finishing behind Kerry.”

But Philman, who won the national pentathlon title in her first year of competition, has decided to adjust her attitude toward practice.

“I thought I didn’t have to work that hard,” Philman said. “I found out that you do.”

Effort in practice has never been a problem for O’Bric, who practically was raised on the track. Her parents were youth track coaches and her older brother and sister both competed, so it was no surprise when she started running at 4.

She entered her first competition at 6 and figures she has been to about six national championships. Because of her slight build, O’Bric has a weight-training routine to build upper-body strength. But her best attributes are speed and the determination to master the techniques of strength events.

“Marie has an incredible desire and awesome strength,” Karen O’Bric said. “Kerry had incredible desire and she’s a technician. She works hard to do it exactly by the book because she’s had to compensate in some of her events for her lack of strength.”

O’Bric has a personal best of 28 feet 11 inches in the shotput (Philman’s is 32-6) and would be Edison’s third-best in the event. She has also become proficient at the javelin, but her best is about 10 feet short of Philman’s.

“It sure takes a lot of technique to be good at that event,” Kerry O’Bric said. “I thought you could just go out there and power it, but it takes speed and technique.

“It’s a lot harder than it looks.”

But it’s in the foot-speed events that O’Bric amasses most of her points. She qualified for the Southern Section Division II finals in the long jump, and jumping behind state record-holder Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks, finished eighth with a personal best 17-4. Her best in the 200 (26.9) is more than a second better than Philman’s, and she rarely loses to anyone in the 800--her best is 2:32.9.

“You have to hurt to do good at the 800,” O’Bric said. “Many people don’t like to hurt.”

Competing against one another hasn’t hurt their friendship, and Karen O’Bric has taken steps to make sure of that. In high school track meets, she doesn’t enter them in the same events.

“I don’t believe in pitting athletes against each other, that’s not my style,” O’Bric said. “They drive each other, they do. But they are good about it. They are quick to console each other if one does poorly in an event.

“If they were training alone, I don’t believe they would do as well. Because their nearest competitor is so close, they have that constant individual to compete against, in a positive way.”