COLLEGE DIVISION NOTEBOOK / MARTIN BECK : Graff-Ermeling Makes Final Run

Several years ago, Concordia’s Genevieve Graff-Ermeling made an athletic choice she thought was irrevocable.

Because the physical stress from basketball and distance running was taking too high a toll, she decided to give up running.

Graff-Ermeling was giving up a lot. She finished sixth in the NAIA national cross-country meet as a freshman and fifth in the 1,500 meters in track as a sophomore.

However, she was also a standout basketball player for the Eagles, helping the team to an NAIA District 3 championship as a junior. As a senior she was an All-Golden State Athletic Conference and All-District 3 first-team selection as the team qualified for its second consecutive national tournament.

Graff-Ermeling had no regrets but missed running, so after her final basketball season last spring, she got back on the track. About a month later she won District 3 titles in the 1,500 and 3,000 meters.

She skipped the national track and field championships in favor of attending her graduation ceremony at the college, but she had rediscovered the joys of running and jumped at the chance to come back to school this fall to run cross-country.

Saturday, Graff-Ermeling will run her final race for Concordia at the NAIA national meet in Kenosha, Wis., and she and her coach, David Saltin, say she has a chance to win the national title.

“She won’t give up,” Saltin said. “If she sets her mind that she’s going to meet a goal, that’s what she’s going to do.”

Graff-Ermeling has been pointing to the nationals since the summer when she started running 30-40 miles a week. She has shed about 15 pounds from the frame she had bulked up for basketball and believes she is peaking at the right time.

“It’s been a goal of mine, but you never know what’s going to happen until the race,” she said.

*

Front-runner: Biola’s Elizabeth Onyambu, who beat second-place Graff-Ermeling in the district championships, has run 17 minutes 25 seconds for five kilometers, one of the fastest NAIA times in the country this year.

But Graff-Ermeling has been catching up. In their first meeting this year, Graff-Ermeling finished 46 seconds behind Onyambu, 36 in the second and only 16 in the district championships.

*

Graff-Ermeling and her husband, former Eagle basketball player Brad Ermeling, are planning to go to Japan in February to teach at a Lutheran school affiliated with Concordia.

Graff-Ermeling hopes to continue serious training in an attempt to qualify for the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in 1996.

“I’ve basically been running for about seven months; maybe in a couple of years I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “Right now, it’s just nice to be running again.”

*

Add cross-country: For the sixth consecutive year, Southern California College will be represented by a woman in the national meet, and for the first time in Coach Bryan Wilkins’ six-year tenure, a man also has qualified.

Nikee Pool, a sophomore from Great Bend, Kan., and Jason Schaefer, a sophomore from Mt. Clemens, Mich., will run on Saturday for the Vanguards.

It’s a return trip for Pool, who finished 150th in the field of more than 300 last year.

*

Many local basketball teams will open their seasons this week.

The Southern California College men’s team, which began with a 114-99 victory over Pacific Christian Tuesday, will play host on Saturday to Black Hills (S.D.) State, which was ranked No. 11 in the NAIA Division II preseason poll. Also Saturday, Concordia will be home to Western Washington.

The Chapman women’s team opens Friday and Saturday at the Cal State San Bernardino tournament while the SCC women are at the Cal Poly Pomona tournament. Pacific Christian plays Simpson on Friday at Independence Park in Fullerton.