Young O.C. Star Loses Eye but Not Spirit : Accident: Errant golf ball gives Olympic hopeful new hurdle. She aims to get over it.

If only it hadn’t rained two weekends ago.

Maybe then, a construction crew might have installed additional netting between the driving range and running track at Saddleback College on Feb. 21, as scheduled. And maybe a golf ball might not have soared over the protective barrier, as it did Feb. 23. And maybe one of the nation’s most promising young track and field athletes might not need surgery to remove her eye, as she will this week.

But fate did Ashley Bethel no favors.

Bethel, a two-time national youth pentathlon champion and aspiring Olympian, was running on the Mission Viejo community college’s track when she was struck flush on the right eye by a golf ball hit from the adjacent driving range.

The impact ruptured the eyeball and left the 14-year-old Lake Forest resident blind in that eye. Doctors at the Doheny Eye Institute in Los Angeles determined Thursday that it will have to be replaced by a glass prosthesis.

So one of Orange County’s rising track stars, whose top long jump mark of 19 feet, 7 1/4 inches as a 13-year-old last summer would have placed her second in the 1993 California State high school girls’ meet, will have to pursue her Olympic dream with only one eye.

“To me this was like a drive-by shooting,” said Abby Bethel, Ashley’s mother. “Here we were, doing track like we have for five years, minding our own business, and out of the blue our kid is struck down. It was a senseless, random act.”

Random because of the incredible odds against such a mishap.

“You figure you’re running around a 400-meter track, and someone 200 yards away hits a tiny golf ball--what would be the odds it could hit her right in the eye at that time?” said Skip Bethel, Ashley’s father. “They’ve got to be 1 billion to one.”

Senseless because the Bethels believe it could have been avoided.

“We’ve found balls all over the football field and track, so they’re getting over the nets,” Skip Bethel said. “They either have to shut down the range at certain times or raise the nets.”

Ashley, a 5-foot-8 eighth-grader at Los Alisos Intermediate School, has no intention of shutting down her track-and-field career because of the accident. She plans to compete in this summer’s junior national and Junior Olympic meets, and she fully intends to accept an invitation to work out at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., in August.

She knows the road ahead will be difficult--there will be several surgeries, and she’ll have to deal with the emotional trauma of losing an eye.

“Of all the senses, losing sight is one of the most devastating,” said Dr. John Irvine, who heads the team of four specialists treating Ashley at the Doheny Institute.

On the track, Ashley will have to learn techniques to compensate for her lack of depth perception, grow accustomed to protective eyeglasses and cope with the frustration of previously routine events--high jump, hurdles, long jump--becoming more difficult.

But her goal is still to compete in the Olympics.

“I don’t think it will affect track or anything because I met an athlete (Wednesday) who has a glass eye, and he said everything is OK,” said Ashley, an honor roll student who plays the violin and is involved in several extracurricular school activities. “I’ll get over it, because I still have another eye.

“But I’m still angry because this didn’t have to happen.”

The golf ball that struck Ashley wasn’t the only one to fly onto the track that afternoon.

“Before she got hit, we had three balls come over the fence, and right after, another one came over,” said Ericka Metoyer, a freshman on the Saddleback track team. “We’ve been working out since September, and I would say a ball comes over every other hour, and with full force. It’s not like someone’s tapping them over.”

Officials of the Saddleback Community College District, which oversees operation of the $2.4-million, state-of-the-art range, and of Donovan Brothers Golf, the management company hired to run it, said they were aware of balls clearing the nets.

They’ve been trying to monitor where and when balls were landing in the track area and have made attempts to eliminate risk. The range, which opened last April, was shut down during football games last fall, and hitting stalls on the east side of the range, which are closest to the stadium, have been closed during stadium activities.

The range is bordered by netting, about 50 to 60 feet high, on both sides. A third net runs between the range and the stadium. Last summer, a large section of that barrier was increased to a height of about 80 feet to better separate the tee area from a child developmental center and the track.

There was one trouble spot, though. A section overlooking the southwest corner of the track, where the fence turned westward from the child developmental center, was left at about 60 feet.

Bill Kelly, district vice chancellor of administrative services, and Tony Carcamo, vice chancellor of fiscal services, said additional netting, which would have brought that barrier up to 80 feet, was supposed to have been installed beginning Feb. 21--two days before Ashley was hit.

But rainstorms before that delayed work.

“The grounds were too wet, and the contractor couldn’t get heavy equipment in to do the job,” Carcamo said. “There was also a problem with one of the poles . . . and they had to stop installation.”

Carcamo said work on the extension is being done, but as of Friday it had not been completed. Had the additional net been erected, the ball that blinded Ashley might never have reached the track.

“There are a million ‘what ifs,’ ” Skip Bethel said.

What if the eastern third of the range had been shut down while track practice was in session? Mike Donovan, who runs the range with his brother, Bill, said range employees could not determine who hit the ball that struck Bethel. “The person who hit it might not even know,” he said.

But Donovan believes the ball came from one of the 18 stalls on the range’s east side, from which a powerful left-to-right shot would have the highest probability of reaching the track 200 to 225 yards away.

Kelly said that before the accident, the east portion of the range would occasionally be shut down between 1 and 6 p.m. The Silver Wings Track Club, coached by Skip Bethel and Bill Norris, uses the track Mondays through Thursdays from 4:45 to 6 p.m., and the Saddleback track team has been training regularly during afternoons since January.

But Mike Donovan said the entire range was in operation at the time of the accident and that he had not been told in recent weeks to close the eastern portion in the afternoon.

“There was no mandate (from the district) to close part of the range on a daily basis,” Donovan said.

There was after the accident. The whole range was closed about an hour after Ashley was hit, and last week, the district ordered the eastern portion of the range closed between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Kelly said he had assumed the eastern side of the range was closed at the time of the accident. He said he could not yet comment on whether a memo ordering the east side closure from 1 to 6 p.m. had been issued or, if it had been, why the entire range was open when Ashley was struck about 5:20 p.m.

“That’s what our investigation is all about,” Kelly said.

Kelly said an attorney for the district’s insurance carrier is looking into the matter, and he didn’t go into further detail. The Bethels have also retained an attorney, family friend Jim Crandall of Irvine.

“Our theory is simple--it was a defective design to put a driving range next to the track and child-care center,” Crandall said. “They didn’t shut it down when they knew balls were coming over the fence. With prior knowledge, they had a duty to remedy it. Our case will be based on design and negligence.”

Kelly expressed sorrow for the Bethels but said he doesn’t believe the district was negligent.

“We’re trying everything we can to make it safe,” he said. “That’s why we’ve closed portions down, monitored balls, raised the nets. Our maintenance people have found balls on the track, but we never received complaints from people using the track.”

Metoyer, the Saddleback athlete, was practicing the long jump when Bethel passed her on the track that afternoon. The sound of the ball striking the girl is etched in her memory.

“It was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “It sounded like the ball hit the pavement.”

Ashley crumpled to the ground, screaming and clutching her eye.

“At first I thought it was a shot put (ball),” Bethel said. “One of the girls on the Saddleback team ran toward me, held my hand and told me to calm down. She told me to remove my hand from my eye, and then she said, ‘Oh, my God, we need a doctor.’ ”

It was Metoyer.

“It was the most pain I’ve ever seen a person in,” Metoyer said.

An ambulance took Bethel to Mission Community Hospital. The prognosis was not good. The cornea and sclera, the white part of the eye, were lacerated. There was heavy bleeding and a loss of tissue. The orbit, the bony cavity the eye sits in, was shattered.

Later that night, Ashley was transported to the Doheny Eye Institute, where she underwent a 6 1/2-hour operation to stabilize the eye the next day. She remained at Doheny until Feb. 26, receiving a steady stream of visitors, cards, flowers and calls, including one from Olympic heptathlon champion and world-record-holder Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Doctors warned the Bethels last week to prepare for a difficult decision--whether to keep the eye and hope it would not be cosmetically different than the left eye, or have it removed, thus eliminating the chance for infection. But Thursday, that decision was essentially made for them: Doctors determined the eye could not be saved.

“Ashley is losing a part of who she is, a part of her body, and if someone had said to me my child would be dismembered in some way, I wouldn’t have been able to accept it,” Abby Bethel said. “Now we’re forced to accept it.”

Ashley, though, has remained remarkably composed. She does not seem concerned that other kids might tease her about a glass eye. She does not see this as a setback to an already well-decorated track-and-field career.

Bethel’s personal-best marks in the 100-meter hurdles (14.5 seconds) and high jump (5 feet, 4 1/2 inches) would be considered outstanding for a high school senior, and her long jump at the USA Track and Field Youth National Championships in Houston last summer would rank fourth among girls in Orange County prep history. She plans to play volleyball, basketball and track at El Toro High School next year and still has her sights set on the Olympics.

“I have faith in God that He’ll get me through this,” she said. “I have my parents, my family, my friends. I still have another eye.”

And her life.

“The miracle may very well be that her life was spared, because had the ball hit her on the head, it may have killed her,” Abby Bethel said. “The other miracle is Ashley has been able to handle this with such a grace and style that none of us could have. She’s a very strong kid. That’s not to say she won’t have a grieving process, but she’s been wonderfully accepting of this kind of tragedy.”

Track Accident

A young track athlete lost the use of her eye due to an errant shot from a neighboring golf driving range. The ball that hit her probably flew over a section of the protective fence line that is lower than the rest of the mesh.

Saddleback College

Practice tee area

Probable trajectory of golf ball

Section without net

80-foot fence parallels stadium

150 yards

200 yards

Child Development Center

Stadium

Runner hit by golf ball

Source: Saddleback College

Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times