WHERE ARE THEY NOW: KENNEDY HIGH’S RECORD-SETTING 1,600-METER RELAY TEAM : Golden Cougar Quartet Linked Forever by Their Historic Run : Track and Field: Mark set 13 years ago has weathered test of time. It still ranks second on the all-time national high school list.

Denean Hill--nee Howard--can laugh about it now, but 13 years ago, she was deeply embarrassed.

The Kennedy High girls’ 1,600-meter relay team had just set a national high school record of 3 minutes 37.71 seconds to win the 1981 State championship. But while teammates Ann Johnson, Kelley Cook Bell--known then as Kelley Cook--and Denean’s sister, Tina, were basking in the adulation of the standing-room-only crowd of 14,250 at Cerritos College, Hill was apologizing for the advice she gave them minutes earlier.

“I kept saying, ‘Oh you guys, I am so sorry,’ ” Hill said this week from her Newhall home. “I felt like such an idiot. I remember telling them before the race, ‘Look. Let’s go out there and do our best, and try to win, but let’s don’t even think about the record. There’s no way we can get it.’ ”

Most track experts would have agreed.

Kennedy lowered the national high school record in the 1,600 relay twice in 1980, but the Golden Cougars’ fastest runner, Sherri Howard, had graduated in June before winning the 400 in the U.S. Olympic trials.

Without her, Kennedy appeared to lack the horsepower to break its national record of 3:37.98.

“I thought we had a chance at defending our state title,” Hill said. “But I couldn’t see how we were going to be able to compensate for the loss of someone with Sherri’s talents.”

Kennedy did so because Hill, Cook Bell and Tina Howard all improved their times from the previous year, and Johnson proved to be a solid addition to the group after being hampered by injuries early in the year.

A strong Manual Arts team also figured in the record equation. The Toilers led after the second and third legs before succumbing to Hill’s blistering anchor carry.

Kennedy entered the meet with the fastest high school time in the nation at 3:40.76. But Manual Arts was close behind at 3:41.07.

Tina Howard ran a 54.2-second leg to give Kennedy a 10-meter lead at the first exchange, but Cook Bell’s 57.4 carry left the Golden Cougars three to four meters in arrears.

Johnson’s 55.3 leg left Kennedy seven to eight meters out of the lead, and Denean followed with a scorching 50.8 anchor. She caught Manual Arts’ Carla Johnson coming out of the first turn and pulled away to victory. The Toilers finished second in 3:39.07.

“Denean went after her like a Tiger going after its prey,” said Eugene Howard, who coached his daughters throughout their careers. “I remember when (Denean) got the baton, I didn’t think we had a chance at getting the record because she’d have to run a (sub-51 second) leg. But that’s what she did.”

The victory helped defending champion Kennedy finish second behind Berkeley in the team standings and soothed the disappointment of a botched pass in the 400 relay at the start of the meet.

During a memorable two-day meet in which five national high school records were set, Tina finished second in the 400 in a then-personal best of 54.38 and Denean placed second in the 100 (11.83) and won the 200 (23.73) before they teamed with Cook Bell and Johnson in the 1,600 relay, the final girls’ event of the meet.

“The girls really dug down deep that night,” Eugene Howard said. “They shocked me with that time. When I saw how fast they had run, it really got me going. I was just so proud of them.”

Although it has been 13 years since that record-breaking performance, the mark by that Kennedy foursome has weathered the test of time well. It still ranks second on the all-time national high school list behind Pasadena Muir’s 3:37.69 in 1985.

In contrast, there have been plenty of alterations in the lives of the athletes who produced the record.

One never ran after high school, another had her collegiate career cut short by injury and a third hung up her spikes after graduating from college. And then there’s Denean, who has been a member of four U.S. Olympic teams.

Among them, they have been married, given birth, moved out of state and entered business. But they’ll always be linked by their record run nearly half a lifetime ago.

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Tina Howard, who ran the first leg on the record relay, always seemed overshadowed by members of her family.

In 1980, Tina finished third in the 400 in the City Section championships, but a few weeks later Sherri and Denean placed first and third in the Olympic trials in the 400.

Tina improved to second in the state as a senior in 1981, but that was the year that Denean won the first of three consecutive 400 titles in The Athletics Congress championships.

The large shadows cast by her sisters didn’t bother Tina as she continued to compete with them at Cal State Los Angeles.

She lowered her personal best to 54.34 in college, but she left track behind after graduating with a degree in business administration in 1987.

“For me, running through college was enough,” Tina said. “I never intended to run after that. By the time I graduated, I was ready to get my career started.”

Tina, who is engaged, has worked as an assistant at the Center of Health Resources in Los Angeles for the past two years, and would eventually like to open her own business.

“It’s just another goal that I’ve set for myself,” she said. “We were always setting goals for ourselves in high school and working toward them and I’m still doing that now.”

*

Kelley Cook Bell enrolled at Kennedy High as a promising 800-meter runner in the fall of 1979, but when the 1980 track season began, she had earned a spot on the Golden Cougars’ 1,600 relay team that included Sherri, Tina and Denean Howard.

That trio had combined with older sister Artra to set a national high school record of 3:44.1 in the mile relay in the 1979 State championships for San Gorgonio High in San Bernardino. And the media attention on “California’s First Family of Track” heated up after the Howards moved to Granada Hills.

When Kennedy set a then-national record of 3:39.62 in the 1,600 relay in the 1980 City championships, broadcaster Jim Hill, working then for KNX-TV, was on the scene to interview the record-setters.

As the slowest runner on the team, Cook Bell could have developed an inferiority complex, but the Howards made her feel like part of the family from the beginning.

“I always knew that it didn’t matter how fast I ran, as long as I gave 150% every time I stepped on the track,” she said. “That’s all they asked of me and themselves.”

Despite her ease around the Howards, Cook Bell realized she was fortunate to be running with such a talented trio.

“At times I think that I was just happy to be there,” she said. “Running with the Howards was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

Although Cook Bell no longer lives in the state, the closeness that developed among the four runners in high school has lasted through the years.

They still keep in touch and whenever Cook Bell visits her parents in Granada Hills, they get together.

Cook Bell, who ran 2:15 in the 800 in high school, placed fifth or better in three consecutive City finals before lowering her best to 2:13 at Valley College in 1983.

She transferred to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the fall of that year, but never ran a “serious” 800 again. Then-Mustang Coach Lance Harter used her primarily in the 400 and in the 1,600 relay.

She lowered her personal best to 54.6 in the one-lap event before suffering torn ligaments in her left knee in 1987 while playing soccer for the school’s club team.

That year had its positives, however. She met Dan Bell, a member of the school’s rodeo team, and the two were married four years later and eventually moved to Dan’s hometown in Paradise Valley, Nev., population 150.

“We wanted to live in a town where you didn’t have to lock your doors at night,” she said. “It’s a different type of lifestyle from where I grew up, but the quality of life is great for raising a family.”

Cook Bell, who has an 18-month-old son named Shane, has been the boys’ track coach at Lowry High in Winnemucca since 1992, and was recently hired as a coordinator at a fitness center in that town.

She and Dan also run a hay-baling business and own 50% of the Paradise Saloon and Mercantile Co.

r Cook Bell has kept a low profile about her athletic accomplishments since moving to Paradise Valley, but they became public knowledge earlier this week when a photographer from the local newspaper shot photos of her for this story.

“They’re really making a big deal out of it,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “It’s not like I go around talking about it.”

*

Ann Johnson is the mystery woman of Kennedy’s record-setters.

Although Hill and Howard have stayed in touch with Cook Bell over the years, none knows the whereabouts of Johnson.

After graduating from Kennedy in 1982, Johnson was expected to run for Valley College during the 1983 season, but she never came out for the Monarch team.

James Harvey, an assistant coach at Antelope Valley College and a long-time coach at Valley, said Johnson was a “very good athlete.”

“I remember talking to her about running for Valley, but she never made it out there,” Harvey said. “I’m not sure what happened.”

Eugene Howard, who said he saw Johnson and her parents at a meet five or six years ago at Cerritos College, said that Johnson originally planned to run track in college, but instead decided to work full-time to help out her family.

No matter where Johnson might be, Hill has not forgotten her contribution to that team.

“Ann ran the race of her life,” Hill said. “We couldn’t have set the record without her. . . . But when she held her own on that leg, I knew we had a chance at winning.”

*

Denean Hill has had to live up to some grand expectations since placing third in the 1980 Olympic trials at the age of 15, but she has managed to do so.

She won five state high school titles for Kennedy. And though slowed by injuries at Cal State L.A., she has ranked among the top 10 sprinters in the 400 in the country nine times during her career, and qualified for four Olympic and two World Championship teams.

Her Olympic dreams turned sour in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter ordered the U.S. team to boycott the Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. But she earned a gold medal as a member of the American 1,600-relay team in the 1984 Games that were marred by the Soviet-led Eastern European boycott.

Hill, who is married to WBA light-heavyweight champion Virgil Hill, had the best year of her career in 1988.

She finished sixth in the 400 in the Olympics--after running a personal best of 49.87 in a semifinal--and ran the first leg on the team that finished second with a national record of 3:15.51.

After sitting out 1989 to give birth to Virgil Jr., Hill missed the 1990 and ’91 seasons because of a knee injury. She placed fifth in the 400 in the 1992 Olympic trials and earned another silver medal in the 1,600 relay in the Games of Barcelona.

Hill gave birth to her daughter Alaysia last November and has been gradually working herself back into shape this year.

Although she plans to race again next year and take a shot at qualifying for her fifth Olympic team in 1996, the 1981 State championships always will hold a special spot for her.

“That (national record in the 1,600 relay) is still the most-surprising performance of my career,” Hill said. “I’ve run some better times in some bigger meets since, but I’ve never been more pleasantly surprised.”