Smith Back on Track After Coaching Change

Mike Smith, boys’ cross-country coach at Camarillo High since 1982, will coach the Scorpions’ boys’ track team this season.

Smith, 42, replaces Dennis Riedmiller, who will be the girls’ track coach at Channel Islands High this season.

Riedmiller guided Camarillo to a 10-2 record in Marmonte League competition the last two years, and last season the Scorpions won their first Marmonte League title since 1982.

Budget cuts in the Oxnard Unified School District forced Camarillo to let Riedmiller go, however, and he began teaching special education classes at Channel Islands last fall.

This will be Smith’s second stint as the boys’ track coach at Camarillo. His first lasted from 1988-’92 before he resigned to spend more time with his wife and four children.

He was also an assistant track coach at Camarillo from 1984-87 and in 1993 and ’94.

“It’ll be fun,” Smith said. “I’m looking forward to getting back out there and working in events that I haven’t done in a while, such as the relays.”

In other news, Camarillo and Newbury Park will host the inaugural Channel Coast Invitational at Camarillo on March 18.

Eleazar Hernandez of Camarillo, Brett Strahan of Hart, the Thousand Oaks trio of Jeff Fischer, Keith O’Doherty and Kevin Marsden, and Phil Gonzalez of Crescenta Valley are expected to run.

Hernandez finished fifth in the Foot Locker national cross-country championships in December, and Strahan is the No. 3 returning 1,600-meter runner in the nation.

Fischer, O’Doherty and Marsden placed third, sixth and ninth in last year’s State Division I cross-country championships.

Gonzalez finished eighth in the Southern Section Division II cross-country final.