HIGH SCHOOL TRACK AND FIELD : Irishman Runs for Homeland : Thousand Oaks’ O’Doherty Honors Dublin by Wearing a Shamrock and Outdistancing Most Competitors

As he runs through the rain-soaked, lushly green hills that ring Conejo Valley, Keith O’Doherty hears the wind whistle through his ears and he can almost make out a lilting Irish tune.

Well, maybe it’s just a memory. The hilly terrain reminds the Thousand Oaks High runner of Ireland, where he spent the first 13 years of his life before his family emigrated from Dublin.

From the shamrock on his Irish running cap he wears at each meet to the tiny Irish flags painted on the heels of his spikes, the 18-year-old senior looks like he’s headed for a St. Patrick’s Day parade rather than the finish line of a race.

And the Lancers always wear green: It’s a school color.

In keeping with Irish tradition--three of the four fastest performers in the indoor mile have been Irishmen--O’Doherty is a distance runner, competing at 1,600 and 3,200 meters in track and running on the Lancers’ state champion cross-country team. His boyhood idol? Eamonn Coghlan, the world record-holder in the indoor mile.

“I was genuinely excited when I learned Keith was a real Irishman,” said Jack Farrell, the Thousand Oaks track and cross-country coach and an Irish-American. “Running is a culturally supported sport over there. Whenever a culture gets behind a sport, you produce winners.”

O’Doherty gobbles up the Irish associations faster than a corned beef and cabbage supper. But even he marvels at the conclusions some Americans draw.

“People look at me and they look at my times, then they find out I’m Irish and they think I’m better,” he said.

Before his senior year, he might have needed the extra boost his lineage seems to confer. But after a breakthrough cross-country season last fall and a victory last month in the two mile in the Sunkist Invitational at the Sports Arena, O’Doherty is the most improved distance runner in the area.

He carried the Lancers during most of the cross-country season when Thousand Oaks won its third consecutive Southern Section Division I title and second straight state championship. The team was ranked No. 2 in the nation and shattered its own course record at Mt. San Antonio College by 47 seconds.

O’Doherty, the team’s No. 1 runner most of the season, placed third in the section’s Division I meet.

The improvement has continued in track season. After the Sunkist victory, he won the 1,600 and 3,200 last week in Thousand Oaks’ first meet of the season and placed second in the 1,600 and 3,200 in last weekend’s Channel Coast Invitational, posting personal best times of 4 minutes 23.5 seconds and 9:25.0.

Despite the Irish connection, O’Doherty hardly seemed destined for success at Thousand Oaks. Since his freshman year, his career has been tied to classmates and best friends Jeff Fischer and Kevin Marsden, whose accomplishments dwarfed O’Doherty’s for a long time.

As freshmen new to running, the three took turns beating each other during the cross-country season. But instead of running track that spring, O’Doherty played tennis, a sport he still pursues as a coach for younger players at a Thousand Oaks club.

As sophomores, the threesome shrunk by a third. Fischer and Marsden emerged as two of the best cross-country runners in the area, racing 1-2 for Thousand Oaks, the state runner-up in 1992.

O’Doherty, a full minute slower than his friends, languished on the frosh-soph team. Then, having decided that running was his first sport, O’Doherty put away his tennis racquet and ran track that spring--on the frosh-soph team. O’Doherty finally made the varsity as a junior on the cross-country team, running as the No. 5 man for a state championship team led by Fischer and Marsden, who placed third and fifth in the state meet.

During track season last spring, O’Doherty joined the varsity and lowered his personal best in the 3,200, his No. 1 event, to a respectable 9:30.25. But Fischer and Marsden were winning races with O’Doherty still lagging behind.

“Keith never perceived himself as inferior, no matter how much prima facie material said otherwise,” Farrell said. “He never showed frustration either.”

Said O’Doherty: “I always thought I would be running with them by then, or by then, or by then.”

“Then” arrived last fall.

After a rigorous summer workout program running what Farrell calls “ego-fests” with Brandon Del Campo, a Thousand Oaks graduate now running at UCLA, O’Doherty was poised for a breakthrough.

He served notice at the cross-country team’s annual “watermelon run,” a team trial race in which O’Doherty blew past Fischer and Marsden, loyal friends who have pulled for O’Doherty’s breakthrough as hard as he has. Despite jockeying for position for four years, the three exhibit no jealousy or envy, Farrell said, perhaps because they are so similar.

All three are honor students with ambitious academic plans and the Scholastic Assessment Test scores to match: Fischer has scored 1,340, O’Doherty 1,290 and Marsden 1,160.

All three are considering UCLA, and Marsden has received an appointment to the Air Force Academy, although he has not decided to accept. Fischer and O’Doherty visited Princeton of the Ivy League together, and O’Doherty also is considering Baylor.

“When Keith fell out of our training group (as sophomores), that was disappointing because we are friends,” Fischer said. “We still knew he had a lot to show. It was really neat to watch him last (cross-country) season.”

For O’Doherty, the key moment came during the season-opening Seaside Invitational in Ventura. Running in an elite field that included Hart’s Brett Strahan, John Greene of Agoura and Antonio Arce of Palmdale, O’Doherty placed second.

“Strahan went out like a shot and I was running about 10th,” he said. “Then in the second half of the race, I started catching people. I pulled past Greene and Arce and I thought, ‘This is cool.’ ”

In November, O’Doherty (5-foot-11, 125 pounds) won the Ventura County Championships, beating Camarillo’s Eleazar Hernandez, who placed fifth a month later in the national championships.

Nevertheless, O’Doherty faces a difficult track season. He must place in the top three in the 3,200 in the Marmonte League finals in May to advance to postseason individual meets.

“Running is incredibly addictive,” he said. “Basically, it appeals to my senses and is enjoyable. It’s not just something to do to get in shape. It’s fun.”

Part of the fun for O’Doherty is continuing to link his identity to the Emerald Isle.

“I see myself in the tradition of Irish running,” he said. “I’d like to aspire to that.”