Mataafa Throws Her Weight Around : Track and field: CSUN transfer is second in shot, third in discus at Mt. SAC Relays.

The sky was sunny with a few scattered clouds.

The breeze was light and the temperature was a balmy 75 degrees.

As Kristina Mataafa of Cal State Northridge sat in the stands on the final day of the Mt. San Antonio College Relays on Saturday, she could have been thinking, “I’m glad I decided to come back home to Southern California.”

Mataafa, runner-up in the girls’ discus in the 1992 State championships for Escondido Orange Glen High, attended Colorado during the 1992-94 school years. But after tiring of the frigid Rocky Mountain winters and improving her bests only marginally with the Buffaloes, Mataafa decided to transfer to Northridge.

“They had recruited me in high school and they had a really good coach,” Mataafa said of Matador assistant Candy Roberts. “So it was a good match.”

The results don’t lie.

Mataafa has improved her personal best in the discus three times this season, and Saturday she finished second in the university-open division shotput with a heave of 47 feet 9 inches.

Mataafa’s effort tacked slightly more than a foot onto her previous best and moved her into third place on the all-time Northridge list.

She also finished third in the discus, although her throw of 164-3 was short of the 167-1 best that she posted Friday in the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational.

“There’s something about that discus ring,” Mataafa said. “I don’t know what it was, but I just lost it. I wanted to win so badly that my technique just came apart.”

After marks of 152-3 and 153-0 on her first two throws, Mataafa unloaded her 164-3 effort in the third round, but she could throw no farther on her final three attempts.

“I wanted to throw 175 (feet),” Mataafa said. “An automatic qualifying mark (of 173-11 for the NCAA championships) would have been nice.”

Teresa Stricklin added a fourth-place finish at 46-4 3/4 in the shotput and a fifth-place effort of 153-10 in the discus for Northridge. Marshall Evans, Derek Favorite, Jeff Nasternak and Akiem Brown combined for a winning time of 3 minutes 13.88 seconds in the university-open 1,600 relay.

Other than that, Northridge had a relatively quiet meet.

Kristin Dunn, who threw a school record and NCAA-leading 176-4 in the javelin against UCLA and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on April 8, decided not to compete because Northridge Coach Don Strametz did not know until Friday night that Dunn was going to be allowed to compete in the invitational portion of that event.

“(Roberts) and her just decided that it was best to pass up this meet,” Strametz said.

Isaac Turner of Glendale College, who set a school record of 1:49.93 in the 800 meters at the Fresno Relays on April 1, would never have dreamed of bypassing Mt. SAC, not when he had a chance to race Brian Wilkinson of Hartnell, the state leader at 1:49.30.

Wilkinson defeated Turner, 1:50.79 to 1:51.24, taking the lead at the end of the first lap and holding off the Vaquero sophomore in the homestretch.

In other events involving former local standouts, Darcy Arreola of the Reebok Aggies placed second in the women’s invitational 1,500 with a time of 4:17.27, Erick McBride of California Coast Track won the third heat of the men’s university-open 800 in 1:49.44 and Jeremy Fischer of Wisconsin placed third in the invitational high jump at 7-2 1/2.

Arreola won the 1,500 for Cal State Northridge in the 1991 NCAA Division I championships, McBride was the 1990 NCAA Division II champion in the 800 for the Matadors and Fischer won the high jump for Camarillo High in last year’s State meet.