Arce at Top of Gonzalez’s Pass List : Track and field: Crescenta Valley runner aims at avenging loss to cross-country champion.

He made the list before the season.

Seven names. Seven runners. And as Phil Gonzalez of Crescenta Valley High enters today’s Southern Section divisional championships at Cerritos College there is only one name that he has not crossed off.

Antonio Arce.

Arce, of Palmdale High, was first among seven runners who finished ahead of an ailing Gonzalez in the Southern Section Division II cross-country championships last fall.

He is the only one Gonzalez has not come back to defeat during the track season.

Although Arce was favored to win last year’s Division II meet, Gonzalez was expected to contend for a top-three finish.

A bout with flu destroyed those plans.

“It was really frustrating,” Gonzalez said. “I would feel OK in workouts during the week, but I wouldn’t have enough energy for the races.”

The track season didn’t start off well, either. A strained hip muscle forced Gonzalez to miss a week of training and prevented him from training hard for another three weeks.

But this latest setback has not slowed him. Gonzalez won the 1,600 and 3,200 in the league finals two weeks ago and qualified for the Division I finals in both events in last week’s prelims.

Gonzalez’s personal best of 9 minutes 14.41 seconds in the 3,200--a time turned in after a severe coughing attack following his heat of the 1,600--favorably compares him with heavyweights Brett Strahan (9:14.18) of Hart, Arce (9:14.28), Jeff McLarty (9:14.38) of Chino Hills Ayala and Jeff Fischer (9:15.64) of Thousand Oaks.

The coughing, triggered by allergies, was so intense that Gonzalez barely warmed up before the 3,200, drinking some tea and taking three cough drops instead.

Then he went out and lowered his personal best by more than seven seconds.

“I wasn’t intimidated at all by running with those guys,” Gonzalez said. “I wanted to show them that I could run with them. It was an honor to be up there, though. When I first started running, Antonio Arce was one of my idols.”

Arce, Strahan, McLarty, Fischer and Gonzalez will run in both the 1,600 and 3,200 in the Division I meet, possibly giving an edge to Eleazar Hernandez of Camarillo in the 3,200.

Hernandez, fifth in the Foot Locker national cross-country championships in December, ran 9:05.15 to finish fourth in the Arcadia Invitational last month and is expected to take the field through the first 1,600 in 4:27 or 4:28.

Arce, the defending champion in the 3,200, and Strahan, the defending champion in the 1,600, are among nine athletes from the region who will attempt to successfully defend titles they won last year.

Among other reigning champions are Ramsey Jay of Ventura in the Division II boys’ 400; Kim Mortensen of Thousand Oaks in the Division I girls’ 1,600 and 3,200; Bridie Hatch of Nordhoff in the Division III girls’ 300 low hurdles, and Liz Giltner of Chaminade in the Division III girls’ high jump.

Mortensen has personal bests of 4:59.23 in the 1,600 and 10:51.55 in the 3,200, but will be a heavy underdog against Agoura’s Amy Skieresz (4:53.97 and 10:31.60) and Anaheim Esperanza’s Courtney Pugmire, who finished ninth in the national cross-country meet.

Ronney Jenkins of Hueneme, Andrea Wasden of Rio Mesa and Kadrina Coffee of Palmdale lead the list of other region leaders who will compete.

Jenkins, who has a best of 24 feet 1 inch in the long jump, will face defending state champion Tyree Washington of Riverside La Sierra in the Division II meet.

Wasden has run 14.39 in the 100 high hurdles and 44.42 in the 300 lows, but will have to run substantially faster to defeat defending Division II champion Joanna Hayes of Riverside North, who timed 13.75 and 41.98 in the prelims.

Coffee, a freshman, leads the region in the 200 (25.04), 400 (56.47) and triple jump (37-9 1/2) and will also run the anchor leg on the Falcons’ region-leading 1,600 relay team (3:53.36) in the Division I meet.

Field events start at noon. Running events begin at 1 p.m.