UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK / JOHN WEYLER : Monson and Yaba Strive to Stay in Step, Right to the Finish Line

Vince O’Boyle extols the virtues of mob mentality and the UC Irvine cross-country coach only has to look as far as his two foremost converts for examples of its success.

“We try to run as a pack and keep it tight,” O’Boyle said. “That’s not a novel approach, of course, but this team has really picked it up well.”

Leading the way are junior Laura Monson and senior Jo-Jo Yaba, a couple of quintessential pack rats.

They have traded off finishing first and second for Irvine in cross-country and track distance races, fall and spring, for the three years they have competed at Irvine. And they have lived together for two years.

But any sense of rivalry is undetectable.

“We really work together so well and we’re just happy for the other one, no matter who finishes first,” Monson said, smiling.

“Exactly,” Yaba says, “Just what Laura said.”

No teasing? No good-natured trash talk? Not even a friendly wager of a diet soda?

“No, and it’s really neat that we’ve concentrated on working together,” Monson said. “We have just one focus, one goal. All I think about is sticking together and pulling each other along.

“And that’s not just Jo and me, but the whole team.”

Don’t expect to hear a different perspective from Yaba.

“There is no No. 1 runner or a No. 2 runner here,” Yaba said. “At Arizona State [Oct. 13], we finished 8th, 11th, 12th, 15th, 16th and 17th and there was only about five seconds separating us.”

O’Boyle, sporting his best Cheshire cat grin, nods and smiles and smiles and nods.

“That’s the essence of our approach,” he said. “We worry more about each other than we do about any other team. It’s a pretty simple formula. If your team can group together and that group finishes in the upper 10% of a race, then you are going to be very, very tough to beat.”

Monson has been the first Anteater across the finish line in two of Irvine’s four major meets this year. And Yaba has been No. 1 in the other two. In last year’s Big West Conference championship, Yaba finished second overall and Monson was fifth.

Sure, they would like to improve on that Saturday when the Anteaters host this year’s conference meet at Central Park in Huntington Beach, but Yaba would settle for No. 2 again if it was Monson just ahead of her.

“I’m telling you,” O’Boyle said, “they’re tight as soup.”

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Leaders of the pack: O’Boyle has been working hard on the psyches of his top two women competitors and the results of an improved mental approach are evident.

Monson, who had incredible freshman seasons in cross-country and track, struggled a bit last year.

“People say Laura didn’t have a sophomore year like her freshman year, but she had such a tremendous freshman year that it would have been very hard to come back and top it,” he said.

“She was actually pretty steady, but she started over-analyzing a bit. After working on her head long and hard with a lot of individual counseling, though, I think she’s comfortable again to just go out and run.”

Yaba, who attended Mt. San Antonio College for a year before transferring to Irvine, made her move last season. After finishing second in the conference cross-country meet, she was third in the 10,000 meters, second in the 5,000 and fifth in the 3,000 in the Big West track meet.

“After she caught fire last year, that changed her,” O’Boyle said. “She started to believe, ‘Hey, I can run with these people.’

“Jo’s an internal leader. If she went into coaching, she’d be a great coach. On runs, I feel like I don’t even have to be around. She’s taking care of the younger runners, just taking care of business. She has a great work ethic and is really dedicated. She loves it.

“I’m probably going to redshirt her in track. It’s purely selfish on my part, I just want to keep her around another year.”

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Then there were six: Only the top six finishers in the Big West will qualify for the conference men’s basketball tournament this season. Irvine, which has played some of its best basketball during the postseason as the tournament’s 10th-seeded team (1994) and eighth-seeded team (1995), will have to improve its regular-season record to participate in 1996.

“Before, no matter what you did during the season, when you got to that second weekend in March, you still had a chance,” Coach Rod Baker said. “Now, every one of your conference games means so much more because you have to position yourself to be able to go.”

Baker says this year’s team is his “most talented” in five seasons at Irvine.

“This is a good-enough and mature-enough team that we can’t be talking about sixth or seventh,” he said. “Hopefully, the fact that only six teams are going will be a moot point for us.”

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Ouch patrol: The men’s basketball team has been practicing for a week without three of their top post players. Junior Paul Foster, a 6-foot-8 transfer from Moorpark College, has a sprained ankle; Shaun Battle, a 6-6 senior who averaged five points and three rebounds last season, has tendinitis of the knee, and senior Michael Tate, a 6-4 forward who was second on the team in rebounding (seven per game) has a groin pull.

All are expected to return this week.

Not so fortunate are senior point guard Shauhin Talesh and sophomore Nicole Kelly, a starting defender on the women’s soccer team. Both suffered torn anterior cruciate ligaments in their left knees and will be out for the year.

Freshman forward Kori Zimmerman, who had two goals and two assists in the Anteaters first 12 games this season, is also out with a broken right foot.

Anteater Notes

Young guns continue to shoot up the competition as the women’s soccer team, ranked 14th in the nation again this week by Soccer America, improved to 12-0-2 with two victories in Albuquerque, N.M., over the weekend. Freshman forward Dena Lundy scored off an assist from freshman defender Jaime Reichenbach in the 100th minute during a 1-0 overtime victory over New Mexico Friday night. And freshman forward Nicole Bucciarelli scored in the 53rd and 54th minutes as the Anteaters beat Wyoming, 2-0, Sunday. . . . Here’s a headline you thought you’d never see: Irvine Ranked Among Attendance Leaders. Women’s soccer is seventh in the West Region in total attendance (2,760). And all five of the Anteaters’ final regular-season games are at home. Irvine plays host to San Diego at 7 Wednesday night, San Diego State at 7 Friday night and UC Santa Barbara at noon Sunday . . . . The women’s soccer team already has tied the school record for most victories in a season, previously set in 1991 and 1993.

Junior Craig Watson scored a two-point goal with 2 minutes 21 seconds remaining in overtime Sunday to lift the fourth-ranked water polo team over host USC. The Trojans were ranked No. 2 in last week’s national poll. This week’s poll will be released today. . . . The men’s basketball team’s annual Blue & Gold scrimmage is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday in the Bren Center. The women’s team will practice at 1 p.m. Both are open to the public and admission is free. The men’s team will be available for photos and autographs from 1 to 1:30 and the women’s team will be available between 2 and 2:30.