Alemany’s Quick Study : Area-Best Sprinter Miguel Fletcher Also on Fast Track in the Classroom

As Alemany High sophomore Miguel Fletcher walked slowly off the track after a workout earlier this week, he looked nothing like one of the fastest high school sprinters in the nation.

Fletcher clocked state-leading times of 10.47 seconds in the 100 meters and 21.44 in the 200 in the Trabuco Hills Invitational two weeks ago, but there was nothing quick about him as he wearily plopped down in the school’s bleachers.

But when he starts to talk about track, Fletcher, who chose Alemany for its academics, speaks passionately about sprinting and competing in the Arcadia Invitational tonight at Arcadia High.

“It’s the burst of speed. That’s what I like about sprinting,” he said. “I like that fast quickness.”

Fletcher has been a national-class age-group sprinter since he was 10 and clocked 10.98 in the 100 and 22.0 in the 200 as an eighth-grader at Sierra Vista Junior High in Canyon Country.

He improved to 10.83 and 21.93 and placed fourth in both events in the Southern Section Division III championships as a freshman at Alemany. Those marks were his bests until the Trabuco Hills meet.

There, Fletcher moved to second on the all-time region list in the 100--1992 Olympic 400 champion Quincy Watts ran 10.30 as a Taft junior in 1987--by blowing away a field that included Kevin Griswold of Garden Grove, who finished third in the 200 and fifth in the 100 in last year’s Southern Section Division III finals.

“I knew it was pretty fast because I won by a good margin,” Fletcher said. “But because no one was pushing me, I wondered what I could do if someone was really pushing me like at Arcadia.”

In the 200, Fletcher started almost too quickly. He rocketed out of the blocks, but stumbled briefly because he was trying to run the turn too tight.

“It wasn’t like he almost fell or anything,” Alemany Coach Dimitri Lagos said. “But he did stumble enough that it cost him a tenth of a second or two. He might have run [21.20] if he hadn’t stumbled.”

Fletcher isn’t worried about what might have been. He wants to run under 10.40 in the 100 and under 21.00 in the 200 by the end of the season and figures that a sub-21 200 clocking is possible as soon as tonight if the conditions are right.

He won’t lack for competition.

Junior Bryan Harrison of Roswell, Ga., and senior Vince Williams of San Diego University City are entered in the 100 and 200. Harrison won the 200 and placed third in the 100 for Dana Hills in the State championships last year. Williams was fourth in the 100 and fifth in the 200.

“I’m looking forward to [the competition],” Fletcher said.

A desire to compete against the best and a strong work ethic have combined to make the 5-foot-11, 178-pound Fletcher the sprinter he is, Lagos said.

“He’s not a prima donna,” Lagos said. “He’s very modest of his accomplishments and he doesn’t expect special treatment because of who he is. He’s just one of the guys and he works as hard as anybody.”

Lagos, a former 800 runner at Kennedy High, is particularly fond of Fletcher’s unassuming nature because of his distasteful memories of the 1985 Golden Cougar team led by Michael Pringle.

Pringle, who had a standout football career at Cal State Fullerton, won the long jump, placed second in the 100 and fourth in the 200 in the 1985 City Section championships, but often had to be coaxed into running a leg on the 1,600 relay.

In contrast, Fletcher followed his 21.44 200 clocking at Trabuco Hills with a 47.9 leg to help Alemany to a region-leading time of 3:20.14 in the 1,600 relay.

“He was as happy about the [400 and 1,600 relays] as he was about his own times,” Lagos said. “He kept saying, ‘Man, we were rolling.’ ”

Fletcher takes great delight in the relays because “they’re a team thing. You get a chance to swoop on people and that’s fun.”

Fletcher’s joy for running has played a big part in his success, according to his father, Ned, who ran 9.5 in the 100-yard dash for Cal State Northridge in 1975.

“He just loves to run,” Ned Fletcher said. “He has since he was a little boy.”

Running fast is not the No. 1 priority in Miguel Fletcher’s life, however. Education is.

That’s why, his parents said, they sent him to Alemany.

“We knew he was a good athlete, but we wanted him to be a solid all-around person, too,” Ned Fletcher said. “That’s why we sent him to a Catholic school. We thought he would get a better education at a Catholic school than at a public one.”

Miguel Fletcher seems happy with his parents’ decision. He has a 3.2 grade-point average and the discipline needed to study several hours a night carries over to the track and the technical aspects of sprinting.

“Basically sprinting is all form,” he said. “You don’t worry about running fast. You just keep your form and that’s how I ran that 10.4. The object is you want to get out first so [your opponents] break down their stride and have to come after you and you’re already up ahead of them.”

Fletcher has been told for years that he’d be an outstanding football player, but it wasn’t until last fall that his mother, Adrina, allowed him to play. Although he rushed for about 14 yards a carry and gained more than 1,000 yards last fall on the junior varsity, he considers himself a sprinter playing football, not a football player running track.

“I’ve always been running track,” he said. “I just play football because it’s fun.”

Fletcher’s times have brought about comparisons to Watts, who ran 10.56 and 20.97 as a sophomore.

“It’s a compliment because he was such a great high school sprinter,” Fletcher said.

Although Lagos views the comparisons in a similar manner, he realizes that in a matter of 10.47 seconds, Fletcher went from being a very good high school sprinter to one on the verge of greatness.

“We thought that he had a legitimate shot to win the [Southern Section] Division III title in the 100 at the start of the season,” he said.

“But we figured he would need some help to get to State. But now, winning the State meet is a real possibility.”