Dunn Finds Patience Goes Long Way

Good news for Candy Roberts, coach of Cal State Northridge’s throwers.

Star pupil Kristin Dunn is finally a believer.

Dunn, an NCAA Division I All-American in the javelin for Northridge in 1994 and ‘95, admits she butted heads with Roberts over a training regimen she considered too easy last fall. But after finishing seventh in the U.S. Olympic trials in Atlanta last week, she has confidence in her coach’s methods.

“I have to admit it that she was right,” said Dunn, who underwent surgery on her left (throwing) elbow and knee after her senior season last year. “She told me last fall that I had to be patient in my training. There were so many times I would go to Candy and say, ‘I need to run more and sprint more and throw more and lift more.’ ”

The intense Roberts, only a year and a half older than the 23-year-old Dunn, tried to be patient but reached her boiling point one day last October.

“She really chewed me out,” Dunn said. “I was telling her all these things I thought I should be doing and she said, ‘Look, you’ve got to trust me.’ She told me that I couldn’t push it. That I wanted everything to happen too quickly. That I had to be patient if I wanted to throw well and be injury-free this season.”

Scheduling problems limited Dunn to only three meets this year, but her 176-foot 4-inch toss in the trials tied her personal best set last year and helped her attain her goals of a top-eight finish and defeats of Ashley Selman, Jen McCormick and Heather Berlin, all of whom she had never beaten.

Her seventh-place effort left Dunn pumped about improving her career best in the weeks ahead, but Roberts wants her to call it a season and concentrate on shedding 27 pounds from her 6-foot, 192-pound frame by September. And this time, Dunn isn’t questioning her coach.

“I do need to lose weight,” said Dunn, a teacher at Coutin school in Canoga Park. “I was too heavy this season. I need to get down to 165 by September so I can put on some weightlifting weight in the fall.”

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Derek Kite got his first taste of the trials in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and the experience left him with a thirst that can be quenched only by a berth on a U.S. Olympic team.

“I’m willing to wait four years or eight years or 12 years, but I’m going to run in the Olympic Games one day,” said Kite, a 1990 graduate of Camarillo High who placed 13th in the trials. “I know what it takes now and I’m going to have to work a lot harder.”

Kite, the No. 2 runner on a Camarillo cross-country squad that won the Division I title in the 1989 State championships, earned NAIA All-American recognition in cross-country and track several times at Lubbock (Texas) Christian from 1990-94, and he’s improved steadily since.

After running 8 minutes 49 seconds in the steeplechase as a sophomore at Lubbock Christian, Kite ran 8:44.46 last year and clocked 8:37.07 shortly before the trials. Once there, he ran 8:50.39 to finish third in a first-round heat, a personal best of 8:36.76 to place seventh in a semifinal and 8:50.73 in the final.

“I was kind of overwhelmed by being [in the final],” said Kite, who lives in Malibu and runs for Future Track, an Agoura Hills-based club. “I was really focused in the semifinal on making the final, but I had never really considered myself to be on the same level as someone like Francis O’Neill and I think that got to me.”

O’Neill finished fifth in the final, a race that taught Kite, 24, that he needs to get much stronger--both physically and mentally--if he’s going to make future Olympic or World Championship teams.

“You really need to be strong to last three rounds and it’s very mental too,” he said. “You can tell yourself, ‘You are going to make it’ or you can say, ‘Can I make it?’ and fall behind.”

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Ryan Wilson of the University of Arkansas failed to qualify for the final of the men’s 5,000 in the trials, yet the 1993 Agoura High graduate still has a chance to represent the United States in the Olympics.

That’s because Ronnie Harris of Arlington, Va., who placed third in the trials, has yet to meet the A qualifying standard of 13:29.0 for the Games.

For a country to send three athletes to the Olympics in an event, each individual must exceed the A standard.

Wilson, who ran 13:28.6 to win the 5,000 in the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in April, is one of only four eligible Americans who have run 13:29 or faster in the 5,000 during the qualifying period that ends July 16.

The others are Bob Kennedy and Matt Giusto, who finished first and second in the trials, and Mark Coogan, who advanced to the trials final but will focus on the marathon at the Olympics.

“I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” Wilson said. “We’ll just have to see what happens in the next three weeks.”

Wilson, 21, would have preferred to make the U.S. team by finishing in the top three at the trials, but a 14:15.47 clocking in his heat left him nearly seven seconds shy of advancing to the final.

“I was very disappointed,” Wilson said. “I knew I needed to make the final, but for one reason or another, I wasn’t ready.”

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Quarter-miler Denean Hill of Newhall fell short in her bid to make a record-tying fifth U.S. Olympic team in the trials, but that doesn’t mean her season or career has ended.

No sooner had the 1982 Kennedy High graduate been eliminated in her semifinal heat than she was contemplating racing on the European circuit this summer and in the USA Track & Field Championships next year. The top three finishers in each event in that meet will qualify for the U.S. team that will compete in the 1997 World Championships in Athens.

“I had planned on running faster, but I was not disappointed,” Hill said about the trials. “I improved my time in each round, but I think I was just a little short of racing.”

The 31-year-old mother of two entered the trials with a season best of 52.30 in the 400 after running only three races this year. She clocked 52.01 in the first round, 51.89 in the quarterfinals and 51.74 in the semifinals, but the latter mark left her in sixth place, two spots shy of qualifying for her fifth consecutive trials final.

Nonetheless, she saw enough positives to want to race on the European circuit for only the second time in her career and to train for another year.

“I really feel like I have in my legs to run a [mid-51-second 400],” she said. “I just need some more races. I’m even thinking about dabbling in the [800.]”