Area Athletes to Compete in Junior Track Event

Bridget Pearson of Hoover High, Liz Giltner of Chaminade and Zarinah Tillman of Cal State Northridge head a list of six athletes from the region who are scheduled to compete in the USA Track & Field Junior championships, which start today at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.

Pearson, the runner-up in the girls’ pole vault at the State championships earlier this month, will compete in that event and Giltner, the state champion in the high jump, is entered in the heptathlon.

Tillman and Kadrina Coffee of Palmdale High will both run in the women’s 400 meters.

Tillman ranks second on the all-time Northridge list with a best of 54.71 seconds. Coffee ran a career best of 53.96 to place second in last year’s meet, but has not run as fast this season.

Nicole Campbell of Ventura High and Ryan Jones of Cal State Northridge are the other local entrants.

Campbell will run in the women’s 800 and Jones will compete in the men’s 110 high hurdles and 400 intermediates.

The top two finishers in each event qualify for the U.S. team which will compete in the World Junior championships Aug. 21-25 at Sydney, Australia,

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Jeff Beam, the Western State Conference champion in the pole vault for Moorpark College, has committed to Cal State Northridge.

Tennis

Monique Allegre of Camarillo has received the Evelyn Houseman Award from the Southern California Tennis Assn., the highest honor given for 10 years of good sportsmanship in junior tennis.

Allegre, a standout at Camarillo High who now plays at the University of Arizona, finished 1995, her final year of juniors, ranked eighth in Southern California.

Past winners of this award include Ania Bleszynski of Thousand Oaks (1994) and Wendy Ouwendijk of Camarillo (1996).

Basketball

Saugus High has hired Susie Sparks to coach its girls’ team. Sparks was interim coach part of last season. She replaces Laurie Roland, who took a maternity leave.

Jason and Jarron Collins, twin 6-foot-10 forwards from Harvard-Westlake High, have accepted invitations to participate in the Nike All-American camp at Purdue University, July 7-12.

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Contributing: Dana Haddad, John Ortega, Bryan Rodgers.