Home-Grown Athletes in Olympic Lineup

Some we know. Some we’ve never heard of. A few we will recognize as neighbors only if a television announcer tells us so when their faces pop up on the screen.

They are our hometown Olympians and they will be at center stage during the Atlanta Games, which begin Friday with opening ceremonies and run through Aug. 4.

Twenty-seven athletes from the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County regions are scheduled to compete during the Games in 13 of the 29 sports contested.

Among them is Gail Castro, a 38-year-old former Crescenta Valley High and Valley College student who, until recently, planned to watch the action during some of the 171 1/2 hours of coverage NBC is expected to provide.

Castro and partner Deb Richardson were longshots who showed up last month at the women’s beach volleyball trials in Baltimore expecting nothing but hoping for the best.

“I watched the top players under so much pressure and it just turned my stomach,” Castro said. “We were under no pressure because we weren’t supposed to make it.”

But they did, and in a sport that is debuting as an Olympic event.

Also making history as a first-time medal event is softball, and the region is represented by two outstanding hitters on the favored U.S. team: first baseman Sheila Cornell and utility player Kim Maher.

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Cornell, 34, batted a team-high .581 for the U.S. team that won the gold medal at the 1995 Pan American Games in Argentina. The former Taft High and UCLA star is a member of the Valley-based California Commotion, which boasts five Olympians and last year finished second in the Amateur Softball Assn. women’s open division national tournament.

Maher, a former star at Buena High and Fresno State, batted .375 at the Pan Am Games.

On the men’s baseball diamond are a pair of pitchers from the region who overcame steep odds to make the U.S. team, considered a strong medal contender.

Jim Parque, a left-hander from La Crescenta, earned an invitation to try out for the U.S. squad by posting a 9-3 record as UCLA’s No. 1 starter as a sophomore this spring. He then outperformed another local standout to secure his ticket to Atlanta.

Parque beat out Pepperdine’s Randy Wolf, the two-time City Section player of the year from El Camino Real High School, as the team’s left-handed relief pitcher. Wolf was considered a better bet to make the Olympic team because he played for Team USA last year.

Even more of a longshot than the 5-foot-10 Parque was 6-foot-5 Jeff Weaver, who made a remarkable rise from unheralded walk-on freshman at Fresno State to All-American status. Weaver, a Simi Valley High graduate, survived strong competition among right-handed pitching hopefuls to earn a spot in the bullpen.

There are, of course, local athletes who have for years been on a steady course for the Olympics. Among them is boxer Fernando Vargas, 18, a leading contender for the gold medal in the 147-pound division.

A graduate of Channel Islands High and a product of the La Colonia Boxing Club in Oxnard, Vargas became the youngest-ever U.S. amateur champion two years ago and last year won a bronze medal at the Pan Am Games.

The U.S. has won at least one medal in boxing at every Olympiad in which it has participated, but has never won a game in Olympic field hockey. Six players from Ventura County are on the 16-man field hockey team, comprising the region’s largest contingent in a single sport.

Larry Amar of Camarillo, Ben Maruquin of Ventura, John O’Neill of Newbury Park, Scott Williams of Thousand Oaks, and Simi Valley natives Nick Butcher and Tom Vano are products of the Field Hockey Federation, a 15-year-old youth program that has helped Ventura County become the nation’s top source for young male players.

Although the U.S. lags behind world powers India, Pakistan and Germany, the Olympic team in May won a tournament in Spain that included Ireland and Argentina. It was the best showing by a U.S. team in international competition in some 20 years.

Butcher, 20, the team’s youngest member, says the U.S. is optimistic, despite earning a 0-19-3 record in five previous Olympics. As in 1984, when the Games were held in Los Angeles, the only reason the United States is competing in Atlanta is because it gets an automatic berth as the host nation.

“It’s a great opportunity for us because we have nothing to lose and everything to gain,” said Butcher, a Royal High graduate. “We’re playing really well and we expect to do well in the Olympics.”

So does Kristine Quance, who fulfilled a childhood dream by earning a spot on the Olympic swimming team. In the process, however, she had to endure frustration.

Quance, a Granada Hills High graduate who attends USC, qualified in two events with second-place finishes in the 200-meter individual medley and the 100 breaststroke at the trials in March. But the former Granada Hills standout was disqualified from her best event, the 400 individual medley, because of an obscure rule infraction while making a turn.

Pepperdine University is well-represented on the men’s volleyball team with three former players: captain Bob Ctvrtlik, Tom Sorensen and Jeff Stork, a Topanga Canyon resident who attended Taft High and Pierce College and is competing in his third Olympics. Stork helped the United States win the gold medal in 1988 and the bronze medal in 1992.

Justin Huish of Simi Valley claimed the No. 2 spot on the Olympic archery team despite an unorthodox training regimen that includes shooting arrows through his house to a target on a hill.

“His methods have always driven people crazy,” Bernie Huish, Justin’s father, said last fall. “Justin is the type of kid who can sit around and eat Twinkies, practice for a week, then go out and clean people’s clocks.”

Sharon Hanson of Ventura is a longshot to win a medal in the heptathlon after finishing third at the U.S. track and field trials. Hanson, a Buena High graduate, will compete in the sizable shadow of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the two-time Olympic and world champion who lives part-time in Canoga Park and does some of her training at Cal State Northridge.

Victoria Herazo of Castaic finished third at the trials in the women’s 10-kilometer walk to qualify for her second Olympic team.

Mark Crear of Valencia, Johnny Gray of Agoura Hills and Regina Jacobs of Oakland are three track athletes with ties to the region who could contend for medals.

Crear, who was ranked first in the world in 1994 and ‘95, is expected to battle world-record holder Colin Jackson of Great Britain and 1995 world champion Allen Johnson of the U.S. for the gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles.

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Gray, who won the Olympic trials on his 36th birthday in June, is an 800-meter specialist competing in his fourth Olympics. He won the bronze medal in 1992.

Jacobs, a 1981 graduate of what is now Campbell Hall High in North Hollywood, is appearing in her third Olympics in the women’s 1,500.

Rich Corso of Van Nuys has the distinction of coaching the Olympic and Harvard-Westlake High water polo teams.

Denny Fercho of Camarillo is among 16 men on the U.S. handball squad. He was introduced to the sport through the Ventura County Boys & Girls Club.

Amy Fuller of Westlake Village won a silver medal at the 1992 Olympics in rowing and is a member of the defending world champion women’s eight crew.

Also in rowing, David Collins of Thousand Oaks is making his Olympic debut in the men’s lightweight four without coxswain. Collins graduated from Westlake High and was a two-time captain of the Rutgers lightweight crew. He hopes to compete in the Olympics in 2000--as a marathon runner.

Another first-time Olympian is Joseph Harper of Ventura, who is competing in the 1,000-meter individual canoe event.

Times staff writer John Ortega contributed to this story.