Lange Sealed His Fate as Coach With Kiss

It has been 3 1/2 weeks since Balasz Kiss of USC won the hammer throw in the Olympic Games in Atlanta, but Trojan assistant Dan Lange is still on cloud nine.

Lange, Cal State Northridge’s top hammer thrower in the late 1980s, guided Kiss to four consecutive NCAA championships at USC and to a fourth-place finish in the 1995 World championships. But when the 24-year-old Hungarian won the Olympics, it took Lange, who attended the Games, some time to realize the magnitude of that accomplishment.

“We knew he was capable of winning, but it’s a whole nother thing when it finally happens,” Lange said. “I don’t think I really realized what he had done until I called [girlfriend Darcy Arreola]. She wasn’t home, but I left her a message. And when I told her Balasz had won the gold medal, I started getting all choked up.”

Kiss’s gold-medal chances got a boost when defending Olympic and two-time World champion Andrey Abduvaliyev of Tajikistan was unable to compete because of a knee injury. But the field still included Igor Astapkovich of Belarus and Lance Deal of the United States, the second- and fifth-place finishers in the 1995 World championships.

On top of that, Kiss had to deal with the pressure of trying to become the first Hungarian track athlete to medal in the Olympics since Miklos Nemeth won the javelin in 1976.

The pressure got so intense that Lange had Kiss stay outside the Olympic Village during the Games. When it came time to compete, he told his charge to simply have fun.

“He had always done well in the past when he just enjoyed the meet,” Lange said. “He had always thrown well in the NCAA championships because he was always relaxed because he knew he was going to win. So I just told him to enjoy it. To treat it like it was the NCAA championships, although the competition was much better.”

The advice seemed to work. Kiss unloaded his winning throw of 266 feet 6 inches on his third attempt, then survived a scare in the sixth--and final--round when Deal threw 266-2.

“It seemed like it took them forever to post that mark,” Lange said.

When they did, Kiss breathed a sigh of relief and shortly thereafter, he was the Olympic champion.

His victory turned him into a national hero in Hungary and made Lange so appreciate the rewards of coaching, he is considering making the profession his career.

That might sound surprising coming from someone who has been training throwers for the past eight years, but Lange always viewed coaching as a steppingstone to something else.

The 31-year-old Hart High graduate has worked as a sports and fitness consultant for several years, but after this season, he admits that coaching is in his blood.

“I’m usually so tired at the end of each season that I’m not sure if I’m going to come back,” Lange said. “But I don’t feel that way this year. . . . I’m resigned to the fact that I’m destined to be a coach. That this is something I truly enjoy.”

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Arreola, Lange’s girlfriend and the 1991 NCAA champion in the 1,500 meters for Cal State Northridge, appears ready to move up to the 5,000.

Arreola, 28, won the NCAA title as a Northridge senior in ’91 and followed that with a career best of 4 minutes 9.32 seconds to finish third in The Athletics Congress meet and qualify for the U.S. team that competed in the World championships that summer. But she hasn’t come within two seconds of her best since.

More importantly, she failed to advance to the final of the 1992 or ’96 Olympic trials and was eliminated in the heats of the 1994 and ’95 USA Track & Field championships.

Arreola said her struggles have stemmed from three main factors.

First, she does not possess a monster kick like some of her competitors. That can prove deadly in the 1,500 because most championship races are slow, tactical affairs that come down to a scorching last lap.

Second, the pressure to improve in the 1,500 has become greater every year that Arreola hasn’t. And third, running has too often “been the only thing” in her life.

She uses the past year as an example.

She didn’t work so she could focus on the trials, but by the time of the trials she no longer enjoyed running like she used to.

“I need to have other things going on in my life,” she said. “I’ve discovered that I’m not one of these people who likes to think about my workout all day.”

In an effort to diversify her time, Arreola plans to go back to Northridge to complete work toward her degree. She also will help coach everyday runners in preparation for the upcoming Santa Clarita Marathon.

“I like working with other runners,” she said. “It makes you realize that this is supposed to be more fun than it has been for me. I still enjoy it, but I need to enjoy it more.”

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Two months have passed since Dimitri Lagos and Vicky Waggenbach were fired as the boys’ and girls’ track and cross-country coaches at Alemany High, but Lagos said he’s still “shocked” by his dismissal.

Lagos, a walk-on coach who guided the Alemany boys to a third-place finish in the Southern Section Division III track championships in May, said he had no idea that anything was wrong until he returned from the National Scholastic Outdoor track championships in late June.

He said that Alemany Athletic Director Dudley Rooney informed him then that he had to fire him because “some other coaches threatened to quit if I wasn’t let go.”

Lagos concedes he had differences with girls’ basketball Coach Melissa Hearlihy and football Coach Pat Degnan, but he never considered them job threatening.

“I just want people to know the reasons why I was fired,” Lagos said. “There were no misappropriations of funds or improprieties with students. It’s not like I was dating a student. People tend to think the worst when things like this happen, so I want them to know that neither of those things occurred.”

Waggenbach, who still teaches at Alemany, would not comment on her firing and Rooney could not be reached for comment.

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When the State track high school championships are held at Cal State Sacramento next year, it will end a nine-year run at Cerritos College.

The meet was staged at Cerritos from 1988-96, but the California Interscholastic Federation voted earlier this year to begin alternating the State basketball and track championships between sites in Northern and Southern California.

As a result, the finals of the 1997 State basketball championships will be held at The Pond in Anaheim after being staged in Northern California--except for Divisions IV and V in 1988 and ‘89--the previous 13 years.