Frack’s Decision to Make a Run for It Works Out for Everyone

Shawn Frack is a young man who can recognize the impossible dream . . . especially when he’s flat on his back staring up at it.

He always wanted to be a football player, his dad always wanted him to be a football player, but young Frack was a pragmatist. Even as a 14-year-old, he understood his limitations: he was shorter than five feet and less than 100 pounds.

“I played Pop Warner, but by the time I was a freshman at Esperanza [High], I realized I was just too small,” he said. “I was a defensive back, but still, I just hated getting beat up in practice all the time.

“When I told my dad I didn’t want to play in high school, he kind of freaked out. He was pretty upset. He had been real involved with it in Pop Warner and he wanted me to play.”

But Frack--reluctantly at first--had decided to focus his athletic attention on another sport, and it didn’t take his father long to see that his son could run and succeed, minus the headgear, pads and collisions.

“In junior high, we’d do the mile once a week and I was always one of the first to finish,” Frack said. “The P.E. teachers would always say, ‘You should go out for cross-country.’ But like any other kid, I thought running was the worst.”

He joined his sister and aunt in a couple of 5K events the summer before his freshman year at Esperanza, however, and began to develop an appreciation for a sport that didn’t hit back.

The appreciation turned into adoration, he went out for the freshman-sophomore cross-country team, quickly trimmed chunks off his best times and was promoted to the varsity by the end of his freshman year. He finished the season as the fastest runner on his team and, by the time he was a senior, he was a Southern Section Division II track champion at 3,200 meters.

“I was looking real hard at UC Irvine, but then they almost dropped the program and it kind of scared me away,” Frack said. “So I ended up at [Cal Poly] SLO.”

His one-year tenure in San Luis Obispo was an unhappy cycle of injury, rehab and re-injury. And, after a summer back home, he didn’t want to return.

“I kept getting tendinitis and coming back too fast and getting hurt again, and I never really felt comfortable with the coaching staff and their style,” he said. “I told my parents I didn’t want to go back and we got permission to talk to [Anteater Coach] Vince [O’Boyle].”

Now a junior, Frack has been a key to Irvine’s resurgence in men’s track and cross-country. He led the Anteaters to third place in the Big West Cross-Country Championships last year with a 17th-place finish in 26 minutes 47 seconds. He was seventh in the 1,500 meters (4:03.24) and 10th in the 5,000 (15:53.15) at the conference track championships last May.

Frack says he has always considered himself a track man--mainly because he lost his edge during the summer and wasn’t in great shape for the fall cross-country season--but this year, he hopes, will be different.

“I always slacked off and then would be really unhappy with the way I ran in cross-country, but that always motivated me for track,” he said. “I’d work really hard and then beat a lot people in track that I never came close to in cross-country. But this summer I did everything the coaches set out for me, and I’m in the best shape of my life.”

Apparently. Frack led Irvine with an 11th-place individual finish (25:37) during the five-mile UCI Invitational Sept. 14. And he was Irvine’s top runner again Saturday--and the third-fastest individual--with a 25:40.6 at UC Santa Barbara. The Anteaters took second place in the four-way meet that also included Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State.

“We’ll see how the rest of the season turns out,” he said, “but for the first time in my life I’m looking forward to cross-country instead of just looking ahead to track.”

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Bottoming out: The women’s volleyball team had a record of 1-10, two starters--Brandy Smerko and Amy Pimentel--had just quit the team and the Anteaters hadn’t won a game in five matches.

But Coach Merja Connolly somehow remained optimistic last week.

“We’re dealing with it fine,” she said, “and now we have a whole new inspiration because we’re dealing with 11 players who want to be in the gym, knowing that their minds are competitive.

“We view preseason as a dress rehearsal, things begin for us this weekend when [Big West] Conference play starts.”

Maybe they should have rehearsed a bit more.

After losing its first two Big West matches to Pacific, ranked No. 17 in the country, and sixth-ranked Long Beach State, Irvine is 1-12 and hasn’t won a game in seven matches.

The Tigers and 49ers outscored the Anteaters, 90-25, in the six games.

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What’s a bench? Junior goaltender Tom Davis, from La Habra High, had played every second of every Irvine water polo game for two-plus seasons until the fourth-quarter against UC Santa Barbara Saturday.

Sophomore Genai Kerr made his debut in the nets with the Anteaters ahead, 11-3. Kerr gave up a goal and made two saves in the final quarter of a 12-4 victory.

Anteater Notes

Coach Marine Cano’s summation of the women’s soccer team’s first-half defense Sunday when the Anteaters fell behind UCLA, 4-0, en route to a 5-1 defeat: “Did we show up for this game? We were so bad, it was diabolical.” . . . A team of former men’s tennis players--Carlos Bustos, Chris Tontz, Curt Stalder, Eric Quade, Jim Snyder, Craig Neslage, Jim Slaught, Chris Ewing, Neel Grover and Carsten Hoffmann--beat a group of former Trojans in the first annual UCI/USC Alumni Grudge Match at the Racquet Club of Irvine Friday. The event was part of the Vic Braden/CHOC Padrinos Tennis Festival, a tournament to benefit Children’s Hospital of Orange County. . . . Two Irvine swimmers--junior Dina Pesenson, a native of Russia, and Rahul Kumar, from India--became United States citizens last week. . . . Former Anteater and world-record holder Steve Scott, who underwent surgery for testicular cancer in 1994, accomplished an amazing double Saturday. Scott, 40, won the Masters division of the Discovery Card Mile on Fifth Avenue in New York in 4 minutes 6.57 seconds and then later beat Ireland’s Eamonn Coghlan in a two-man Champions of the Mile race in 4:37.02.

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Coming Attractions

Here’s a look at key games this week for UC Irvine:

* Men’s soccer against Cal State Fullerton Friday in Anteater Stadium. Anteaters (4-3-1) host second-ranked Titans at 7 p.m. in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation opener.

* Women’s soccer Sunday against California. Junior forward Tracie Manz, who leads the nation with four game-winning goals, has scored at least one point in each of the last four games for Irvine (7-2-1).