Buwalda Quietly Succeeds

Lindsay Buwalda doesn’t mind her relative anonymity in the Orange County cross-country community. In fact, she relishes it.

Buwalda, a senior, competes at Laguna Beach, which barely had enough runners for a varsity team this season and finished last in the Pacific Coast League.

Buwalda also has to compete in the same league with University’s Allyson Marquand, who is only the reigning Orange County champion and was named The Times cross-country athlete of the year in 1995.

But Buwalda has more than held her own.

“Lindsay would have been league champion the last two years if not for Allyson,” Laguna Beach Coach Earl Towner said.

Although Marquand garners all of the top honors, Buwalda doesn’t mind playing second fiddle.

“Allyson is really nice,” Buwalda said. “She gives me a good goal to shoot at. I don’t like that [head-to-head] competition much. I just like to go out and run.”

Buwalda has quietly put together a great season. She finished second to Marquand at the Pacific Coast League finals for the second consecutive season and ran a personal-record time of 17 minutes 33 seconds on the three-mile course at Irvine’s Mason Park in a dual meet against Costa Mesa.

Another high point came when Buwalda posted the third-fastest time in the county at the Mt. San Jacinto Invitational Oct. 25. Buwalda finished the three-mile course, which is also the site for the upcoming Southern Section prelims and finals, in 18:31.

Only Santa Margarita’s Katie Nuanes (18:14), a Foot Locker National Championships qualifier in 1995, and Dana Hills’ Christa Fitzgerald (18:28) posted faster times.

All of these accomplishments have collegiate coaches taking notice. Schools, including UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, are recruiting Buwalda, who battled through stress fracture injuries in her shins during her freshman and sophomore seasons.

“I missed all of my sophomore year in cross-country because of injuries,” Buwalda said. “But I actually didn’t miss the training that much. I came back for my junior season after Coach Towner talked me into it after we had a good track season.”

Towner’s reasons to persuade Buwalda to come back for cross-country are obvious.

“A person who has this kind of talent and drive comes along only once in a blue moon,” Towner said.

Buwalda holds all of the school’s cross-country records and is shooting for a second consecutive trip to the state finals.

But it wasn’t always like this for Buwalda.

“I never really started running until high school,” she said. “Those first few training runs I remember were really hard.”

The hilly terrain around Laguna Beach High provides some of the toughest training ground in the county, and Towner remembered how Buwalda struggled at first.

“I knew from her second day of practice as a freshman that she was special,” Towner said. “Lindsay asked me if she was supposed to be running all the time during that 2 1/2-mile run. I kind of laughed and said, ‘Yes,’ and she just replied ‘Well, we’re trying.’

“Already she was showing me what kind of effort she was putting into this. She has that rare ability to train hard and keep with it.”

The Artists’ home course is at Alta Laguna Park, which should help Buwalda prepare for the upcoming section meets.

“Some of my runners have said they prefer running Mt. SAC to our home course,” Towner said.

Although the Artists had a miserable season, Buwalda, the only senior on the team, is looking forward to the final races of the season.

“Last year it was kind of hard qualifying as an individual for state but without my teammates,” Buwalda said. “I was just happy to make it last year, and I didn’t run a very good race.

“This year, my teammates have been great. A lot of them said they’ll help me train so can try and make it back to state and do better.”