The Wright Approach

George Wright can smile about it now, but his first season as the boys’ cross-country coach at Long Beach Poly High in 1985 was no laughing matter.

Wright, a swimming coach, inherited a program that lacked uniforms and had difficulty fielding a full seven-man varsity team that season.

“The kids weren’t interested in running,” Wright said. “They hadn’t had much success there, and it showed in their attitudes.”

These days, the Jackrabbits have a new attitude.

Last year, Poly won its first Southern Section cross-country championship since 1943 when it captured the Division I title. It was the Jackrabbits first appearance in the finals in more than two decades.

Last week, at the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational in Walnut, Poly runners decked out in black shorts and white singlets were cheered on by members of their booster club en route to finishing second to Carmichael Jesuit, 56-57, in the team sweepstakes race. Carmichael Jesuit is ranked 25th in the nation by Harrier magazine.

“It was a confidence-booster to know that we could have run better and yet still finish that close to them,” said Poly senior Chad Durham, a co-captain who finished fourth in last year’s Southern Section finals. “We lost, but we also won.”

Poly’s cross-country team has also won over the school’s student body and faculty with its performance during the past year. That’s not easy at a school where the boys’ and girls’ track and field teams have combined to win 10 state and 12 section titles.

“A lot of the coaches of the other teams talked to us,” said senior John Gould. “They kind of recognized us as another great Poly sports program.”

Not a bad accomplishment for a team whose school is located in a neighborhood that lacks many green belts or open grassy areas to run.

The Jackrabbits make the best of what’s around. They frequently run from school to a park in Signal Hill where they do a series of hill repeats. Or they’ll meet at team member Tyler Noesen’s house in San Pedro and run in the hills there.

“We’re in an area not known for its hills,” Durham said. “But coach has done a good job getting us into the hills in workouts.”

That hill work pays dividends at Mt. SAC, which features one of the most challenging three-mile courses in the state.

Last year, the Mt. SAC meet jump-started the Jackrabbits on their way to their section championship. The Jackrabbits’ sixth-place finish in last year’s team sweepstakes race showed them they belonged in a race full of some of the state’s elite Division I and II teams.

“We only finished sixth in that meet, but we were third among the [Southern Section] Division I schools,” Wright said. “It was then that these guys thought that they had a chance at winning the [Southern Section] title.”

Three weeks later, Poly won its Division I qualifying heat in the section preliminaries at Mt. SAC and had the fastest team time--the cumulative time of its top five runners--in any of the heats.

That was followed by a 91-109 victory over second-place Santa Ana Valley in the section championships and a berth in the state championships in Fresno, where the Jackrabbits finished fourth behind perennial-power Rolling Hills Estates Peninsula, Poway and Grass Valley Nevada Union.

The roots of Poly’s recent success began when Durham and Gould joined the varsity as freshmen in 1994.

“They’re the ones who got this thing started,” Noesen said.

Noesen helped when he joined the team in 1995 along with Martin Conrad. Durham’s younger brother, Aaron, was outstanding as a freshman last year.

Those five placed among the top 19 runners at Mt. SAC last weekend--paced by Chad Durham’s seventh--and they make the Jackrabbits the probable favorites to win a second consecutive Division I title when the championships are held at Mt. SAC on Nov. 22.

The top four boys’ and girls’ teams in each of five divisions in that meet will qualify for the state championships in Fresno on Nov. 29.

“We’re hoping to win the state title this year,” Noesen said. “We learned last year that it’s all about timing. Last year, Peninsula [the third-place finisher in the Southern Section championships] just had a great day at the right time. It’s about being ready, both physically and mentally, for that race.”