Fast Times

Before she became the World’s Fastest Woman or helped North Carolina win the 1994 NCAA basketball championship, Marion Jones awed spectators, coaches and athletes at Thousand Oaks and Rio Mesa highs.

Big things were expected of Jones when she arrived at Rio Mesa in the fall of 1989 after running 12.01 in the 100 and 24.06 in the 200 in the summer following her eighth-grade year at Pinecrest Prep in Sherman Oaks.

She thrived on the pressure, winning an unprecedented nine state track and field titles in high school. Jones was chosen Track & Field News’ national girls’ athlete of the year in 1991 and 1992, Cal-Hi Sports’ state athlete of the year as a sophomore, junior and senior and was the state Division I basketball player of the year in 1993.

“It was like a Hollywood movie,” said Chuck Brown, then the Thousand Oaks girls’ basketball coach. “Except that everybody but her is in slow motion.”

Plenty of sprinters could relate to Brown’s comments, particularly in the last three years of Jones’ high school career when the 5-foot-10 speedster was the dominant 100 and 200 competitor in the nation.

Jones won the 100 and 200 in the 1990 state championships as a 14-year-old freshman, then took the national sprint scene by storm in 1991.

After running 11.62 in the 100 and 23.70 in the 200 in 1990, Jones clocked 11.17 in the 100, a national high school record of 22.76 in the 200 and 52.91 in the 400 as a sophomore.

She won her second state titles in the 100 and 200 and placed eighth in the 100 and fourth in the 200 in The Athletics Congress championships that year while running against the top women in the nation.

She created a stir when she transferred to Thousand Oaks in November of her junior year--refusing to give a reason--but that didn’t slow her.

Jones helped Thousand Oaks win the section Division I-A basketball title in March, 1992, after missing much of the season with a broken bone in her left wrist.

In track, she missed the national record in the 100 by .01 seconds with a 11.14 clocking, lowered her own record in the 200 with a 22.58 mark and won her third state title in each event.

More impressively, she placed fifth in the 100 and fourth in the 200 in the Olympic trials in New Orleans in June.

Her finish in the 100 gave her a chance to become an alternate on the Olympic 400 relay team, but she turned down the opportunity, saying that, “The time wasn’t right.”

Jones averaged 22.8 points and 14.7 rebounds during her senior basketball season, but two-time defending champion Thousand Oaks lost to Buena, 44-33, in the section title game.

She added the long jump to her repertoire in track, perhaps looking for another challenge.

Although she’d never competed in the event until that year, Jones leaped 22-0 1/2 to win the state title and move to second on the all-time national performer list. She also won the 100 and the 200 to give her nine state titles in her career, three more than any other athlete.

The best measure of her greatness might come from looking at the all-time national list in the 200.

Jones, who ranks second on the all-time world list in the 100 (10.65) and 200 (21.62) and is two-time defending world champion in the 100, still has eight of the nine fastest times ever run in high school, including the top five.

“Physically she was really talented,” said Brian FitzGerald, Jones’ coach at Rio Mesa. “And she had a very good work ethic. . . . But the thing that really set her apart was that she was just a fierce competitor. She wouldn’t back down from anybody.”