TRACKING GREATNESS

High school sports serve as a rite of passage for the athletes who play them, the students, friends and families that gather to watch them and the sportswriters who cut their professional teeth covering them.

High school football games in Los Angeles date to 1896, but it wasn’t until 1934 that the Los Angeles City Section was born.

The Southern Section was established in 1912 and held its first athletic competition in 1913.

This story is not an attempt to document the achievements of every outstanding athlete, coach and team that made a mark, for there are far too many to chronicle here.

Rather, it is a history lesson of sorts told by current and former Times staff writers who have written about Southland prep athletes. Most of the writers graduated from Los Angeles-area high schools. And while many have gone on to cover college and professional sports as beat writers or columnists, all maintain indelible images of the prep athletes they watched, covered and, in some instances, competed with and against on the playing field.

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I wasn’t alive when Olympic champions such as Cornelius Johnson (Los Angeles, Class of 1933), Mel Patton (University, ‘43), Mal Whitfield (Jefferson, ‘43) and Charles Dumas (Compton Centennial, ‘55) were honing their skills in high school.

But I did see Quincy Watts, who graduated from Woodland Hills Taft in 1988.

Watts had a mixture of size (6-3, 185 pounds), power, grace, competitiveness and coolness under fire that I hadn’t seen before--or since--in a Southland high school track and field athlete.

Obea Moore of Pasadena Muir and Michael Granville of Bell Gardens are other outstanding competitors I have covered, but I never got the impression they had a legitimate chance to one day win a gold medal in the Olympic Games or world championships.

I did with Watts, who won the 400 and ran a leg on the world-record setting 1,600-relay team in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

Watts won a total of three state titles in the 100 and 200 in high school and had bests of 10.30 in the 100 and 20.50 in the 200. But his true potential was most evident when he ran the anchor leg in the 1,600 relay.

That’s when he’d bring crowds to their feet with splits in the high 45- or low 46-second range.

It was during those times that I’d shake my head in amazement and think, ‘If this kid stays healthy and sticks with it, he could be one of the best quarter-milers in the world.’ ”