OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

Add Mark Nevers of Oak Park High to the list of runners who have turned the frustrations of a disappointing track season into motivation for a superb cross-country campaign.

Nevers, a junior, failed to advance to the Division IV final of the 1,600 meters in the Southern Section track and field championships in May, but he has won six of eight races entering the Ventura County cross-country championships at Lake Casitas in Ojai on Friday.

“That definitely motivated me,” Nevers said of his track struggles. “The whole season I had been inconsistent and I wasn’t like that during cross-country. . . . That helped me get the fire and the competitiveness back this season.”

It also led to his best summer of training.

Nevers took three weeks off after his track season ended with an eighth-place finish in the 3,200 in the section Division IV final, but he averaged 50 miles a week in training during the summer.

The work has paid off with several notable performances.

Nevers, runner-up in the state Division IV cross-country final last year, won the small schools race of the Ojai Invitational at Lake Casitas on Sept. 18 and the Division IV race of the Stanford Invitational on Oct. 2.

He placed second to senior Girmay Guangul of Santa Clara of the Central Coast Section in the small schools race of the Clovis Invitational at Woodward Park in Fresno on Oct. 9 and was fourth in the Division IV sweepstakes race of the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational last Friday.

“Ojai and Stanford have been my best races,” Nevers said. “I never expected to run as fast as I did at Ojai.”

Nevers clocked 15:26 over the three-mile course at Lake Casitas, 20 seconds faster than he ran in finishing second to Josh Spiker of Ventura in the Ventura County championships last year.

His 15:50 clocking over Stanford’s 5,000-meter course was 23 seconds faster than he ran last year, and his 15:31 time over Mt. SAC’s rugged 2.95-mile layout was 12 seconds faster than he ran to finish third in the Southern Section Division IV final last November.

“I am shocked at his improvement this year,” Coach Kevin Smith said. “I did not expect him to run as fast as he has. . . . He has gone to another level again.”

This is not the first time Nevers has surprised Smith, who is in his 15th season at Oak Park.

Smith still recalls Nevers’ freshman year, when he was the No. 2 runner on a veteran Oak Park team that finished fourth in the state Division V final the previous year.

Nevers had never run competitively before, but he looked good in early season workouts and posted the second-fastest time among Oak Park runners in a season-opening meet in San Diego while running on the Eagles’ second team.

“I kept telling myself, ‘This is an illusion,’ ” Smith said of Nevers’ promising workouts. “But after that race, I definitely thought, ‘We’re dealing with something real here.’ ”

Nevers, a straight-A student, finished 27th in the 1997 Southern Section Division IV final to help Oak Park to a sixth-place finish, before running 4:32.59 in the 1,600 and 9:42.43 in the 3,200 in track.

He improved to 4:27.98 in the 1,600 and 9:40.42 in the 3,200 last track season, but he never approached his goal of a “low 4:20” clocking.

That was particularly galling for someone who had given up basketball before the season to concentrate on running.

“For some reason, I had four or five races where I wasn’t there [mentally],” Nevers said. “I was squeaking by on talent in a lot of races, but it caught up with me in the [Division IV preliminaries].”

This season has been doubly satisfying for Nevers because Oak Park is a state Division IV title contender.

The Eagles are ranked No. 3 in the state behind McFarland and Shasta Central Valley, and they’re expected to battle No. 5 Nordhoff for the county title Friday.

Nordhoff, the two-time defending state Division IV champion, is shooting for its third consecutive county title and fourth in five years.

“It would be great to win because Nordhoff has always been the team to beat,” Nevers said. “It’s exciting to be going into the meet trying to take the title away from them.”

Nevers is given little chance of beating Spiker, who ran a stunning 14:42 at Mt. SAC on Saturday, but he’s not worried about that. He’s most concerned with improving his time on the Lake Casitas course and leading Oak Park to its first county title.

“Josh is going to do what he’s going to do,” Nevers said. “He’s probably going to go after the course record [of 15:04 set by Keith O’Doherty of Thousand Oaks in 1994]. I just need to run my own race and reach my own goals.”