HIGH SCHOOL PREVIEW : Boundary Line Benefits Northwood’s First Team : Cross-country: First-year school gets coach and three members of Irvine High’s state championship unit.

Northwood High School opens its doors for the first time Thursday, and already there’s talk about where to hang the championship banner.

That’s because the girls’ cross-country team, one of only two varsity sports Northwood definitely will field this season, is expected to benefit from the arrival of Coach Randy Rossi and three key runners from Irvine High’s 1998 state championship team.

Sophomores Jordan Bechtold, Kira Mettra and Jenny Ormes were among the top five finishers at the Division I state finals in Fresno last November, but were forced to transfer north when Trabuco Road was selected as the boundary line for enrollment.

“I think it’s kind of hard that we have to leave our team and everything,” Ormes said. “But I like this new team, so it’s working out good.”

Northwood’s student body will consist of freshmen and sophomores during its first year and will add a class each of the next two years. Because the state doesn’t include freshmen when determining enrollment figures, Northwood’s sophomore class size of approximately 280 students places it in Division V, where it is ranked second behind Palos Verdes Chadwick in the Southern Section preseason poll.

The attendance boundary was drawn so Northwood would have a “critical mass,” which is a student population large enough to offer a complete scholastic program, Rossi said.

Irvine students with older siblings still at the school would be allowed to remain behind. Students within Irvine’s boundaries could petition to attend Northwood, and that same number within Northwood’s boundaries would be allowed to stay at Irvine.

“It was all done on a lottery system,” Rossi said. “So there was no guarantee that any group or any special interest would be served by that. I believe, when it was all said and done, there were 14 students who ended up making the exchange.”

Bechtold, Mettra and Ormes didn’t win the lottery, but now they’re feeling like the lucky ones.

“We tried to fight it in the beginning,” Mettra said. “But I’m happy now because we have a really good team this year. We run really close together and I’m excited to start racing.”

Rossi took the team to Catalina last month for an eight-day training session, during which he talked about the new roles his athletes will inherit.

“The four of us sat out on the beach one night and the girls were concerned because they are sophomores and there is a tremendous amount of responsibility that they need to assume,” Rossi said. “But I tried to reassure them that they are doing an outstanding job. I’m very, very pleased with the leadership they’ve provided the team.”

Rossi, who teaches Spanish, said his decision to leave Irvine was a career move. The new $58-million school will include state of the art teaching facilities, including a high-tech foreign language lab.

“Northwood will be very good because they have Randy Rossi and he’s one of the best coaches in the country,” Brea Olinda Coach Pam Barstow Valenti said. “I know Randy has already forgotten more than I’ll ever know.”

Rossi’s penchant for getting his teams to peak at the right time was never more evident than last season. Irvine was ranked fifth in Division I going into the Southern Section finals, but surprised top-ranked Esperanza, 92-108. The following week, the Vaqueros won their second state title, again defeating Esperanza, 88-93. They ended the season ranked seventh in the nation.

“Last year, I thought we were really good and we still were ranked like fifth in CIF,” Mettra said. “But then we won the state meet and proved they were wrong.”

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Brea Olinda is ranked second behind Santa Margarita in both the Southern Section and state Division II preseason polls, which is fine with Barstow Valenti. The Wildcats will run in a four-way meet at Santa Margarita on Thursday, but she said this time of year typically is not the best for Brea Olinda.

“We seem to have a trend,” Barstow Valenti said of the annual season opener against Santa Margarita. “They always kick our butts early, but by CIF they tend to be kind of beat up.

“My kids usually don’t start running well until the beginning of October. We plan our training to have the best races at the end of the season.”