Allyson’s Wonderland

The girl who might be the Next Big Thing in track and field isn’t unnerved by great expectations and doesn’t blanch when experts compare her to the greats in her sport, not even Marion Jones.

But star status for 17-year-old Allyson Felix is not entirely without awkward moments.

At a recent high school meet, the senior from tiny Los Angeles Baptist High in North Hills was surrounded by autograph-seeking peers asking for her signature on everything from event programs to sweatshirts and T-shirts to their very own shoes.

“It definitely caught me off guard,” Felix recalled with a laugh. “There are not a lot of places you can sign your name on a shoe. I really had to think about where I should sign them.”

At the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in April, Felix shattered an 11-year-old national junior (age 19 and under) record and high school record when she won the women’s invitational 200-meter race in 22.51 seconds. A week later, at a Grand Prix meet in Mexico City, she bested a 23-year-old world junior record by running 22.11 in the same event.

That time is the fastest in the world by a woman this year, although Jones has not competed because she’s expecting her first child in July.

And if Felix runs much faster this summer, she might be signing more than shoes, tops and programs sometime soon.

Although she has accepted a scholarship offer from USC, there is speculation that she might forgo a collegiate career to sign a lucrative shoe company contract if she decides that running for one of their clubs will improve her chances of making the U.S. Olympic team next year.

“As of right now, I’m going to USC,” she said. “But we’ll see how things go. As my dad says, ‘Nothing’s out of the question.’ ”

This much is clear: Felix, who will run in the 100 and 200 and 400 relay in the Southern Section Masters Meet at Cerritos College in Norwalk on Friday, and in the women’s 100 in the Home Depot Invitational at Carson on Sunday, was reared by parents who encouraged her and older brother Wes to be humble and respectful of others.

“We’re Christians, so we’ve used the Bible to teach values to our kids,” said Paul Felix, Allyson’s father and a professor at The Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley. “I think they’ve taken what we’ve taught them to heart, and that’s helped them keep things in perspective.”

Wes is a sophomore at USC who won the men’s 200 in the Pacific 10 Conference track and field championships earlier this month.

“We’ve always had the understanding that it’s just sports,” Wes said. “All it takes is one injury or a car accident and it could be over, so don’t take it too seriously. It’s a great opportunity to do some things and travel to some interesting places, but it’s still just sports.”

Marlean Felix, Allyson’s mother, said both her children were taught to consider the long run.

“[Allyson] is very successful in what she’s doing right now and we’re very happy for her,” she said. “But this is fleeting. At some point, it’s going to be over.”

For now, Allyson’s superb talent and perspective make her a prime candidate to continue the legacy of top female track athletes produced by Southern California high schools -- Olympic champions such as Florence Griffith Joyner, Gail Devers and Jones, along with NCAA champion sprinters such as USC’s Angela Williams.

“Athletes like her don’t come along very often,” Jack Shepard, a veteran high school track expert, said of Felix. “That 22.11 puts her in the class of a Marion Jones or a Jim Ryun ... She’s great for the sport because she seems to be extremely nice, intelligent and smart.”

Craig Masback, the CEO of USA Track & Field, has been as impressed as anyone with Felix’s performances this year, but he warns that it’s unwise to make predictions about what she might accomplish.

“In the world of women’s sports, there is no greater challenge than trying to be the world’s fastest female, given the total number of countries participating in track and field and the total number of athletes taking part in sprint events,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “The worst thing any of us can do is take what Allyson has already achieved and place any mantles on her shoulders or attempt to guess what the future will bring for her. She has had a marvelous season, is a hard-working, mature-beyond-her-years athlete, and appears to have wonderful potential.”

That potential was not evident until the 5-foot-6, 125-pound Felix began running track as a freshman at L.A. Baptist.

While Jones, the world’s top women’s sprinter in the 100 and 200 from 1997-2002, had been the fastest middle school sprinter in the nation as a youth in the late 1980s, Felix spent her junior high years playing basketball and the violin.

She was on the varsity basketball team at L.A. Baptist as a freshman before going out for the track team at the urging of her father and brother.

“I just thought she could have a good time with it,” Wes said. “She seemed like she had a nice stride, but I never envisioned anything like this.”

Neither did Jonathan Patton, who was about to enter his seventh -- and possibly last -- season as an assistant at L.A. Baptist when Felix arrived.

Many of L.A. Baptist’s top sprinters had performed poorly at the end of the 1999 season because of what Patton said was a lack of desire. He wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to coach at the school.

Trying to weed out slackers before the start of the 2000 season, Patton put his athletes through intensive workouts during the first two weeks of practice. But he didn’t notice Felix until after that, when he held 60-meter time trials.

Felix ran so fast in her first race that Patton assumed he had timed her incorrectly. When she ran the same time again a few minutes later, he recalls asking her, “Now what’s your name again?’ ”

By the end of the season, Felix had won Southern Section Division IV titles in the 100 and 200 and placed seventh in the state final in the 200 after running a then-career best 23.90 in a qualifying heat.

“That really helped my confidence,” she said of the state meet. “That’s when I decided to get serious about [track]. After that, my passion for it just grew and grew and grew.”

Three years later, her times place her among the world’s fastest women, with a likely place on the U.S. team that will run in the World Championships in Paris in August.

“Her attitude is, ‘I want to do whatever it takes to win,’ ” said Barry Ross, who has designed Felix’s weight workouts for three years. “Demeanor wise, she is such a nice, sweet kid. But inside she’s steel. She hates to lose.”

Or win with what she considers a sub-par performance. For example, in the state high school championships last year, Felix won her second consecutive 100 title but was upset she had to come from behind to defeat Shalonda Solomon of Long Beach Poly.

“She just kind of stomped back,” Patton said. “She didn’t want to be told what she did wrong, but she didn’t want to be congratulated either. She just said, ‘I can’t wait for that 200 meters.’ ”

And when that race came around, Felix won by .53 of a second -- a relatively huge margin -- in a time of 22.83, the fastest of her career until last month.

Felix’s 22.51 time at Mt. SAC in April cut .07 seconds off the previous national high school record that Jones set while finishing fourth in the 1992 Olympic trials, just after her junior year at Thousand Oaks High.

Since then, the comparisons between them have been fast and furious, something many young athletes might consider a burden considering Jones won a record nine state titles in high school and a record-tying five medals in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

Not Felix. “I consider it a compliment and honor to be compared to her,” she said. “She is someone that I look up to, but I am somewhat different than her. I’m definitely not trying to be the next Marion Jones. I’m just trying to be myself.”

That means keeping accomplishments in perspective and being careful to stay grounded.

“She’s the same sweet person she has always been and that’s the thing I’m so proud of,” Wes Felix said. “Her schedule is a little bit more busy with interviews and stuff like that, but she still carries herself the way she always has. You can’t tell if she’s the fastest woman in the world [in the 200] or the Alpha League champion by the way she carries herself.”

As to how fast she might run in the future, there are two schools of thought.

One is that her success is not as great as it might appear and that she is questionable to make the World Championship team because several veteran U.S. sprinters won’t be in peak form until the USA Track & Field championships, the qualifying meet for the Worlds, are held at Stanford from June 19-22.

The flip side, however, is that Felix’s training also is geared to produce her best times -- and an all-important top-three finish -- at the national championships. Some say she might well run faster at Stanford than she did in the altitude of Mexico City.

Patton is a proponent of the latter theory.

“I’m thinking someone is going to have to run 21.8 to beat her by the end of the summer,” he said, “because she is so strong over the last half of the race that someone is going to have to have a big lead on her early in the race to hold her off at the end.”

Typically, Felix refuses to make any predictions.

“I definitely think that running against the good competition, I’ll get some good times,” she said.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

*--* ALLYSON FELIX Progression in the sprints (with finish in state championships if applicable): Year Age Best Times 2000 14 100 12.19 200 23.90 (7) 2001 15 100 11.53 (1) 200 23.31 (2) 2002 16 100 11.40 (1) 200 22.83 (1) 400 55.01 2003 17 100 11.37 200 22.11* 400 52.26

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*--* MARION JONES Progression in the sprints (with finish in state championships if applicable): Year Age Best Times 1990 14 100 11.62 (1) 200 23.70 (1) 400 54.21 1991 15 100 11.17 (1) 200 22.87 (1) 400 52.91 1992 16 100 11.14 (1) 200 22.58 (1)** 400 54.44 1993 17 100 11.28 (1) 200 23.00 (1)

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*--world junior (age 19 and under) record; **--national high school record at the time. Jones also had a best of 22-0 1/2 in the long jump as a senior and won the event in the state championships. Jones competed for Oxnard Rio Mesa High in 1990-91 and Thousand Oaks in 1992-93.