Moorpark High cross country training begins to show signs of success
By Eliav Appelbaum eliav@theacorn.com

Mark Jaeckel helped Moorpark High School's girls cross country team get out of a bind.

When Tara Thomas, longtime girls' head coach, left the Musketeers for an assistant principal position at Mesa Verde Middle School in late August, Jaeckel filled the void. Now the 10-year coach of the Moorpark Striders youth team has high expectations for a Moorpark squad that lost only two runners.

"I'm very happy with the team," Jaeckel said before a recent practice. "We're strong and we have a good amount of seniors."

Moorpark boys' head coach Tom King hopes the Musketeers recover from an uncharacteristic last-place finish in the Marmonte League in 2006.

"Our goal is to do better than last year, obviously," King said, "and improve our times and gel as a team."

With almost 100 runners in tow between the teams and Marmonte action starting next Thursday, the Mustangs ran well in two recent invitationals, the Sprint by the Sea in Seaside last Friday and the Mission Oaks Invitational at Tierra Rejada Ranch in Moorpark on Wednesday. Moorpark's girls had a top-10 showing in Seaside while the boys finished 15th overall. At Mission Oaks, the top 21 finishers in the boys' and girls' races earned medals.

The Musketeer girls are bolstered by 12 seniors, including standout Madelyn Stoltze, arguably the team's fastest longdistance runner. Fellow senior Heather Wicks and sophomores Stacey Fujikuni, Taylor Davis and Emily Sandon round out Moorpark's top five runners. The last two varsity spots were still up for grabs, pending the results of the Mission Oaks Invitational against Rio Mesa.

Even though freshmen Dana Woodbury and Rebecca Haas look strong early, Jaeckel expects to keep the pair on the seven-member frosh-soph squad. All other runners who don't make the frosh-soph or varsity teams will run together on the junior varsity squad.

"I think we'll be battling with Agoura for the (Marmonte League) championship," said Jaeckel, who was a New Jersey state champion in cross country and the 800-meter run at Saddle Brook High School before earning a scholarship to American University in Washington, D.C. "One of our goals is to go undefeated in the regular season and place at invitationals and send our whole team to the CIF state championships."

Moorpark's girls team finished third in the Marmonte last season. The top four teams in the league advanced to the CIF preliminaries at Mount SAC College.

Only 13 teams from the Southern Section preliminaries advance to the CIF Finals on Nov. 24 at Woodward Park in Fresno.

With the Striders, Jaeckel oversees the development of around 250 runners ages 5 to 14. Making a change to high school, where Jaeckel assisted last year, has been an adjustment for him and his charges. Jaeckel, who used to work for Paramount Pictures, will also coach the girls track and field team in the spring.

"I think it's been a little tough on the girls in that the transition from the prior coach took place quickly," he said.

"They had a female coach, so they have to adjust to a male coach. That's been tough on them, but I think it's going well. We're learning about each other."

For the boys, junior Chris Coleman is expected to lead the charge.

"He's worked really hard his sophomore year in cross country and in track, and that carried over to this summer," King said of Coleman. "I have a saying I tell the boys and the girls: 'Summer makes a runner.' You can go into summer and be the No. 1 runner on the team and top 10 in the county. But if you don't run in the summer, everyone else catches up to you."

Justin Tung, Jon Jerome, Will Smith and Matt Kay comprise the core senior boys group. King also has high expectations of sophomore Ryan Imhof.

"He's worked extremely hard, extremely hard," King said of Imhof, who had a second-place finish in the Sprint by the Sea. "It's paying off."

One of the Musketeers' youngest runners, freshman Jordan Jaeckel, is the son of Mark. At press time, King still hadn't selected his top seven varsity runners.

Working together, King and Jaeckel will try to get Moorpark peaking at the end of the season.

"The key to pacing is we alternate hard to easy workouts every other day," Jaeckel said. "It's about quality not quantity. During the summer we did a lot of 8 to 10 mile runs. Now we're focused on interval training, hill work and 800meter intervals on the courses so you just build up until you get to the point where you want to peak at the end. We want to keep our legs fresh."

Moorpark opens league next Thursday in a three-way meet with Royal and Newbury Park at Challenger Park, Royal's home course. On Sept. 27, the Musketeers square off against Simi Valley and Westlake at Tierra Rejada Ranch.